My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. Powerful, disturbing, and beautifully written.

Highly recommended!

One of the big books to drop this fall, I anxiously awaited approval for an advanced copy of Ayobami Adebayo's Stay With Me. I wanted to pick up a hard copy at Book Expo, but by drop time (4pm ish) I was in so much pain and could barely walk, so I taxi'd home. I'm so grateful to have been approved for an electronic copy.

Yejide and Akin have been married for years, and theirs is a love at first sight story. Their union, however, has not produced offspring, which in their Nigerian culture is the worst thing that could befall a marriage. Akin is forced by his family to take a second wife. When Yejide is finally with child, the hope is that it will cure all ills, but unfortunately it is the beginning of a series of events that may rip the couple apart and will have a resounding affect on the family for the rest of their lives.

This novel was by far the best I have picked up in recent months. It was beautifully written in terms of the story; the narrators shift between the couple and there was never a moment when I didn't know who was speaking. Each of their voices broke my heart in their own ways; the unbearable pain of desperately wanting a child and then losing one was difficult to read at all, but especially as my little boy sleeps in my arms while I read through the couple's pain. You learn early on that there is a secret between the couple, and as it unravels through the course of the novel, I was flabbergasted at how simple it was yet how it deeply complicated several lives, some to the point of no return.

I was struck by how simply stunning this novel was. It was impossible to keep the characters at a distance as they will burrow themselves in your soul. As their relationship became fractured, I couldn't side with one over the other. My heart hurt for both players, and I secretly hoped for a happily ever after. I held my breath for them and I rooted for them. I only wanted their dreams to come true. You may not be able to get what you want, but you can live within the confines of this incredible piece of work and experience the joy and the sorrow Adebayo gifts you for a few hours.

Yejide and Akin are happily married, and, for the most part, satisfied with their life, except for one thing. Yejide, despite trying for years, still hasn’t been able to carry a baby to term. In Ethiopia, apparently, this is considered extremely shameful, and it seems the woman is always blamed. Not only does Yejide grieve because she longs for a baby, but they are both under intense pressure from relatives to do whatever it takes to provide them with descendants. This “whatever it takes” includes Akin taking a second wife, not unusual in their culture, but a terrible blow to Yehide. She in turn makes some desperate decisions in order to conceive. What follows is a series of traumatic events that test them both.

I appreciated this author’s vivid writing style, and it kept me reading avidly even though the extreme reactions of Yehide didn’t seem credible to me. I thought Akin’s reactions much more believable. I was especially dubious of Yejide’s decision near the end. Would any mother really do this based on unverified information? Of course, this could be due to cultural differences. I enjoyed gaining more insight into Ethiopian culture. This alone is a good reason to read this. I can’t say much more without spoilers, but I will look forward to reading more books by this author in the future.

Note: I received an advance copy of the ebook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The question of what exactly it means to married, and married well, is at the heart of Ayobami Adebayo's Stay With Me. When we first meet Yejide, we learn that technically, she's had a long marriage. She's lived apart from her husband, Akin, for many years, but she receives an invitation to attend his father's funeral as his guest that sends her on a reminisce about their past and how their separation came to be. They met at university in Nigeria, and though they were both seeing other people at the time, quickly fell in love and got married. Their marriage was happy, except that even after several years, they were childless. Though Akin and Yejide were a modern couple, his parents were traditional, and if their first-born son couldn't produce an heir for the family with his wife, they had a solution: a second wife.

This is the first in a series of what come to be deep, deep cracks in Akin and Yejide's relationship. Yejide is desperate to keep her husband to herself, and knows that in order to do that, she must somehow become pregnant...which she does. The plot has several twists and turns, and while I'm usually not especially fussed about spoilers, this is one of the cases where I feel like letting the plot unfold as you read is important. Though the book is relatively short (under 300 pages), Adebayo deals with some powerful themes: love, marriage, mental health, trust, family, sex, and what it means to be a parent.

This book had some issues, but on the whole it was a very promising debut that made me excited for the next steps in Adebayo's literary career. Some of the plot twists felt like they were a little much, and for its length, there were too many of them. Nigeria's political turmoil was constantly in the background, and I'm not quite sure what purpose it served for most of the book...in such a richly emotionally layered domestic drama, it felt out of place. It is crucial for a late-in-the-story plot point, so maybe she was trying to make sure that she'd adequately planted the seeds beforehand. Yejide, and to a lesser extent Akin, were very well-drawn and compelling characters, which is something that I always look for when I read and enjoyed in this book. All in all, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading what Adeyabo writes next. That being said, I would recommend this, but maybe not to everyone. I think it'll appeal most to readers who enjoy character-based domestic dramas and don't mind if they occasionally trend towards the implausible in their plotting.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

This novel had some great early buzz, but it never really worked for me. The setting in Nigeria was not really used, aside from the coups, which did not really influence the story until almost the end. The culture was barely touched upon. The characters were not fully developed and none were likable.

I saw this as more of a draft of things to come.

After reading a third I wondered where this book was going. If the main characters Akyn and Yejide would lead me to more than a story where a woman was meant to give birth, preferably boys. And they did.

I find it hard to write a review that is worthy of this book, but let me say this: Stay With Me is a well-woven story about love, loss and sacrifices. And about the choices that one makes, both despite and because of other people's opinions or even pressure: 'before you call the snail a weakling, tie your house to your back and carry it around for a week.'

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book.

A great novel about true love and the lengths we go to keep it. Good writing, relatable characters.

Quadruple WOW!

If you told me that I'd love being on top of the Mountain of Jaw-Dropping Miracles, I would have told you that you were nuts! Miracles are right up there with ghosts—I don’t like them to sully my beloved story. But man, there I was, my feet glued to the ground, my jaw dropping, like the mountain expected. I couldn't have run if I wanted to. And I couldn’t have looked away. Because really, I was witnessing one of the weirdest (and sort of grossest) scenes I’ve ever seen. It's also a funny scene, probably the only comic moment in a book that has a lot of tragedy.
I had to reread the scene because I just didn't believe what was happening. I will say no more. You must read it.

Like sneakers in a dryer, the bizarro scene got my attention. But it isn’t a huge part of the story. The novel is about a Nigerian couple, Yejide and Akin, who want children. Sounds innocent enough, right? What happens surrounding this “want” is all twisty secrets, delusions, lies, and grief. Add gossip, superstition, jealousy, and plenty of tragedy and you get the idea.

I get so squirmy happy when I think of this book! The story is as close to perfection as you get. A class act. Yes, this is a quadruple WOW, with tears flowing as the story ends. (Believe me, it takes a lot to turn me into a crybaby reader.) It’s one big Joy Jar. It’s heavy on the drama, and there’s this freshness to the drama and the dialogue, with unusual plot turns that kept me riveted.

The author keeps her eye on the ball. She doesn’t try too hard and she doesn’t blabber. No question, she had me at hello. I did not want the story to end. And I can’t seem to stop gushing.

Yejide and Akin have a great marriage, and they both are sophisticated, educated, and modern. The parents and other extended family members, however, are steeped in tradition, which includes polygamy, and they are bossy. No, they aren’t just bossy. They obnoxiously push their agenda onto Yejide and Akin, and the havoc begins.

I loved getting a peek of Nigerian culture, which I know nothing about. And we get to see a tiny bit of the political climate—elections and coups and violence, which take place in the background. I think one of the points is that life in Nigeria is marked by political turmoil, and it’s impossible to ignore. Yet, everyday life goes on. People incorporate the political goings-on and adapt to them. The contrast between daily life and the big scary political happenings in the background is shown beautifully. But I need to point out that the book is not heavy into politics, and thankfully, there isn’t a political message. I don’t like politics or messages, so believe me when I say that the political scene is not front and center.

There’s not much descriptive text—it’s all drama and dialogue—which is what I prefer anyway. I get so tired of hearing about beauteous leaves. Give me talk, and give me fire. And that’s what I got here.

The story is well-told—straightforward and tight—with intriguing, flawed characters. It’s told in first person, which I love, and Yejide and Akin have alternating chapters. This works especially well when there are secrets, and there definitely are secrets here. There are two time periods, but it never gets confusing. The voices and time periods are interwoven perfectly.

It’s magic the way the author made me care about what happened to Yejide and Akin. The author’s art is gorgeously sneaky; I can’t quite my finger on why it had the power to pull me into the story so completely, but believe me, it did. There were a few fairy tales, which usually bore me to tears and interrupt the story and generally make me furious. The fact that I accepted—no, that I actually enjoyed the fairy tales—tells you just how hooked I was. This may be an exaggeration because I am so in love with the book, but the content seemed a little Shakespearean.

About the cover: I LOVE the red and purple abstract cover. She who usually couldn’t care less about covers. It is so appealing, so exuberant, it’s like it matches the beauteous content hidden under it. I’ve never ever thought of a cover and the story being matchy matchy, but that’s what I think of here. It’s like I’m wearing this richly colored outfit, with cool textures, that makes me twitchy with glee. And then I dye my hair some complementary color and add exotic jewelry with other complementary colors and textures, and then I have this whole look of richness that makes me feel gooooood. I read this book on a Kindle, but I absolutely have to buy the book so that I can stare at the gorgeous cover (knowing that within lies matching beauty), and swoon to my heart’s content.

The sign of a good story is that it takes you away to another world and you want to stay there. Reality takes a back seat. Well, that’s what happened here. I can’t stop thinking about this book! It’s in a three-way tie for my favorite novel of the year. The fact that this is a debut and the writer is in her 20s just blows my mind.

The author didn't have to say Stay with Me because there was no question I was staying: I was glued to the page. It would be more accurate for me to be the one saying Stay with Me. Write another book please. Stay with Me.

This is a book unlike any I've read yet. It will be a great choice for book clubs and discussions.

Heartbreaking and intense. I know this novel will stay with me for a long time. A must-read.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance digital copy of this book (all opinions are my own).

What a beautiful story. I inhaled this book in the course of a day, which I very rarely do, but it definitely added to my enjoyment of it as I could sink into the world and stay in it with very few distractions.

This is the love story of Yejide and Akin. It's a complicated love story, as most are, and delves into the issues of loyalty, fidelity, infertility, familial pressure, cultural expectations...so much explored in such a short book. It makes us as the question to what extent is a couple willing to go to get what they think they need, and the answer felt very honest and real. I loved that I did not predict what was going to happen (on more than one occasion). I loved the way the couple's relationship was uniquely affected by extended family, the community, and the Nigerian culture in which they were born and raised. To me, this was a book about family, immediate and extended, and how our roles in that family affect the relationships we go on to have later in life, and in the families we create ourselves.

I think Stay With Me will have high appeal to bookclubs because of all the issues to discuss; it will be the book I'll be recommending to the ones at our library this fall.

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo, which I received as an egalley from Netgalley, was an unexpectedly wonderful reading experience. I love the richness of character and plot development of the lives of Yejide and Akin as they struggle with the issues of infertility, impotence, adultery, and death of children due to p cell disease. This is a wonderful debut novel that portrays struggles that are relatable to everyone. I hope Adebayo writes more because she probably has developed a wonderful fan base, especially from me!

As elemental, at times, as a Greek tragedy, Adebayo’s debut is a visceral story of family betrayals grounded in what begin as an ideal love story. Akin and Yejide meet at college, fall in love instantly and marry quickly. But their comfortable, seemingly flawless existence in Nigeria, where Akin has a good job at a bank and Yejide runs her own hair salon, conceals fundamental deceptions and is marked by an aching void – the absence of children.

As the novel opens, Yejide is faced with the fact that Akin has been pressured into taking a second, likely more fertile wife. Although Akin does his best to minimize the impact of this development on Yejide, a period of intense psychological disturbance follows.

This is but the first in a sequence of desperate developments between husband and wife. With expert pacing, Adebayo slowly peels back layers of truth about Akin and Yejide’s marriage, to reveal the substrata of lies on which it is built, and on which it will founder. Stay With Me is a story of yearning, guilt and gut-wrenching loss, yet is expressed with remarkable restraint and delivered in the simplest of language. Sometimes it’s illuminated by folk tale; often the somber tone is diluted by the comic, chorus-like contributions of a coterie of secondary female characters.

For a first novel, Adebayo’s is an strikingly impressive achievement, situating the domestic agonies of its two central characters against a deftly suggested, low-level background of Nigerian politics – the coups and countercoups, the fake elections and local violence. Graceful and unsentimental, poised and intense, this is fiction that plumbs depths. Adebayo is a new voice to relish.

What an amazing book! Will definitely be recommending this one

I'm reading so many truly GREAT books right now, this one may be suffering a bit from comparison. I listened on audio (which was brilliant BTW) so I don't have any name spellings. It's the story of a marriage of a Nigerian couple, and the story revolves around their struggles with conceiving a child and then the health of their children.

<spoiler> there were a lot of deaths </spoiler>

It was good but I'm having trouble getting excited about it. This was probably mostly a book about the characters, and they were good, solid, flawed, afraid, interesting people.

See link to goodreads review

Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo
Nigeria from the late 1980's to 2008 is the setting of this wonderful debut novel.
Polygamy in this country is widely accepted and superstitions abound, belief in evil and angels, etc. The young educated people, however want to break out of these traditions and old time beliefs. Akin and Yejide is such a young couple, who meet and fall in love at university and marry believing that they will have a modern marriage. After a few years of being married, Akin and Yejide still don't have a child, which is completely unacceptable in the culture they are living in. Akin's family interferes by bringing to Akin a second wife to have a baby with. Things don't turn out as expected and there are twists and turns in the novel, that I don't want to give away here. The story is told by Akin and Yejide alternating in the tumultuous years of Nigerian history, military rule, gangs, etc. Yejide's wish to have a child of her own is heartbreaking, she tries her best to cope with Akin's family, the second wife, and her job as a hairdresser at her beauty salon. The story is well written, with love and lots of humor ( "I will kill you if you die") . I took away one star, because sometimes it was not clear who is speaking until a few paragraphs into the chapters, and I found that a little confusing. Also, not all the African sayings were translated for complete understanding. Overall, a very worthwhile read, recommend it to others.
Thanks NetGalley, Knopf publishing and the author of this advanced copy.

I kept seeing this book all over Booktube and saw it up for the Baileys Prize, so I knew I had to read it. Right after I did buy it though, I was approved on NetGalley to review it. Go figure.
I absolutely adored this book. One of my favorites of the year.
I will say at one point, around the half way mark I had to put it down, as it really hit home with me as a mother.
The book certainly made me think about what it would be like if one day my husband told me he would be marrying another, about being a mother, and a family unit in general.
I would highly recommend this book to all. I look forward to more novels written by Ayobami Adebayo.

I received a copy of this book through Netgalley for an honest opinion. I would like to thank Ayobami Adebayo and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the opportunity to read and review this beautiful book.

I expected one thing from this book but got something else out of it. I was expecting a heart-wrenching tale of a woman's quest to become a mother, which it was, but it was just as much a story of having, tragically losing, and mourning children. The twist having to do with the father was unforeseen and effectively shocking! The setting was exotic and educational for me, as I've never read anything set in 1980s & 90s Nigeria. I will recommend this book to patrons interested in African fiction and contemporary literary fiction, and unconventional stories about motherhood and/or infertility. I will however only recommend it with a BIG caveat about sick children! - I'm sure this wouldn't be for the feint of heart or for anyone who's cared for a very sick child.

Yejide's desire for a pregnancy -- to the point where she physically carries a phantom pregnancy! -- is palpable. So was her anger with her husband. Maybe this is a cultural difference, but I thought that given these bursting descriptions of anger and want, it was interesting that Yejide's love and/or erotic emotions were absent. The reader doesn't get a sense of why she married the man she did, or why she dives into an affair. Her affect around the men in her life is cold. Is this a side effect of the coldness her father bestowed on her because of her role in her mother's death (from complications of her own birth)? Yejide is a truly solitary figure, right up to the very end, when her insistence on carrying her feelings alone causes her even more serious -- and seriously unnecessary -- grief.

The book is short, and very intense, and lively. It's written sparsely but still packs an angry-grief-stricken wallop. I love that it explores so bravely the desperation and devastation around infertility for women. A great read!