Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli

Someday, Maybe is a compelling debut novel that follows a young Nigerian woman's emotional journey through unimaginable loss after her husband dies by suicide. Throughout her grief, she is buoyed by her tight-knit family, eventually makes some new friends, and tries to hold onto the love she shared with her husband.

I had been warned by a variety of people, with this book in my queue, to be prepared for some gut-wrenching reading. Unfortunately, despite what seemed like an exceptional writing style, I could find no avenue into connecting with the main character, Eve. There was a remoteness to Eve's point of view, a distance from the reader, that was not helped by the use of first-person present tense narration. Present tense is stifling and stagnant, so the cyclical nature of real grief made the story feel too repetitive and the depth of her pain feel stunted and less profound than I would otherwise have found it.

Audiobook, as narrated by Adjoa Andoh: Andoh reminded me of one of the narrators for one of the books from The Queen of the Tearling Series...and so early on, I struggled to realign this story and pull it away from feeling like a fantasy novel. But — whether I could move on from that or not — I could still hear the extraordinary talent in Andoh's voice. While I didn't love a couple of voices she chose for two characters (the mother-in-law was a little too Disney villain and Q himself was a little off...), overall I found her narration to be fairly excellent — her voice is strong and her delivery more than made up for any possible flaws otherwise to be found.