It's 1990, and Lily is a sixteen-year-old girl living in Manchester, England. It has been five years since her father's death, and she is soon to return to her birthplace in Nigeria to reunite with her mother and siblings for the anniversary.
As cold rain thunders on the British streets, Lily flashes back to her childhood in Lagos. The biracial daughter of a Nigerian father and an Irish mother, Lily lives a dual reality as a child, with moments of joy existing alongside her father's increasingly erratic and violent behavior, which is due to a stage illness Lily doesn't understand called schizophrenia.
As the streets of Lagos erupt in violence due to a coup, things with Lily's father reach a breaking point, and she is sent away to live with a family in England. As a confused and shy child thrust into a foreign country, Lily must deal with a new school and new friends, while longing for what she left behind in Nigeria.
In the vein of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, My Life As A Chameleon is is a powerful story of resilience and belonging across different cultures, and about how family secrets can destroy even the deepest bonds.