Jalissa and her dad aren't close, but when he invites her to Jamaica, his homeland, for the first time, she says yes.

She's running from heartbreak and a loss of her own; he's running out of time.

As they travel through sun-drenched towns and navigate tangled family roots, old wounds open and long-held silences begin to break. They're both trying to outrun something-but along the way, they cross paths with people whose stories shift their own, helping them face the past, reckon with the present and reimagine what comes next.

Bitter Melon is a tender, funny, heart-bruised road trip into memory, mortality and the fierce, fragile love between a daughter and the father she's still learning to understand.

Liv is a writer of Jamaican and Guyanese descent via South London. Liv tells stories with heart about the people and places that matter to her. Her work spans journalism, audio, TV and curatorial projects for which she's received various accolades, including LGBTQI+ Broadcaster of The Year and Rising Star at Wow. Her short story, 'The Sisters', was published in the critically acclaimed HAG, a collection of forgotten folktales retold. She was a BBC Writer in Residence for 2021, in which she developed an original pilot for a queer conspiracy thriller. At 21, Liv founded the award-winning media company gal-dem. Liv is most at peace in nature, and she now lives by the sea. Rosewater is her debut novel.