The ratings and comments on Goodreads for On Rotation, by Shirlene Obuobi, are so spot-on to illustrate why publishing companies have to be held accountable for the way they promote a book. There were a few people who thoroughly appreciated the story for what it was, which was a combination of “relationship fiction” and and the immigrant experience, with coming-of-age (early 20s variety) thrown in; the rest were disgruntled and showed that in their ratings, because the blurbs had led them to believe this was a rom-com.

Don’t get me wrong: There is a romance in this book that takes up a significant amount of air. But it isn’t a comedy (although there are a few funny moments), and it doesn’t have that coy, somewhat self-conscious vibe that lets you know when you’re supposed to acknowledge the ironies or coincidences or other plot points common to the specific rom-com subgenre.

Instead, it’s a narrative about the experiences of a young black woman in medical school; but moderating that more generic scenario is the specificity of being a first-generation Ghanian, seeing how that sensibility and those traditions differentiate a part-West African, part-British heritage from that of the American descendents of slaves. It’s a showcase for the immigrant point of view—the older generation who gave up much to move their lives to a new arena having hefty, sometimes crushing expectations of and for their children, who are perceived to have every advantage and are expected to make perfect choices. It’s an examination of friendship and love and what place and importance those two levels of engagement can have in life. And yes, it’s also a romance, but from a more complicated context than the usual rom-com fare.

On Rotation focuses on Angie, a 20-something black woman who is prioritizing her career goals and having to juggle wildly to keep up with everything else. The style is engaging, and the cast of characters is lively, diverse, and inclusive. I liked the detail of the story where she decides to enhance her chances at getting a plum residency by doing a study about how the black experience with doctors and hospitals differs from that of white patients. While I am a white woman, the fact that I have a health condition about which many doctors are ignorant and/or dismissive made me able to relate to and appreciate the information she gathered.

The challenges of trying to live up to her parents’ expectations, which are many and encompass both the significant and the trivial—including everything from her success as a doctor and her choice of romantic partner down to the tidiness of her apartment and how she wears her hair—will probably ring true for many of us, but there is definitely an added amount of pressure for children of immigrants. I loved the connections she had and maintained within her circle of “ride or die” friends, and the bewilderment and grief with which she faces the possible ending of one of those relationships. And the shallowness of her past dealings with men who appreciated certain aspects but couldn’t embrace the whole of Angie were a nice contrast to the relationship she wants but doesn’t trust with a man who may be different.

I confess that I would have preferred a little less of what was going on inside Angie’s head at all times for a little more of what was happening in the thoughts or behind the scenes of certain other characters; but this is a minor caveat—it was, after all, Angie’s story.

There was one truly irritating aspect of the book and, perhaps blessedly, something I could blithely choose to ignore: The author appends footnotes to almost every page, in which she didactically explains medical terms, Ghanian customs, black hair, contemporary slang, and everything else she must have believed the reader was either too ignorant to get or too lazy to research. But because I read this as an e-book, the footnotes all appeared sequentially at the very end of the book and, rather than jumping back and forth between whatever page I was on and the last 20 pages of footnotes, which is a major pain when reading on a Kindle, I simply gave up on knowing what she was choosing to share in those addenda, which probably saved the book for me. Footnotes in fiction are almost never a good idea unless they serve an alternate purpose, such as the ones in Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus saga, wherein the main story is about the boy magician Nathaniel who summons an ancient genii, while the footnotes contain the sly side commentary of the genii himself. So I guess my recommendation for enjoying Obuobi’s book is to read the Kindle version and ignore the asterisks liberally seeded throughout the text!