My Life As A Chameleon: Longlisted for the Jhalak Children's and YA Prize 2024

15-year-old Lily has been sent from her home in Lagos, Nigeria, to a new school and a new family in Manchester, England. She thought it would be a chance to reinvent herself, become the shiny-happy-confident girl that everyone wants to be around. But it hasn’t turned out like that.

Here, without friends or someone to confide in, she struggles to fit in – and being ‘different’ feels newly dangerous, vulnerable and provocative.

Lily looks back at her childhood and confronts the family trauma that turned her young life upside down, triggering the series of events that brought her here. Can she rely on the strength she built for herself back then, in order to save herself now?

My Life as a Chameleon is a powerful story of resilience and belonging, about family secrets and how they can destroy even the deepest bonds. It is a story about finding your place in the world and realising you deserve to be there.