I don't even have words to describe this. It was just so so SO good. How is this a debut novel?! Ayobami Adebayo pulls you in from the very first page with her artful storytelling. She makes you want the best for Yejide and Akin even while making them complex, not-very-likable characters.

This is the story of a marriage complicated by infertility, family drama, cultural beliefs & practices, and of course, insufficient communication. We begin at the end, where Yejide is traveling to Akin's father's funeral. We do not know why she and Akin have separated, we do not know what has gone wrong, we only know that this is the first time that they will see each other in more than a decade. We get snippets of this funeral journey while Adebayo tells us their story from the beginning. She makes us desperately want things to go well for them, without promising them a happy ending, or a happy middle, for that matter.

Here's a quote:
I would hear the saying many times from other people over the years and will never quite know what they meant each time. So love is like a test, but in what sense? To what end? Who was carrying out the test? But I think I did believe that love had immense power to unearth all that was good in us, refine us and reveal to us the better versions of ourselves.

This novel is told both in alternating viewpoints between Yejide and Akin, each with their own unique voice (so unique in fact, that we do not need the chapters to be labeled to know who is telling the story). It is also divided into sections, each of which tells a bit of the end of the story (the "end" being 2008) and then switching back to the past (starting in 1985). Time slowly moves forward until we are all in 2008, at the funeral for the end of this story. Through this time we see how the expectations, ideals, beliefs and actions of others have made the already trying time that Yejide and Akin are having even more trying.