Audiobook review: Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?

When I was flying home from Africa back in March, I read an article in the in-flight magazine (hey, when the flight is upwards of 17 hours, you'll eventually look at everything!) about books by Africa writers. I'm a little bemused that it seems like most of them are African writers who live in England and write in English, but it's a start.

My library had this one, so I decided to take a look. Or a listen. 

Title: Yinka, Where is Your Huzband?

Author: Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Publication Info: Penguin Audio 2022, 11 1/4 hours. Original hardback, Pamela Dorman Books 2022, 384 pages

Source: Library

Publisher's Blurb:
Meet Yinka: a thirty-something, Oxford-educated, British Nigerian woman with a well-paid job, good friends, and a mother whose constant refrain is “Yinka, where is your huzband?”

   Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story.  But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right.
    Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date for Rachel's Wedding. Aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend, Yinka is determined to succeed. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs to find is herself?
    Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? is a fresh, uplifting story of an unconventional heroine who bravely asks the questions we all have about love. Wry, moving, irresistible, this is a love story that makes you smile but also makes you think—and explores what it means to find your way between two cultures, both of which are yours.

My Review:
Yinka, Where is Your Huzband is not the sort of book I normally read. Not because it's  about young Nigerian women living in London (while I'm an old white woman living in Seattle), but because it's about young urban women and their love lives.

I'll be honest: at one point, I almost decided it was pure chick-lit and I should give up. Not that there's anything wrong with chick-lit, but it's not my thing. But I keep feeling like there was something more here, and soon Yinka would figure out she was being a crazy woman and we'd see the rest of the story, the part that was in the blurb that made me want to check it out.

Did that happen? Well, mostly. I mean, her insights aren't earth-shaking, but she does manage to put the ideas of beauty--and the importance of having a man--into their proper places. And I liked the ending, though I kept kind of hoping she'd find out she's gay. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. But she does find out she has a spine, so that's good.

In the end, the book never was quite my sort of story, as you can tell from this review. But I think it was a very good book and rises above its obvious genre. And I did get a lot of insights into some lives very different from mine by reason of race, age, and nationalities (Yinka, after all, has two nationalities--she's very definitely both British and Nigerian). That's worth a lot.

My Recommendation:
Worth taking a look. By the way, I think the audio book is best, because otherwise I would absolutely not have heard the accents in my head, and they were wonderful. The role of religion in the book and in Yinka's life was sometimes a bit uncomfortable for me but again, that's part of reading about another culture.

 

FTC Disclosure: I checked Yinka, Where is Your Huzband out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2024
 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated. 


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