At first, the connection between the story and title seemed far-fetched, but as the story unfolded, the narrative became clear.

Dream Count is a beautifully-written novel that weaves together the complexities of the human desire of four powerful women as they reminisce about their past relationships that did not exactly fully align with their dreams of love.

Despite the fact that the novel masterfully captures the emotional depth of the desires of these women, I found the frequent flashbacks into their many relationships very extensive and lengthy.

Chimamanda's writing is, as expected, brilliant.

It was an absolute privilege to receive an early copy of this novel.

I was so excited to get my hands on this ARC - 10 years in the making! This book was just ok for me, but because of how much I had looked forward to it, I felt an extra level of disappointment.

Basically, this is a character study of four women and their relationships. It feels almost like four different novellas bound together, so I'll go one by one and give my feelings about each one.

We open with the first woman, the "glue" that sticks these women together: Chiamaka. Chia is a dreamer, the daughter of a rich father, who wants to make it as a travel writer. We meet her during the pandemic lockdown and immediately dive into long-winded reflections on her failed romantic relationships. I was missing a reason to care, to be honest. I didn't feel compelled by Chia. The men in her life were so crummy, and she had so little agency in her relationships. And it began feeling repetitive; I didn't feel any progressing character arc, just one crummy guy after another.

Next, we get to know Zikora, and this section starts with such promise. Zikora is in the throes of labor, and I was looking forward to a story of motherhood. But again, we leave the present day almost immediately and dive into Zikora's dating history as well. I did connect with her character more than Chia, but still, she was a woman without agency, dating men who didn't value her. I did enjoy the parts of her story that dug into her relationship with her mother, who was an interesting and complex woman who Zikora begins to understand better over time.

Then, Kadiatou - a breath of fresh air! A young girl in Guinea, looking up to her big sister who yearns for more in life, not quite understanding her dreams - Kadi genuinely loves the quiet village life. Life takes her down an unexpected path. Her sister's spirit drives her forward, something to live up to, but Kadi does have her own deep strength. She just doesn't recognize it in herself. I don't think I've read about a character like her before, and I was so interested. And then - BAM! Enter crappy guy who takes away her agency.

Omelogor was a totally different story. I actually didn't think I liked her when her section began - her voice sounded pretentious and condescending. But as I got to know her, I grew so fond of her, of how she saw the world, of how she valued her culture and people, and of how she saw the complexity in her society. I respected how she was unwavering in her convictions, voicing her stance without fear of what others would think.

If you are looking for a series of character studies and don't need a plot to advance a book forward, then you're probably going to enjoy this more than me. The same goes for if you are a hopeless romantic who feels compelled by stories of searching for something you are not sure you want.

Looking through all the 5 star reviews this has, I seem to be in the minority. So, if you're excited to read it, ignore me and pick it up!

Chia - 2 stars
Zikora - 3 stars
Kadi - 3.5 stars
Omelogor - 3.5 stars
Average - 3 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for this ARC to read and review.

Oh how I missed Chimamanda! These four women and their stories and their struggles and their desires and their failures and their needs! So real! So valid! I loved reading about these older millennial women navigating womanhood, motherhood in the height of COVID! The why are you not married for chia and omelogor was so real bc why are you not married lol jk jk but just some of the nonsense one endures being a daughter of africans! I resonated so much with these women! They arent perfect! They say some wild mess and deal with some loser ass men but overall isnt that life?!?! Your trials your failures etc! Chimamanda continues to elevate as always! Although i liked this novel, if i were to compare to her other bodies of work this would be at the bottom unfortunately! Overall, the writing is lovely and doesnt put me in a slump and made me stay!

I have enjoyed previous books by Adichie, but this one unfortunately didn’t work for me. It felt more like 4 novellas with somewhat intersecting stories about bad men/relationships, mothers and daughters, wealth, power, culture, roles and traditions. The writing was beautiful, but the plights of the characters (with the exception of Kadi) did not grip me. Kadi’s “chapter” was based on a true story that happened on 2011 which the author explains in an afterward. That could have been the entire book. The other chapters didn’t seem to hang together as a cohesive novel and the story lost something in its totality.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. Dream Count is available on 3/4/25.

Dream Count
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I am a fan of Americanah, and was excited to receive a copy for review, and was certainly not disappointed. Dream Count is a beautifully written recounting of the stories of four interrelated women. It deals with love, relationships, with cultural differences, discrimination and misogyny. Diffucult topics all.

It is both inspirational and heartbreaking. The author's afterword is not to be missed.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for providing the digital galley.

An absolute masterpiece about the bonds of love and family. I didn’t want this book to end. Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced read!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most important writers of our time. Her novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah are both modern classics, and her essay We Should All be Feminists should be required university reading.

I loved this novel. Here, Adichie presents us with four dynamic women characters, whose chapters alternate in focus and narrative voice. The story is set both in America to Nigeria and the author interweaves the personal and political as the four women navigate love, work, gender, and class divides.

My thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me an opportunity to read an ARC copy.

I swear everything that this author writes, I just love. Her writing style, the relatability....just everything.

very well written story about some very interesting and well written people. i would definitely recommend it. 5 stars. tysm for thea rc.

This started off a bit boring and slow but picked up after a little bit. After the beginning *awkwardness*, the characters started to become life-sized and impressively multi-dimensional. It usually icks me out a little bit reading about the pandemic, so I think I would enjoy some of her other books a little better. Overall this was a good book!

Adichie is truly a beautiful and talented writer. A true gem. I adore her work and so reading this was so exciting for me. The characters have so many layers to them, and as the story progresses, we get to see more and more of these characters. Adichie doesn't stray from talking about heavy and important topics and thoughts for the characters. Every word continued to build on the narrative and characters and made me feel like I was being pulled right into the story.

This was such an interesting, attention grabbing book. Very interesting perspectives on relationships and cultures. I loved learning all the various names of the characters and the food. I also enjoyed the travel descriptions.

Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for an ARC of this book for an honest review.
This book was just not for me. I really tried to like it and gave it a good amount of time but I couldn’t finish it or recommend it.

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a novel that weaves together the thoughts and dreams of four female characters.Each chapter contains stories and conversations about one of the characters .The story takes place during Covid so that isolation is in the novel as well. Chiamaka is. Nigerian travel writer and Kadinto is her housekeeper who is trying to make a life with her daughter. Zikora is a lawyer who is Chiamakas best friend .Omeloger is an important woman in finance in Nigeria.Because of personal preference I enjoy a story with more plot.This book had a lot of talking and self reflection of the characters and not a lot of action.I felt Kadinta was the best and most interesting character.Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for allowing me to read this arc for my unbiased review..

I'm not sure I have the words to capture the many layers and nuance that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brings to life in the four primary characters in Dream Count. Humans are complex beings and Adichie conveys this skillfully in the ways the characters evolve over the years and how their earlier experiences impact their later lives/decisions/perspectives. Her depictions of the scenes and characters and their interactions with one another make you appreciate the intricacies of intersections among race, gender, class, nationality, age, language, etc. This is the kind of story that you can reread over and over again and still learn something new; this is the kind of book that you want to read with others because there's just so much to talk about. Some characters are more relatable than others; some stories hit me harder than others, but they come together poignantly. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time to come!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the e-arc.

Another tour de force from Adichie. What is a dream count? Continuing to aspire to something higher? Meeting societal goals and expectations? Emerging from a tragedy, scathed but standing? As always, Adichie takes on big questions through complex characters with a view to African history and a feminist lens The women protagonists are in the contemporary setting of the recent COVID pandemic which adds an additional weight to the story of family, women’s friendships, and love relationship. The historical fiction component of a hotel maid being sexually assaulted by a powerful man adds gravity to the plot. I plan to recommend this book to all lovers of literary fiction. The novel will be an excellent choice for book clubs.

"Dream Count" is told in the voices of four different female characters. Adichie's prose is always powerful and poetic, and her main characters all had compelling stories of their own to tell, yet, once we were introduced to Kadiatou, a housekeeper for Chia, I was wishing I didn't have to wait so long to find out what happened to her. Once we finish the novel, in the author's note, we learn that she is modeled after someone who was raped by a VIP guest at a hotel, a terrible case that Adichie followed in the news years ago, then resurrected in her novel. When the novel begin with Chia, a young wealthy Nigerian woman who falls in love with a calloused academic, and her friends are telling her to dump him, as I'm sure many of the readers are doing also, mainly so we can move on to something more interesting than watching a woman swoon over a lousy boyfriend, but she tends to repeat this cycle, so we have to grin and bear it, and the wealth of a couple of the characters was a bit fatiguing, yet, I remained very interested when Kadiatou, a woman raising a daughter alone, happy to be in America cleaning rooms, and found the other women much more interesting as they cared about Kadiatou and tried to protect her when this terrible incident happens at the hotel where she's employed. Basically, the novel focuses on successful women whose mothers wish they'd marry and have children, yet, they swirl around with murky romances, and we see the women engage as independent individual who become stronger as they engage more with the world and less on trying to find that perfect mate.

10 years is a long time to wait for a new book from my favorite author - luckily it was worth the wait. This is a gorgeous book that tells the story of four women (three from Nigeria, one from Guinea) and their interconnecting lives. The women were all incredibly developed, the stories were fresh and interesting, and I loved the themes of sisterhood and solidarity. Kadi’s storyline was most interesting to me and, honestly, if flushed out, could have stood solo in its own book. 4 stars because Dream Count didn’t quite capture me in the way that Americanah did. But still well worth reading. Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC!

Chiamaka was touching qnd relatable. Even if I didn’t always get her decisions, her need to feel secure, cherished and loved in a relationship was understandable. She’s a dreamer and I liked that. Unfortunately, the men she encountered never truly understood her and it hurt that she had to change herself, shut her dreams off and settled for less than what she wanted in the process of trying to find a real connection. I liked how Zikora described her as “So eager to be liked and so unaware of her own appeal”.
Although, I really felt for Zikora in her short story, she was the one I liked the least. The trauma Kwame left her with was definitely devastating. But I couldn’t have compassion for her salty and bitter persona. Her constant comparison with Omelogor made her less likeable in some ways. I loved that her relationship with her mother evolved in a better direction and they started to actually see each other as women and not only mother and daughter.
Kadiatou’s hardships broke my heart. I felt for her and I hated that she went through all this. Her whole life made me angry at how bad women can be treated. And she was quiet yet so strong.
Omelogor was definitely the character I had the hardest time capturing the substance. I loved her boldness, her bravery and her straightforwardness, how unconventional she was. But I was also puzzled about some of her life decisions and reactions. I admired her as much as she made me uncomfortable.

These 4 women were complex. This books was 4 intertwined stories with a nuanced approach on what could be a desired life of a woman in our time.
The novel was a beautiful exploration of lives with unfulfilled dreams, human desires that never quite found their ground in our world.
The storytelling was so good. I’ve loved Chimamanda’a writing since Americanah and she didn’t disappoint. That irreverent yet gripping tone with a slightly sarcastic side makes it so special and fresh.
I loved this novel and I think I related the most to Chia. It’s definitely worth the read! Highly recommend.

Worth the wait.
Adichie crafts a stunningly beautiful character driven novel that captures life and friendship in all of its messiness. It builds over the course of the lives of four women, all connected through Chia, a Nigerian travel writer. Touching on loves and losses, impacts of the pandemic, and the differences between privilege and surviving a system designed against you, and the desire to be known, I loved every moment of Dream Count.