So this was actually the first book that I read following the holidays.  I’ve had it for a while, again from Book of the Month, and one that I had gotten months ago, but didn’t read because I wanted to get through my traditional Christmas books.   The synopsis reads like many other books that I’ve enjoyed, and I thought might give me different perspective, given the fact that the author and the main character are so different than me.  Spoilers ahead!

Let’s start from the beginning.  I love the way that Hannah is introduced in the book, with an interaction with an interested man at a party that she’s attending with her best friend.  I loved her inner dialog, because it showed inner strength that it seems like she struggles with through most of the novel.  I enjoyed her best friend, too.  The meet cute with the other guy at the party was fun, and the way he played into the overall story was unexpected.

As you’d expect, her time with the family back in Nigeria is fraught with awkward moments, and shifts in attitude that happen insanely quickly.  The author touches on some of cultural differences between how she was raised and Nigeria, but if I’m being honest, not nearly enough for me.  I would have liked to understand even more than was given to me.

Through her 10(?) days in Nigeria, Hannah meets family she knew she had due to her research on Wikipedia through her life, which in some cases is nice, and in others, opens her eyes to at least one lie that her mother had told her throughout her life.  That’s unfortunate, but what’s worse is how the oldest sibling seems to constantly sabotage Hannah every chance she gets.  I don’t know that I can blame the sibling – not knowing that Hannah exists, having her there, and dealing with that kind of upheaval cannot be easy for the oldest in the family.  There’s a turn around about 3/4ths of the way through the book (super quick, too – almost too quick), and all goes back to being well.

That is, until the will is read and that same sibling says something that throws all of the progress made in the family completely out the window.  Not only does it put into question how the family has been treating Hannah, it also makes the connection that Hannah has made with the main male character into jeopardy.  Hannah heads home, and we see her trying to put her life back in order, while her siblings back in Nigeria grapple with well-founded guilt.  I’ll leave the summary there…

So, why the three stars?  I mean, so much of it was tried and true romance novel, and I mentioned already that it didn’t give me as much insight into the Nigerian culture as I would have liked.  There was a lot missing if you only considered those two aspects.

I honestly don’t know.  As I was reading it, I knew the formula I was reading.  I knew that the conflicts were going to happen before they happened.  I knew that there would have to be some kind of compromise between the male and female protagonists.  I knew all of that going in.  Perhaps knowing all of that is what made the book fun for me.  In general, the book is an easy read, one with familiar romance genre tropes.  All of the characters are easy to connect with – there’s no one that is a villain that stays a villain.  At the same time, there are quite a few that are very shallow (the brother, for example.  He’s a musician that wants to sound American.  That’s about it.)  From a trope perspective, yes, of course there are many conflicts that could be taken care of pretty easily if the characters would JUST FREAKING TALK TO EACH OTHER LIKE GROWN-UPS, but if they did it would be a book about 20 pages long.

Overall, I’d recommend it, as long as you’re okay with knowing pretty much what’s going to happen from the beginning.