Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an amazing author who puts thoughts into words which make you realize the meaning behind the words. I was looking for the hidden meaning behind the words knowing Adichie was trying to say more. In reading her author's note at the end it gave me insight and explanation for what I was feeling. The four women's voices are their own and you can hear it in the writing. Their voices develop your understanding of the personalities of how they each react to Kadiatou. How many times will Dream Count be in my subconscious before I need to read it again to fill in more of the substance Adichie is expressing in her words.

Gorgeous prose fills the pages of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dream Count, the stories of 4 women spread throughout the world considering the choices and lives they have made for themselves. While Adichie is a powerhouse of a writer, they four parts felt disjointed at times and I'm not sure they ever came together for me. I enjoyed the conversation about power, privilege, and identity but I think Adichie's previous work may provide a better perspective on all those things.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count is yet another testament to her brilliance as a writer. Her prose is effortless—both lyrical and sharp, weaving complex emotions and themes with such clarity that the pages practically turn themselves. The story is immersive, filled with Adichie’s signature insight into human relationships, culture, and identity.

While the novel didn't quite reach the emotional heights that Americanah did for me, it’s still an engrossing read—beautifully crafted and deeply engaging from start to finish. Adichie’s writing alone makes Dream Count worth reading, and its readability ensures you’ll fly through it.

This is a very very meaty book. You can read it for the story, you can read it for the writing, and you can read it for what it is saying. It's the kind of book that you want to spend ample time with and probably reread for anything not absorbed on the first read. I loved it. So much to think about, so much I learned and such a brilliant use of words. A writer to be admired.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It's a masterpiece.

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a beautifully written, deeply introspective novel that explores love, regret, and the intricate web of human connection. Adichie’s prose is as gorgeous as ever, crafting characters so vividly drawn that their struggles feel deeply personal. The novel is an engrossing meditation on love—not just romantic, but also familial and self-directed—raising poignant questions about the choices we make and the ones made for us. At times, the narrative feels slightly disjointed, and some threads could have been explored more fully. Still, Dream Count is a luminous, thought-provoking read that lingers in the mind long after the final page, solidifying Adichie’s place as one of today’s most powerful literary voices.

What an amazing story by the author of Americanah! The story takes place primarily in Nigeria and America with a few other locations around the world included. We spend time with four women whose stories intertwine:
Chiamaka (Chia) -- travel writer who longs for love and lives in America
Zikora -- a lawyer, Chia's best friend. Also lives in America
Omelogor -- Nigerian banking whiz who seeks renewal through an American university
Kadiatou -- Chia's housekeeper who is trying to achieve the American dream for her daughter

You may recognize Zikora, the title of a short story. When I saw her name, I stopped reading immediately and reread the short story. Turns out you don't need to do this -- the short story is included in this book with a few more details added!

This is a rich story that holds your attention. It has one of my least favorite book boyfriends in it! The coronavirus also happens during this book. We learn about the dreams for each character, their struggles, frustrations and joys. The author's note at the end is incredible. She explains the real world inspiration for the character of Kadiatou. If you have triggers, research this book first.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read a digital copy for review.

Adichie’s newest novel focuses on four women and their relationships to each other. One is a writer, another a lawyer, the third a house keeper, and the final a rich Nigerian. The novel explores humanity and if we can ever truly be happy.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is back and better than ever with her latest novel Dream Count. Dream Count is a beautifully written, mesmerizing novel that interlocks the lives of four resilient women. A reflective story that captures the heart of each woman as they navigate their dreams, loves, desires and longings. A huge thank you to Penguin Random House/Knopf, the author and Netgalley for the advanced digital copy of the book.

At the start of the story we meet Chiamaka, a wealthy Nigerian travel writer who now lives in the United States. The pandemic is in full swing and she is alone, reflecting on her past lovers, struggling with her decisions and remorse. Zikora, her best friend is a lawyer who is very successful at pretty much everything, but has been deeply wounded by betrayal and is devastated. Omelogor is Chiamaka’s spirited, uninhabited cousin a financial powerhouse questioning herself, and there is Kadiatou her housekeeper, who is raising her daughter, but dealing with hardship. Each woman different from the other, and yet connected by their human nature and emotions.

Dream Count is a thought provoking, poignant masterpiece. The storyline is a persistent exploration of the human heart. What does it take to actually love someone, to be loved, and find happiness. Do the choices we make and those that are opposed upon us change how we navigate love and life? No two stories are alike and everyone progresses in different ways to get to where they need and want to be in life. Adichie does a phenomenal job of showing her readers this through lens of anxiety, hope, love and desire. Dream count is a highly compelling, powerful must read that should be at the top of everyone’s reading list.

I knew almost nothing about the Biafran War before reading Half of a Yellow Sun, and I learned even more about the Nigerian immigrant experience in Americanah. In Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie again explores many layers of identity and culture in West Africa and the diaspora through the stories of four women whose lives are interconnected across time and multiple continents. Ngozi’s writing is smooth and easy to take in. The characters are complex and interesting. This is a great book for readers who enjoy character-driven novels and great writing. I did get bored with each character by the end of their section, and I wished they would use more of the agency they had in their relationships with men.

Adiche’s prose is deft and beautiful. She is a writer in a league of her own, but read this article to see if you want to read the book

https://www.vox.com/22537261/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-transphobia-cancel-culture-jk-rowling-akwaeke-emezi-olutimehin-adegbeye

MacArthur Fellow Adichie returns with her first novel in twelve years which was just named to the Women’s Prize for Fiction long list. Dream Count tells the story of four women — a freelance travel writer, a lawyer, a hotel maid, and sex advice writer — during the early stages of the COVID pandemic. The novel opens with Chiamaka, alone in her home in Maryland, where the “formless days led into one another and I had the sensation of time turning inward.” Chia, whose beauty is commented on by strangers and whose fledgling career is supported by her wealthy Nigerian family, is forty-four years old, without a husband or a child, “a calamity more confounding because it was not for the lack of suitors.” During lockdown, “an unknown waiting for an unknown end,” Chia reflects on her various relationships with men: the boy with whom she shared a first kiss at seventeen who died in a car accident; the uncomplicated Chuka, a “breathing paean to loyalty,” whose proposal Chia rejected because “I could no longer ignore that exquisite ache of wanting to love a lovely person that you do not love;” and Darnell, the “Denzel Washington of academia,” with whom Chia “never felt at home, never felt sure, was never made to feel that she could one day be less unsure.”

Adichie next turns to Chia’s best friend, Zikora, an ambitious lawyer in Washington, D.C., who sobs to Chia because she had thought that she would be married with a child at her age. When her section opens, Zikora is giving birth, but we are told that Zikora is burdened with the surfeit of the trait that women are blessed with — the ability to tolerate nonsense from men — and she refers to several of the men she had dated as “thieves of time.” Zikora is relieved when she meets Kwame, who is attentive and free of restlessness, and said “I love you” before Zikora did. But Kwame, too, is disappointing.

We then learn the background of Chia’s Guinean Muslim housekeeper, Kadiatou, the protagonist of the third section of the novel and moral center of the book. Adichie vividly and sympathetically narrates Kadiatou’s story, from a harrowing scene of female genital mutilation to an arranged marriage to a much older mineworker whose alcoholism Kadiatou assumed was the reason for her miscarriages and stillborn child, and an internationally publicized rape case. In a postscript, Adichie writes that she based Kadiatou on the real-life Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel worker who accused IMF head and French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss Kahn of sexual assault in 2011.

Lastly, and in the least successful section, we visit Chia’s cousin, the formidable Omelogor, who gets off the corporate ladder and attends graduate school where it seems to her friends that she is leached of her light. We follow Omelogor as she quits her job as a corrupt banker (she steals money from wealthy clients to provide microloans to female entrepreneurs) to a graduate student and anti-porn feminist.

This novel lacks the social heft of Adichie’s epic Half of a Yellow Sun, and her lighter, Americanah,. The story seems to be a bit of a regressive take on gender relations where marriage was a time bound dream for many women. Nevertheless, Adichie is such a fine storyteller that the reader gets caught up in these fully realized characters — their desires, their ambitions, and their regrets — and Adichie’s exploration of female friendship, parental relationships and heterosexual intimacy. Thank you Knopf and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this remarkable writer’s latest novel.

This was the first novel that I have read by this author.
I read a short story that she wrote and enjoyed it but to me this 416 page novel felt like 1200 pages.
It’s about three middle age Nigerian women during the covid pandemic who ponder their lives up until then, mostly their experiences with various romantic relationships..their lives have not panned out as far as marriage and motherhood goes..
This has criss crossing story lines, not much of it of interest to me.
This novel has a starred review from Kirkus and some really positive reviews here on Goodreads.. but I wish I had just dnf’d it!

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for the gifted copy!

In her latest novel, Dream Count, Chimamanda Nqozi Adichie tells the stories of four women, each with her own dreams, her own strengths and weaknesses. Overall, it is the story of friends, of cousins, of mothers and daughters, of employers and employees, of successes and deep losses, of lovers and failed relationships, of the pressure put on women to marry and have children.

Adichie divides the book into five sections, the first and last focusing on Chiamaka, a Nigerian woman living in the U.S., a would-be novelist turned freelance travel writer, whose Nigerian father funds her world travels and affluent lifestyle. Between those sections, readers encounter the stories of Chiamaka’s best Nigerian friend Zikora, whose section opens while she is in labor in a Nigerian hospital; Chimaka’s Guinean housekeeper Kadiatou, who also works as a hotel maid; and Chiamaka’s wealthy, abrasive investment banker cousin Omelogar, who has made herself indispensable to the big boss she calls only CEO. Each of the women’s sections overlap, all four characters appearing in each section, while each women is fleshed out in her own section or sections.

The time setting is the Covid-19 pandemic although many of the events have occurred in the past and are recalled as memories, and as memory works, they do not all appear in chronological order. Yet these memories take on such a life of their own that readers sometimes need to be reminded of the pandemic.

Although each of these women has her own interesting story, Kadiatou’s eventually grabbed me the most, perhaps because, as Adichie explains in her notes at the back of the novel, the housekeeper’s story was inspired by newspaper accounts of a Guinean hotel maid caught up in a widely-publicized scandal that became a social justice issue. Giving Chiamaka (“Chia”) the first and last sections, Adichie uses her to tie everything together.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an advance reader egalley of this excellent addition to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work.

Dream Count is Adichie's first fiction book published in a decade, and needless to say, the book community is elated. I had been eagerly awaiting to read this book for so long, and the best thing was that it was exactly as beautiful as I thought it would be. Adichie is a proficient writer, and her prose is readably profound, flowing smoothly through digressions, and the emotional core of this story engrossed me thoroughly.

This story is about four women: Chiamaka, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor, who are unlikely friends in many ways, and the way they navigate the disconnect between their expectations from life and their realities. Each character is carved out meticulously by Adichie, their interconnected stories explored from different perspectives, their thoughts realistic and discrete. Every time I believed to had understood a character, Adichie revealed another layer, and I grappled with how to feel about them. I ended this book with a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, and a lot of respect for Adichie's raw talent for writing.

Reminiscence and yearning lie at the core of this book. All of the women are in their early to older forties, looking back on their lives, and pondering what they could have done differently. Very little in the name of plot appears, and when it does, it is visceral and poignant, beyond infuriating. For a book that is so feminist and that centers women and their lives, it revolves quite a bit around men. Then again, it makes sense in the context of the meaning behind the name of this book. The central question that runs through this novel is What is it to be truly known?

Adichie writes in her author's note, Novels are never really about what they are about, as she reveals what really led her to write this narrative, and end it as she did. So much is packed and explored in this novel—race, belonging, class issues, societal norms, immigration, sexism, corruption, morality, and choice. The characters, with all their differences, embody different belief systems that clash sometimes, and turning the lens upon them through each other's gazes as well as tertiary characters is an innovative written analysis of coexistence.

I'm not even sure who to recommend this to. The writing gets ornate to the point of flowery, the setting seems more haphazard than intentional, and you don't really get a resolution or tension in the story so much as endless introspection. I fell in love with the book, so I'd still herald this as an absolute work of art, and I'd say pick this up if you want a story with a deep emotive core, truly realistic (unlikable) characters, and masterful writing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor publishing for a copy of the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I’m so glad to see a new book from Adichie. This was well written, on the sentence level, and contained interesting stories. I’m just not sure of its intention. It felt kind of all over the place, unfocused (though I could follow the storyline just fine).

It starts with a lonely writer during quarantine, thinking back on her relationships. Then jumps to those of friends of hers, for a long while, then back to her, and I’m not sure why. I can identify themes, but that’s the extent of my understanding of what she was trying to do with this narrative. Thanks to NetGalley for the arc.

Loved this storyline from women's perspective. I bought a physical copy for my bookshelf. This was a new to me author.

I've never been disappointed by a work by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Dream Count might be my favorite so far. 

Four interconnected women with four vastly different stories. Instead of having the point of view rotate on a regular, chapter basis, the book is broken up into five parts with each part focusing on one of the characters (then circling back to the first character). I really enjoyed this formatting as all of the characters still remained throughout the story since they're all friends and/or related but it allowed a deeper focus. 
Additionally, I enjoyed the open-ended quality of each section. There wasn't one big plot conclusion for each of the characters at the end, but instead the sections end on a pause. The stories continue even if the focus didn't. 

I enjoyed each of the women immensely, despite how different they all were to each other. Adichie's unparalleled prose greatly assisted with connecting me to them. I'm not just reading their stories, but living them through her prose. Each of their choices felt so important and their stories made me reflect on the nature of happiness. I know this book and these characters will stay with me.

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is her first fiction release. I have waited for this release with great anticipation because Adichie has always been an author that I have read previous works and come to love and enjoy. This book did not disappoint it was everything that I hoped it would be. Adichie was able to pull readers in with her prowess as a prolific writer.
This book centers around four women-Chiamaka, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor—unlikely friends in many ways, each navigating the complicated tension between their life expectations and the realities they face. These women are in their forties, reflecting on their lives with a sense of yearning and remorse. The novel explores themes of reminiscence, regret, and self-discovery, as each character examines their choices and
their lives through their relationships with one another and the world. I completely fell in love with each character because they brought individual complexity to the story. Each character adding value and insight to the storyline. Each woman's personal struggles feel real and relatable, even as their paths diverge in unexpected ways.
Dream Count is a profound, thought-provoking work that showcases Adichie's raw talent for capturing the human experience. It is a book that will leave you with many thoughts, feelings, and perhaps even more questions than answers. For those who appreciate complex character studies and nuanced explorations of identity, this novel is a must-read. However, for those seeking plot-driven stories or clear-cut resolutions, it may be less satisfying.
The story was medium pace and I was able to flow through the book aimlessly. 5 star rating and I do recommend!
Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor publishing for providing me with an ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own

Recommended: if you're up for it
For something very high-minded and slow and unclear and meandering, for something with little to no plot focus and only as a foil to the character's portrayals

Thoughts:
Oh, no. I really wish I had a nicer way to start, but my God, I was so bored with this!! It's not told as a story, really, more like four separate deep character dives with... No real point? Reading about Chiamaka's litany of failed lovers was a dreadful start and I guess it got better but only barely from there. This whole read felt, in a word, tedious.

I also think I am not the intended audience right now. I am mentally spent and having a hard time engaging deeply with things as I'm worn out just by existing. This author is such a revered one that surely, I must be the one in the wrong if I'm coming out of this book bored and unimpressed? So anyway, that's where I was at.

Everything felt distant despite how intimately their experiences were presented. Like seeing from someone else's eyes, but framed by a television screen, so I always knew it was separate. The things one of them cares about disappears entirely when we move to the next person. Which by the way, they each get a giant block of book dedicated solely to them, rather than alternating views. Turns out I don't enjoy that is it made it feel much less intertwined. They would briefly feature in each other's sections, but definitely as a backseat and often contradictory to the portrayals we had had in the others' perspectives of themselves. I suppose that's expected as how you view yourself and how others view you will often differ, but once again it just felt isolating to me.

So what was in this book? Well... lots of talk about relationships and men. Shockingly quite a slog to read. Some touches on motherhood and expectations on women, especially through different cultures and social statuses. Musings on power imbalance, some more blatant than others. But in the end, I don't really feel like any statement was made, stance given, or thoughts presented to consider. I've left it thinking, why did I bother?

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for a free advanced copy. This is my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for allowing me to read and review this book.

This book has been long awaited, and didn't disappoint. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has beautiful writing. I highly recommend this book!