wordsofclover's Reviews (2.16k)

In 1972, the president of Uganda orders the expulsion of all Ugandan-Asians within 90 minutes. As violence from locals and soldiers increase, and business suffers, newlyweds Asha and Pran as well as their family have to make the hard decision to leave even though this means potentially being separated by country.

I have read another book before about the expulsion order in Uganda against Asians, and I find it a fascinating albeit horrific moment in history - and similar to the previous book I read, in Kololo Hill I appreciated learning about a family's forced journey to another country and their bravery and love for one another pulling them through and the fortitude to begin again from nothing.

However, while I liked the history and some of the themes in the book as well as some of the family relationships - I found the pacing of the story suffered a little bit as well as what the author wanted us to really know or take away from the book. I thought the storyline about December was quite poor and pretty much went no-where other than to show Pran as slightly spineless. I think because this was one of the mysteries lying over the family, and a clear secret Pran was keeping I was expecting it to be a bit more dramatic.

Asha and Pran's marriage is also a focus in this novel as Asha changes away from Pran as she and the family move to England and she becomes a working woman, and gets her confidence back that the last months of Uganda erased. I also think that Pran never really came across well in the book - he was quite selfish in thinking his way was the only way for the family and he never really seemed to think much of Asha or Jaya's opinions.

I think vijaty had potgential and I would have liked to have spent more time with him, and see how he got on with his travels and his relationship with Mary which never seemed to be revealed to the family.

Jaya was the character I felt most drawn towards as we see her worry about all her family while mourning the loss of her husband, and for the second time uproot her home to learn a whole new language and culture.

I actually would have liked the whole timeline of this book to be changed, and have the Uganda section smaller so we could focus more on the lives of the family as they adapt to their new life. It felt like a book that would have benefitted to be very much character focused over plot, and one where the reader stays with the family for 50+ years through all the ups and downs to really foster a bond and get to know everyone inside out.

My name is Aoife and I'm going on my hen party next week so naturally I decided to pick up a book about a bride called Aoife who gets killed on her hen party. It's three years later and Aoife's friends/hens Dani, Tiff, Celine and Beth have returned to the location of the hen party/murder to celebrate Aoife's life but also in Dani's case retrace their steps from that faithful weekend and try to figure out what happened to end up in Aoife's death.

I think this was fun but from the start there was always a very prickly atmosphere between the girls. While Aoife is friends with Dani from college, Tiff and Beth from childhood and Celine from work, none of them really know each other and in Tiff's case downright dislikes Dani due to jealousy. This was also definitely the worst hen party I've ever heard about and not because the bride ended up dead, haha. Having only 5 people at a hen party is really odd - it's more a girl holiday than a party and they weren't close enough for that and at different points, all the hens are extremely selfish in their behaviour and I feel like they broke the cardinal rules of girlhood so many times (you never, ever leave your friends alone in a club!!).

It's obvious from the start as well that while they all love Aoife (or mostly Tiff and Dani), she can be a hard person to be friends with at times due to some party-hard behaviour and her attitude towards men. Though all of that was explained a bit throughout the novel as we see how stifled Aoife has been by her controlling relationship with Nathan (who was a slime) and how the hen party is her chance to realise she doesn't want to stay with him after all.

There were moments I couldn't believe the women's attitudes towards each other (mostly Tiff, Beth and Celine Vs Aoife and Dani) and I just know my friends would a. never leave two of us in a club on our own if there were some dodgy people about - it's either everyone goes home or no-one goes home - and also if I 'went off' with a man and the man came back without me, there would be hell raised. The fact that all of the girls dismissed Dani's behaviour when she came back in such a state and visibly injured shocked me.

I actually think there were some revelations - particularly about Nathan - that could have been left to later on in the book. The author did like to throw in some red herrings as Nathan, Matt and John all fly around in suspicions, but some elements of Nathan's true personality could have been leaked a bit better through the book rather than the very start us knowing he's had a hand in the entire (shit) hen party.

I don't think there was anything that really surprised me about some of the turn of the events and revelations at the end. Maybe the whodunnit even felt a bit tame after everything. I think I enjoyed this book more because of the particular time I'm reading it when I'm excited about my own hen party - though hopefully it doesn't end up in murder (just murder on the dancefloor lololol). 

Oh goodness, where to start with this one. The best thing about this book is the stunning cover and I must say the cover designer for all three Orisha books did a great job as they’re all so beautiful. Unfortunately that’s where the good ends and everything from the first page onwards was downhill for me.

We meet with Zelie once again following the events from book 2 which saw Zelie and her companions knocked out and waking up on some kind of prison ship. From the start of book 3, we find out that this actually has nothing to do with Nehanda and the titans but is in face a brand new enemy they call the ‘Skulls’ led by someone called King Baldyr who wants to harness Zelie’s magic and has no issue with sacrificing Orishans as he goes.

Zelie soon has visions of another girl who Baldyr needs to complete his journey to a living god - and she must get to her first so that’s what she does alongside Tzain and Amari. You might be wondering but what about Inan and the Orisha they left behind? Well it appears we are more or less done with that story and that fight as now all they have to do is say ‘hey look at these new enemies. Let’s all make up so we can fight these guys instead’ and this somehow solves decades of fighting and maltreatment of the magi. Super lazy writing.

The new enemies really threw me off - and the story went in a completely different direction to what I thought it would. I think if we knew more about the Skulls in book 2 or even had the first half of book 3 in book 2, the books would have felt more linear. But I felt completely discombobulated that everything we had worked toward in the first books were just forgotten about in an instant.

We do travel away from Orisha and discover the lands of Gaia where Mae’e lives. Here Amari finally gets the lesbian love story that was very obvious from how she talked about Binta (they were never just friends, come on) but the problem is it’s so rushed and insta love - but then again I have found all the love relationships in this trilogy to be super quick and intense with not much believable time. The only good thing about this book was the lack of Zelie and Inan’s boring love-hate-love relationship. I did much prefer Zelie’s relationship with Roen but unfortunately there’s no update on this as Roen has simply completely disappeared - he was mentioned once in an ‘I hope he’s alright’ though by Zelie but other than that, nothing. Which is WILD and I don’t understand it at all - he was a major love interest in book 2 and had quite a bit to do with the rebellion yet he’s hardly even mentioned in book 3. WHAT!

The timeline as well for this book zipped through so fast, it didn’t make sense either. How quickly could everyone sail? It felt like they were in a game of Pokemon and could traverse seas within minutes. Once they reached Gaia, Tzain goes off to become some kind of ultra warrior within a week or so - and listen I love me a training montage but Tzain has been such a vanilla side character, it felt odd to have his POV thrown into the mix all of a sudden and I didn’t really care about his hulk axe.

The final battle was fine, the sacrifices were expected and the epilogue was awful - again nothing really actually sorted just some kind of magical ‘we’re all best friends now’. You’re telling me the Nehanda we know from book 2 would suddenly be besties with the magi even after her beloved son has died to save one of them. No way.

I’m not sure what happened with this. The hype for book 1 was so real and it had such a sense of beautiful magic and a story focused on black history and characters in a way I feel we hadn’t seen before. Maybe the pressure got to the author but there was such a large time gap between book 2 and 3 - and then for book 3 to be so poor, it’s so sad. This whole book felt rushed and ill thought out and I just really feel like the author wanted to or maybe was contractually obliged to finish it up by a certain date.

I received this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

This book is going to stay with me for a long time. 

 

We follow Eve in the days and months following her husband’s unexpected death. As Eve loses herself in grief, her familyy try to help her as best they can and she also has to deal with her horrible mother in law who seems determined to make her feel guilty for the loss of her son. 

 

Not only is this just a beautifully written book that left me in an emotional heap, I just don’t think I’ve read a book that captured the confusing, overwhelming feeling of grief and the not so linear process of getting over the loss of someone. Not only that but we also have a secondary element to Q’s death in this book as he died by suicide. We follow Eve’s confusion and guilt over the clear mental health crisis Q was suffering from that he had apparently completely hidden from her as well as the anger that eventually surfaces over such a death, and the repetition of the guilt for feeling the anger - and then also the anger at others for being angry at Q. It was a whole cycle that was very real and very full of feeling. 

 

The importance of family and friends is beautiful in this - Eve comes from a Nigerian-English family and we see time and time again how the presence of her parents and her brother, and the staunch protector in her older sister brings Eve peace even if she doesn’t quite realize it. Eve feels frustrated that her family think she needs to ‘get over’ Q’s death quicker than she ever could but what they really want is a flicker of their old Eve back and how afraid they are of losing her as well. Not to mention they are also dealing with grief too as they loved Q as well. 

 

Eve’s mother in law is potentially one of the worst characters I’ve ever read - she doesn’t really have any redemption but I don’t think she deserved one anyway. Every time her name came up, I boiled with rage on Eve’s behalf. And also felt anger at Q for allowing his mother to be this way to Eve for their entire relationship. 

 

I like that this book didn’t tie up Q’s death in a neat bow. It was tragic, awful and may have been preventable if he had been able to communicate better about how he felt. There was no note because sometimes there isn’t. The story was still full of questions by the end that could never be answered because Q wasn’t here anymore. 

 

This book is a raw gut punch of emotion and absolutely amazing.