I featured The Tiny Things are Heavier in my June 2025 new releases video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q31xhbo1tE, and though I have not read it yet, I am so excited to and expect 5 stars! I will update here when I post a follow up review or vlog.

"The Tiny Things are Heavier" had a way of unexpectedly growing on me. In the beginning, I wondered if the novel was going to focus on romance and the life of grad students, which is does to a degree, but then the novel delves much deeper into the lives of our main characters, their expectations of each other, of themselves, and how they see themselves in this world. Sommy leaves Nigeria to attend graduate school in Iowa and despairs over the fact her older brother basically ghosts her after he has endured a painful dilemma. In time, Sommy meets Bryan, a MFA working on his novel, whose father is Nigerian, though he left Bryan when he was one month old. Bryan was raised by his white mother and white brothers and on summer break, they take a trip to visit Sammy's family and for Bryan to look up his father, which is where the crux of the novel takes place. The author wrote this novel when she was a MFA student and it's a helluva first novel.

Wow, what a debut! This is such a rich book with fierce language that sits with one as you keep turning the pages. The book makes many sharp turns that are not displeasing but keep you on your toes and propel you to keep reading. I really liked it!!

Sommy, a young Nigerian woman, comes to the United States with a heavy burden: her beloved brother has just attempted suicide. As she tries to fit in, to continue her studies and to find out who she really is, her brother’s act looms ever-present in her thoughts and nightmares, and worse yet, her brother won’t take her calls.

Nothing really seems to matter until she begins a relationship with Bryan, a bi-racial Nigerian. When Sommy and Brian visit Nigeria so that Sommy can reconnect to her brother and Brian can finally meet his father, things don’t go well at all.

For Sommy to find herself, she must find the strength to make her own way in the world. In a very human, imperfect way she manages to do just that.

This story brings up important insights, among them how we are conditioned by our culture and what that can do to our relationships. Though the difficulties of migration and the ever-present family obligations and relationship difficulties are well documented, what I missed was a more fleshed out description of Sommy’s brother and their relationship.

Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo’s The Tiny Things Are Heavier is a poignant exploration of identity, grief, and the immigrant experience. Sommy’s journey is raw and deeply felt, weaving together themes of family, belonging, and the weight of untold histories. The novel masterfully captures the tension between past and present, as Sommy grapples with leaving behind her brother and forging a new life in America. Okonkwo’s prose is tender yet unflinching, making this debut both powerful and emotionally resonant. A beautifully rendered story that lingers long after the final page.

Thank you to the publisher for the gifted EARC.

I really wanted to love this story. It felt so promising in the beginning. The prose was easy to understand, flowed beautifully, I was immersed. Somewhere it changed from a book I felt would be reflective to a not so great romance.

You may love this, it was not my favorite.

The story follows Sommy’s move to Iowa from Nigeria for her Masters degree and everything in between. Her friendships, relationships and family dynamics get so twisted, I find myself not being able to put the book down.

I relate deeply to Sommy when it comes to moving abroad and starting life on her own, but not so much to the questionable decisions she makes afterward. She’s a sharpshooter and I loved how she always spoke her mind, especially in moments where most would be quiet. Her morals and values were constantly in question. I struggled to sympathize with her a lot as everything unfolded.

One of the things I love most about the book is how it captures the subtleties of being Nigerian in the diaspora. As a Nigerian myself, it made me reflect on the things we’ve come to accept over time and the unique coping mechanisms we’ve developed. A beautiful and thought-provoking read that kept me gripped until the very end.

beautiful and raw book!I love that Esther was able to articulate what many of us deal with and experience

I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this.

eee, maybe my timing of reading this wasn't great but this was another book that felt like it dragged on a bit, unfortunately. my hopes were incredibly high going into this, as I really love Lagos as a destination in books, esp in contrast to the culture shock of America. the premise sounded gripping and I was really enjoying Sommy as a protagonist, but it felt like there was sooo much detail that was not necessary. I liked the themes explored relating to mental health, family, sex and finding yourself. it was enjoyable but I admittedly lost interest around 65% through - just didn't fully land for me by the ending. still - 3.5 stars rounded up!

Esthers’s stunning debut, off-handedly ‘edgy-tender’ style caught me from the first page. Her sentences were seductive — and at the same time she told an achingly compelling story systematically scrutinizing the challenges of migration…..enlarging the emotional profundity observations of cultural discordance, family, love, loss, grief, guilt, ambition, and the struggle of belonging.

The psychological depth plucks the raw nerves of complexities, of messiness, of self-doubt, guilt, unworthiness, the forbidden, the loneliness and sadness.
Esther Ifesinachi’s lifelike quality dialogue felt unerring, emphasizing real probabilities of ‘telling-it-like-it-is’.
It was easy to get involved with the characters and their struggles.

Sommy, a Nigerian woman just arrived in the United States airport — greeted by her apartment-mate, Bayo (also an immigrant from Nigeria). They had never met in person until this moment. Arrangements and agreements had been made online ahead of time. Both sharing their half of the rent.
“Sommy swipes beads of sweat from her forehead. She did not anticipate the heat. She always associated America with the cold”.
“They walk on ahead. The air smells clean. The sky, clear like an overshine window. Unlike Lagos’s gray sky and fogged air. It occurs to her then that she’s indeed landed. She is in America. She wants to throw her arms around.Bayo, say to him: ‘We are here, we are here’. But it passes, the giddiness, as swiftly as it came”.
Actually it only took minutes until Sommy had deep reservations about Bayo’s boisterous personality.

Sommy came to the United States for graduate school…..leaving Nigeria, only two weeks after her brother, Mezie attempted suicide. The guilt of leaving her brother behind and feeling uprooted and out of place herself made Sommy anxious-off balanced.

Life gets more and more complicated for Sommy between her University classes, Bayo (supposedly ‘just’ her roommate), and another love interest named Bryan. (a biracial American).

Before Sommy and Bryan journey to Lagos, Nigeria during their summer break and face a harrowing blow….which causes Sommy to closely examine herself and choices…..
….I was impressed with Sommy’s self-observations she was making from other students in her literature classes.
“It seems always like a contest of literacy, all of them trying to outshine the next person. If someone mentions Tolstoy, the next person mentions Dostoevsky, and the other person then reaches further down history to excavate an older Russian, say Pushkin. They go round and round until somehow, they arrive back in the same twenty-first century, where this critic has written a not so refined essay on the latest successful commercial novel”.
“The essay reads like a Goodreads review, someone would scoff. No one brings rigor to critical analysis anymore, another would add.
Around the fifth week of this semester, Sommy find herself wanting desperately to be part of this club. It’s why she left home. To do something with herself. To find her passion. She wants, too, to reference Russian writers as though she’s read them all her life. She wants it to be worthy of the sacrifice of leaving Mezie behind”.

“It’s the same in Modern Loneliness, her favorite of the three classes, where she’d taken a small comfort in the stories of loneliness, her classmates shared. They all felt isolated. Why? They couldn’t say. Social media, they postulated. The rise of diet culture, productivity, culture, the ‘do better, be better’ culture. They blame capitalism and racism and
neoliberalism. They blamed poverty. They blamed the president of the university and the president of the United States. They blamed the United Nations and the Red Cross. Sommy left every class feeling guiltless, able to pin her roving acrid sadness to the external cause. But when the nadir arrives, it eclipses everything, and even in this class, where she had formerly felt solidarity, she wants to scream; she wants to say,
‘Everyone, shut up, shut up, please, shut up’”.

“The Tiny Things Are Heavier” is a beautifully-written literary poignant novel.
Sorrowful and hopeful …. it’s emotionally powerful and affecting.
Congratulations to Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo (terrific debut; talents galore).

this was beautiful. thank you so much for the eARC! deeply captured Sommy's pain and struggle for acceptance.