3.5

This book was difficult to process. There's a switch pulled late in the novel that shifts the book into completely new territory. SPEAK NO EVIL is primarily about a Nigerian American high schooler learning he's gay and navigating that identity between two cultures: that where he lives (Washington DC), and that where his parents are from (Nigeria). It's compelling and vivid in the voice of the narrator Prentice Onayemi.

And then... the perspective changes and it's another example of first-person storytelling from a woman's POV written by a man. I laughed out loud when I heard Julia Whelan's voice, hearing the perspective (from a very talented narrator!). I was laughing at myself: of course, it's happening in the very next audiobook after I struggled with the last one. And while I think Iweala's perspective worked a bit better for me than HOW TO BE SAFE, I was still taken out of the writing a lot because I can't get my mind to relax about how the story was crafted.

This final third of the novel, written from the perspective of the protagonist's white best friend Meredith, turns the story into a different kind of persecution. An important one, but I don't think this book was wholly successful because the characters are paper-thin and don't help drive home the heavy and critical message. There are moments of depth, and there is a lot of moving writing and emotion, but it fell flat with the last third. It provides so much to be curious about, I wish the 200-page novel had been a 600-page exploratory epic. Still, a good book, and deserving of all the time I've spent thinking about it.