Staff Book Review: The Ones We Loved | Cambridge Public Library

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Book review by staff member Kathleen, Senior Branch Assistant

The Ones We Loved, by Tarisai Ngangura. Toronto, ON: HarperCollins, 2025. 297 pages

For fans of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, here is a fresh voice. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Tarisai Ngangura divides her time between Manhattan and Toronto. She is a journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair and The Globe and Mail. With her debut novel, Ngangura steps into the world of fiction with apparent ease.

The Ones We Loved immerses the reader in the world of She and He. Theirs are lives that are never easy: from childhood, they each experience catastrophic losses, and new starts that tip towards the precarious. And yet, beauty is recognized and lifted.

Ngangura captures the cadence of thought in prose that illuminates the peculiar slant of traumatic, childhood remembrances, so that we can see the world through the eyes of She and He, and root for their relationship. It is a love story that is interwoven with the landscape of place and memory, hardship and connections. With characters that beguile and haunt, this is a novel to savour.

If you love good writing, pick up The Ones We Loved by Tarisai Ngangura.

If you liked The Ones We Loved, Kathleen has created a reading list with similar titles you may want to explore.

This review was originally published in the Saturday, May 17, 2025 edition of the Waterloo Region Record as part of the "At the Library" feature. This regular feature shares reading experiences and recommendations from local library staff.