I wanted to love this book. But I’ve settled on liking it.

Set in modern-day Zimbabwe, the book is a story of two rival hairdressers and serves both as comic relief, social contemporary and an inside view to the ravage of Mugabe’s reign. And at its core, the irrational homophobia of African society.

It begins in Mrs Khumalo salon, one that is very easy to picture as the typical estate salon. Vimbai is famed as the best stylist in Harare and enjoys this privilege until Dumisani appears on the scene. While Vimbai’s philosophy is to make the customers feel like ‘white women’, Dumi’s (as a male hairdresser) winning formula is to make the clients feel like ‘women’. And I can see why that works. The ultimate compliment to a woman is that she is beautiful in her own right, and not to try and fashion her beauty against someone else’s. I transgress…it’s not long before Dumi wins the hearts of clients and employer alike and is promoted to manager.

Along the way, Dumi and Vimbai become housemates, form a friendship, and that turns into something…more. The story then spirals its arc to include the Ncube family, and Vimbai steps into a world unlike that of most Zimbabweans. Wealth and splendour and the joys of excess probably blind her to what readers can easily deduce halfway through the book.

And in the book’s crescendo, dark secrets are discovered that lead to a tragic end.

As I said, I really wanted to love the book because it had all the elements of a great story: winsome protagonist, a love interest, social and political commentary. But the end of most chapter was a little ‘obvious’. The author keeps announcing that more suspense and intrigue is coming; a week from now, an hour from now, six months from now.

As a reader, I don’t want to be told at every turn that this is a scene I need to remember. I want to turn a page, get so dumbfounded I raffle through pages for where the penny should have dropped. Don’t point and tell, show and trust that your storytelling will do its work.

That said, still a delightful book. And it made the hours at the salon yesterday fly by