Not What I Thought

 On Rotation by Shirlene Obuobi

I do not like coming of age stories when I read YA and I do not like finding yourself stories when I read adult novels; this was more finding yourself than romance. The best part was the inclusion of Ghanaian cultural practices and customs. I found that fascinating! Angie is a third year med student who starts the book breaking up with her boyfriend before heading to her parents house for her younger sisters knocking (it's like asking for her hand in marriage but specific to Ghanaian culture). Then a few days later she meets Ricky when she's crying in a public park. They have an instant spark and spend the day together and at the end of the day he finally tells her he has a girlfriend. Then she and her friends go to a concert and meet a girl in the bathroom and she moves to sit with them and her boyfriend just happens to be Ricky, and he just so happens to be friends with one of the girls that Angie is at the concert with. She and Ricky keep running into each other: he is a volunteer at the hospital where she is assigned for one of her rotations. Then they become friends. Then he tells her his girlfriend broke up with him weeks ago and they start hanging out, but they don't define the relationship. When she finally gets the courage to ask him to define the relationship he balks. She ends things. She keeps running into the same older woman in the hospital, turns out it's his grandmother. During this time her best friend and roommate has moved out. She's trying to repair that relationship and Ricky just so happens to be besties with roomies girlfriend so she asks her if he would be open to her reaching out. She ends up spending time with him at the hospital while his dad is dying, acting as a go between for the family and the medical team. After his dad dies his grandmother tells him to go be with her and he takes her to a mural he painted of her. The epilogue is of match day a year and a half later. They are still together. She gets her second choice program but is devastated because it's in Seattle all the way across the country. Then he shows her a job offer from the same city and tells her that he had been applying for jobs in all the cities of her top five programs. Then he gets down on his knee and proposes because he knocked when she was out interviewing. I was upset about the ending on two fronts: first because she never specified what program she matched with (it is implied that it's internal medicine but not outright stated and I wanted that closure) and second because we didn't get to see how his knocking went. The cultural aspects were my favorite parts of the story and I wanted more. I wanted to like this book, but finding yourself it not my favorite.