Wow, this was absolutely intense. The whole book is intensely, compulsively readable and I sped through it in two sittings (and it only took two settings because I had to sleep inbetween).

Ayobami Adebayo tells the story of a marriage, its desintegration, and the hurt happening along the way. We first meet Yejide at a time when she hasn't seen her husband in 14 years and is now preparing to return for his father's funeral, then the story shifts back to the past where the couple is deperately trying to have a child. Both their families blame Yejide, going even so far as to arrange a second wife for her husband, Akin. This addition of a second wife is the starting point of a grueling few years and of a spiral of hurt and viciousness and painful mistakes.

What impressed me the most about this debut novel is the way Ayobami Adebayo created characters who are unpleasent and flawed and intensely aggrevating but still managed to make me feel and root for them. Yejide's intense wish for children and everything she goes through to have them was absolutely heartbreaking - and everybody's reaction to her 'failure' made my blood boil. While she herself is not without serious flaws her reactions and even her stupid decisions made sense considering the immense pressure she is under, for pretty much the whole book.

This is not a hopeful book; I feel the need to point that out. The situation the couple find themselves in is so unbelievably unpleasant that it is a wonder that the Yejide we meet in the beginning to able to function at all.

This tightly woven book is an impressive debut novel - not because of any fancy language but just based on the strength of the characters created. I am absolutely thrilled to see it on the Bailey's prize longlist and I am looking forward to reading Ayobami Adebayo's next book.

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I received an arc of this book curtesy of NetGalley and Canongate Books in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for that!

Stay With Me

An emotional and heartbreaking story that centres on the marriage of Yejide and Akin, and the unbearable yearning for a child.

This is an addictive read that handles sensitive subjects that many will be able to relate to; a heart rendering story that will stay with me for a long time. A beautiful story that I highly recommend. 5*

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher.

These opinions are my own.
The heartbreaking tale of this woman's journey to conceive and the struggles in marriage in respect to Nigerian culture. This book grabbed me from the first chapter and I found it compelling as I read one how cultures can be totally different to the one I live in today. Overall a great read!

Rarely have the social pressures to produce children been conveyed with such intensity as in Adebayo's debut novel “Stay With Me”. Yejide and Akin are an intelligent, beautiful and prosperous couple living in modern day Nigeria. In the year 1985 it looks like they are set for a promising future, but no matter how hard the couple try they cannot conceive a child. The narrative alternates between the points of view of Yejide and Akin. They convey the multi-faceted strains on their relationship as their family and society demand that they produce children. They go to extreme measures to do so and there are multiple shocking plot twists along the way. Amidst the personal crisis that this couple experience, the political leadership of the country is in a precarious state forcing them to make choices which they wouldn't in more stable circumstances. This well-paced drama skilfully conveys the different dilemmas faced by women and men when the importance of conceiving children is placed above all else.

Although Yejide is an educated woman who runs a successful beauty salon it's the perception of her husband's family that Akin financially supports her. No matter how capable she is the fact that she's a woman will always place her at a lower status to that of the man. The overwhelming impression over the course of the novel is that according to the family Yejide's body is not her own, but merely an instrument to bring in the next generation. It's typical for couples to feel under strain from the previous generation to produce children, but the interference here is so much greater where Yejide is subjected to physical examinations from the family and they arrange for Akin to have a second wife when she doesn't become pregnant quickly enough. The worst challenges Yejide faces to her relationship are from Akin's mother and Funmilayo, the woman selected as Akin's second wife. It's a sad consequence of a patriarchal social system that women begin to oppress each other and feel that they must compete with one another.

Even when a woman has a child her body and life are not her own. It's perceived that “a mother does not do what she wants, she does what is best for her child.” So whether she has a child or not, Yejide never feels like she fully controls her own destiny. Matters are not helped when Yejide's own family line is uncertain because her mother died early in her life. She states “the point was that when there was no identifiable lineage for a child, that child could be descended from anything. Even dogs, witches or strange tribes with bad blood.” Yejide's own father had multiple wives and no matter how much she's favoured by the man, the fact that her mother's lineage is unclear makes her a rogue element in this family line. When social status is such an important factor it doesn't matter how capable an individual is; without a strong family tree to support you you will always be condemned.

While the challenges for a woman in this society are manifold, the author equally shows the enormous expectations and problems faced by men. Akin is fiercely in love with Yejide and truly only desires her, but he's pressured to accept Funmilayo as a second wife whether he wants to or not. This compels him to treat her badly and although Funmilayo is presented as a scheming individual, I felt sympathetic to her precarious position. The demand that he produce a child also compels Akin to plot against and lie to his wife. Gradually the levels of deception and self-deception are revealed over the course of the story. The characters are under such strain to perform correctly in their social roles they begin to convince themselves that the reality of the situation is different from what it is. It's observed how “the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves.”

When reading this novel I was reminded of Lisa McInerney's novel “The Glorious Heresies” which also has a tragic romance at its centre. Although these two novels are set in very different societies, they both show the insidious way the dominant ideologies of their countries put undo pressure on personal relationships. “Stay With Me” contains a gripping story that intelligently portrays the longterm destruction of a relationship from choices made under pressure from the family and community that surround Yejide and Akin. Although it contains a lot of serious and compelling themes, the story is full of such vibrant characters and fascinating surprises it's a very pleasurable read.

This book took me through a range of emotions with its various twists and turns. How can I describe it?

Ayobami starts this novel with sentences that lure you into the different angles this tale will take. She starts in 2008, thrusts you to 1987 and back again into 2008. It annoys me in a good way when a writer does the suspense kills me.

With this book, she tells the story of Yejide and Akin who are in love, married and have everything except children. The hurt of being virtually abandoned as a child, the hope of finding love that rises above everything, the betrayal of family and spouses…the many stories that breakout of this bond between a husband and a wife.

You will be forgiven to think this is the usual Nigeria/ African story about the push to have children. It is much more than that.

I am finding it very difficult to review this book without giving spoilers but this is what I will say: If you are looking for a book whose author has the skills of a distinguished oba/ palace storyteller, Ayobami is your author.

She writes this story in such a way that you just have to finish the book in one sitting. If you have never visited any of the places she mentions or understand any of the traditions expressed, she quickly describes these in a way that makes you feel you know everything about polygamy, Abiku, Yoruba people, Ife and Ilesa.

Stay With Me is a powerful book, transporting the reader to Nigeria. The narrative swaps between Yejide and her husband Akin, covering a time period from the early 1980s to 2008.

It’s hard to write about the novel without spoiling the plot and Adebayo’s handling of time and information cleverly allow the story to unfold, teasing the reader with pieces of information about Yejide’s marriage and children in order to entice us further into the complexities of her relationship with Akin and their desire for progeny.

When I outlined the plot for my husband, he found the story unbelieveable – something I take issue with! – and without careful handling the plot might have felt farfetched. Instead, it feels true to the difficulties love has when it meets a world of differing expectations and pressures. Love needs communication and honesty. When it doesn’t have these, what remains?

Family, parenthood and love are at the heart of the novel and though the politics of family are on centre stage, the politics of government are never far from view, allowing for interesting comparisons between home and public truths that a more informed reader would be sure to make more of.

Yejide’s mother died in childbirth and as a consequence she longs to be loved, she longs to belong. She grows up struggling to take on the mantle of womanhood.

Akin too is missing something. As they both strive to find themselves, to take on the labels of lover, wife, husband, parent, the reader finds themselves following phantom paths that ultimately bring us to 2008 and the possibility of new beginnings.

It is pleasing that Yejide is a hairdresser, busy all day weaving hair, running her fingers through the lives of others as she attempts to unravel and rebraid her own.

Stay With Me is a moving story that unflinchingly depicts the pain of longing for and losing children. You need to be ready to read a book about this kind of loss, but if you are you won’t be disappointed. It’s a beautifully written story that you can’t help but feel immersed in.

Stay With Me tells the emotional story of the pressures society places upon women around motherhood and one woman's desperate struggle to find her identity when all she wants to be is a mother.

Yejide desperately wants a baby, however her and her husband Akin are yet to conceive. Facing the pressures of Nigerian culture which values motherhood and offspring highly, the couple are forced to accept the polygamy which Yejide's mother-in-law forces them into. Yejide is desperate to conceive, delving into superstition as she begins to clutch at staws. Either due to unfortunate coincidence or the pressure placed upon her, Yejide develops from a ghost pregnancy, threatening to break her marriage apart.

What ensues is a tale of betrayal, deception, scandal and loss much darker than you would have ever expected. The novel is told from the perspectives of both Yejide and Akin as they fight to form a family and then literally fight to keep their family alive. It is also set against a backdrop of political unrest, which mirrors the tense atmosphere of the novel, up until the parallel climax of both the context and storyline. Alongside its use as a literary device this also serves to ground the novel in a real sense of time and place.

The story is difficult and heart-wrenching. Seeing both perspectives complicates where your sympathies lie and all of the characters are at fault. Notably Yejide is not always sympathetic and likeable - but this was a good decision, as it made her far more real and relatable, as she struggles to come to terms with her identity and relationship to motherhood in a culture which places mothers on a pedestal and shuns women who cannot meet this standard.

The book was compelling and exquisitely written, making it emotive, frustrating and ultimately heart-breaking. If this is Ayobami Adebayo's debut, then surely there can only be better to come from such an exciting new author.

I was given a free copy of Stay With Me by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
Stay With Me grabbed me from the first page and wouldn't let me go until I arrived wrung out at the end. Set during a period of political turmoil in Nigeria in the 1980s and later looking back on their lives from the 2000s, this is the story of Yejide and Akin's marriage as Yejide struggles to conceive and Akin is bullied by his family into polygamy in order to produce a child. Yejide's despair at her fertility and the extreme pressure placed on her are heartbreaking to read about. The huge stress placed on the marriage by the couple's families and society see the marriage start to crack under the strain, compromising Yejide’s mental health as they experience both loss and betrayal. It is incredibly sad in places but hugely compelling. Having the two narrators gave both husband and wife a chance to tell their side of the story. These are two people deeply in love who have been affected tremendously by the stigma of infertility.
The vivid descriptions and exquisitely-crafted language made this a book to remember. This is a stunning debut novel from an author who is clearly going places.

With calm and unpretentious style, Ayobami Adebayo explores themes of marriage, family and love in Nigeria. In this strange but fascinating world dictated by respect for the elders and their opinions, not bearing children is a serious fault that gets remedied with everything from rituals to second wives. Women are reduced to childbearing, an infertile woman is "nothing more than a man". Yet this book nicely explores the protagonist's struggle to break out of those rigid traditions, craving to find love in marriage without having children and a family, deciding between a relationship born from love and shared experiences and one purely practical for the sake of reproduction. Both wife and husband get a point of view, a stylistic element that makes it hard to blame either for their actions, which came from anger and frustration. The turbulent political situation of Nigeria in the 1980s adds a nice backdrop without taking focus away from the interhuman and inner plot points. Do keep some tissues ready before you delve into this book!

Yejide wants a baby. It's all her husband and mother-in-law want and Yejide has tried everything. So when her in-laws insist on a new wife, Yejide can't bear it.

This story is told by 2 narrators, Yejide and her husband Akin. Set in Nigeria in the 1980's we get a part its turbulent history. A decently written debut novel.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Canongate Books and the author Ayobami Adebayo for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Utterly beautiful book. Loved the escapism through the descriptions of Nigeria. A brilliant book especially considering this is a debut novel. I will definitely be on the lookout for future books by Ayobami Adebayo.

This book looks at a Nigerian couple as they desperately yearn to have a family of their own. We follow the heartbreak that Yejide and Akim go through on their journeys. Great to hear both sides of the couple although the weighting is heavily towards the female character.

this book broke me. it was such a wonderful read and so refreshing in subject.

Thanks to Net Galley & Canongate Books for an ARC of this books. The story is set in Nigeria and is about a young couple newly married and wanting to start a family. The months start to tick by and still Yejide is not pregnant. The story tells of their longing for a baby and the lengths they both go to, to have the much longed for child.
Yejide's first pregnancy is imaginary, she so longs to be an expectant mother, to have, someone who belongs to her. Her mother in law finds a second wife for her husband Akin as she longs for her first son to have a child and this causes Yejide more stress.
Her husband Akin decides to take matter in to his own hands to ensure Yejide becomes pregnant by confiding in his brother Duton and persuading him to help them and this is the start of many hidden truths between Akin and Yejide.
It is a sad story about longing loss and heartache. There is light at the end of the story and hope of a new beginning. 3.5 stars.

This book is set in Nigeria. It tells the story of a woman trying to have a family and all that entails with family loyalties, bonds and expectations. It is one of those books you will have to read to the end, to find out what happened and it was not something I could predict.
The setting and context is like a breath of fresh air, there is a lot of sadness too.
I think the book is well written, it grips you.The characters are well developed.The book explores the concept of love and how it can be influenced.
I know very little about Nigeria and the Yoruba people. I was fascinated to learn of their traditions and beliefs and they grounded the book in a world that felt very true yet also very unreal.
I look forward to reading more by this author as I believe this was a debut novel.

How exciting to find another good novel written by a female Nigerian writer. Very well constructed with good prose and very atmospheric. Heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Highly recommended.

Yetide and her husband Akin are a middle-class couple living in Nigeria in the 1980s. He works in a bank, she runs her own hairdressing salon. They apparently have a happy marriage. But they (or more particularly, Yetide) are under great pressure from Akin’s mother because they do not have a child. They have both grown up in polygamous households and she persuades Akin to take a second wife.

Yetide is a wonderful character, alternately beautiful and strong, and isolated and bullied. Her own mother died in childbirth and she was ostracised by her husband’s other wives. By contrast, she adores Akin’s mother and this makes it harder for her to stand up to her. These experiences compound her own feelings about not being able to have a child and the lengths she is willing to go.

The narration switches between Yetide and Akin’s points of view as we see the strain their changed relationship places on them. You get a powerful sense of the conflicting pressures on them and the importance of family. I also enjoyed the details of their daily life. The minor characters are brilliantly drawn and there is warmth and humour entwined with darker moments. The increasing sense of threat from political events entwines with their personal story.

I did have some issues with the latter part of the book. First we have Yetide’s perspective on a key event, then it doubles back to give us Akin’s. This doesn’t tell you anything you couldn’t have worked out, and slows the story down just when the tension should be rising. I also struggled with the plausibility of some elements of the plot and the end was a little predictable. But despite these reservations, it was a fascinating insight into Nigerian life and the conflict between the ideal of motherhood and the reality.

I would rate this book 4.5 if the option was available, it's very close indeed to a 5* for me.

Everything about this book is beautiful. Everything.

The writing is stunning, Adebayo manages to word this entire book perfectly whilst dealing with all sorts of problematic situations. Difficult topics (without spoilers) include polygamy, childlessness, mental health issues, death, life threatening diseases, problems within marriage, political issues within Nigeria. There are more too but those are slightly spoiler-y so I'll leave them off public reviews. Just know that each topic is handled sympathetically and beautifully.

The characters are all amazing too, although some of them are amazingly hideous (Funmi and Yejide's stepmothers especially). My heart aches for Yejide and to some extent Akin. I cannot imagine going through all the pain they experience.

When this comes out, I'll be buying a hard copy. I loved it that much.

This is another book I received as an eARC as I thought it would an interesting book to read for the final Book Riot Challenge – “Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color.”. I was drawn to it by the cover and because I’ve been reading a lot of Nigerian literature recently and wanted to read some more.

I really enjoyed this book, although it’s going to be hard to write a review without spoilers due to the nature of it as it follows Yejide and her struggles with her husband as they try their best to conceive a child. All the characters are really well written and very realistic in their actions. You both like and dislike characters and they’re all very much painted as neither good nor bad, but simply human. The POV alternates between Yejide and her husband, Akin, and so seeing the story from both sides is particularly interesting. The story also jumps around in the timeline from their current struggles, to their courtship in the past and then to over 10 years after the main events of the book. I really enjoyed the story and loved how it ended – especially as the writing was just so lovely to read.

I would definitely recommend this book to those wishing to diversify their reading more, it’s an excellent story focusing on the everyday lives of an ordinary couple and their struggles.

Stay With Me, Ayobami Adebayo

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews
Genre: Literary Fiction, General Fiction (Adult) 
 
This isn’t a book I’d re-read, that being said it was heart breaking at times. A really sad story where it was difficult to see who was really acting in the wrong.

Yejide was so in love with Akim, having been brought up in a typical Nigerian family where her father had four wives, and respect for parents is huge. Sadly her mother died in childbirth, and there are so many religious superstitions over any event connected with death that she’s always on the outside of the family, always being reminded of the awful thing her mother did in dying. When she meets Akin she’s ripe for love. When he sees her he’s entranced and very soon they are married.

That’s seems fine doesn’t it? Sadly though family is everything in this culture and Yejide is soon inundated with advice from Akim’s and her own family about how to get pregnant.
At first they seem like an independent couple, they know much of this “advice” is spurious superstition but slowly the blame weighs heavily on Yejide.
She’s still shocked though when Akim takes a second wife....my heart broke for her here. I was so angry at Akim and yet in that culture, with the constant pressure of parents, not just two but all his fathers wives who want to see their son or daughter as the favoured, its harder to blame him.
I really didn’t like Funmi, wife number two, and yet if I’m honest she was just doing what their culture taught, marry and have children, seek to ensure your children are in the favoured position of their father.

There’s such sadness here, and I so felt for both of them. Some really strange things too, when with a Western eye and education I’m thinking “oh come on, they wouldn’t do/would have known/ought to have”...and yet events carry on playing out, binding them all deeper and deeper, potentially losing that precious love they had.

Later in the story I really was cross at Yejide and her behaviour, didn’t understand how she could act like that to an innocent child, and yet I also understood her too. My first child was stillborn and I spent hours watching over the three that followed, prodding them awake when I was sure that they weren’t breathing.
Heartbreak, death, despair all does strange things and in a way she was just trying to protect herself.

I could have been angry too at the interfering parents, their intervention caused such tragedy, and yet once more its a culture thing, they weren’t intentionally cruel, just wanted what they’d been taught was best for their children, for their happiness, for their fulfilment.

Its a really sad story, but with an ending that hints at a positive future.
I really enjoyed it, it makes for a terrific debut read but its not one I’d re-read now I know how it plays out. I did like seeing things from both Yejide and Akim’s view points. Gave me a real insight into their feelings. 

Stars: Five, a fabulous debut, full of the way a different culture sees parenthood, and the problems it brings when a wife fails to get pregnant.

ARC supplied for review purposes by Netgalley and Publishers

I couldn't take to this book at all I didn't like the writing or the characters. I felt they were weak and wanted to tell them off.