I first noticed The Smart Money Woman because of the hype; probably due to the release of Season 2 of the movie series. I kept seeing reviews of the book everywhere, so I decided to check it out myself. First page in, and my first thought was, “another overhyped book”. The writing style felt basic,…
The first time I stumbled across Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, it was through my sister. She was preparing for the UTME, and the book was one of either WAEC or JAMB’s recommended texts. I still remember spotting it on her desk and wondering, “Purple hibiscus? What kind of flower is that?” Growing up,…
Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda is a hauntingly beautiful collection of short stories. In each of these stories, the ordinary flirts excessively with the supernatural. It’s very unsettling, but very human too. Altogether, there are twelve stories in this collection, but a few struck me so deeply that I had to sit still, staring into space,…
This is one hell of an opening line; the kind of sentence that immediately pulls you in, giving you no choice but to keep reading, and it does a fine job of foreshadowing the grief and mystery that course through Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji. The book begins with a devastating scene: Vivek…
Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is a reflection on unemployment and underemployment and how they affect the lives of some ambitious Moroccan youths. Set in the late 90s and early 2000s, largely under the reign of King Hassan, the book follows the life of four Moroccans: two men and two women, who hoped…
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