Vanessa Walters

"The last photo of Tonye and Nicole showed a man in love with his wife, but pictures could lie. Men lied all the time. Men held you in their arms and lied and smiled and lied...Even with their last breath."

The Nigerwife by Vanessa Walters was just the story I needed to whisk me away for a while. The dual POV's and air of mystery kept me interested the entire time. Walters' vibrant storytelling brought the culture and vibe of Lagos to life. Seeing the story unfold in pieces through different characters and flashbacks really built up the suspense nicely. The themes of generational trauma, abandonment, and classism of Lagos blended nicely with the overall story. Thrillers after a while start feeling redundant but this one had a unique feel and a cast of characters that had me looking at everyone suspiciously. I love when authors can write a unique blend of characters without it feeling muddled and confusing. Also, the idea that nothing is at it seems echoed throughout the story and fit the reveal perfectly.

If you're a thriller reader and looking for a new author to add to your TBR, consider picking this one up. Thanks to @atriabooks for the gifted copy.

You'll love this one if you like stories with:
🇳🇬 dual POV's
🇳🇬 Nigerian setting and language
🇳🇬 secrets of elite society
🇳🇬 diasporic experiences
🇳🇬 fast paced thrillers where everyone is a suspect
🇳🇬 slow reveals
🇳🇬 secrets and lies
🇳🇬 suspicious characters

I can't wait to read more from Vanessa Walters. I thoroughly enjoyed her way of storytelling and her ability to bring the setting to life.… (more)

The Nigerwife is Vanessa Walters' debut adult book.

The title is a name that foreign wives of wealthy Nigerian men have given themselves. The author herself has been part of the Nigerwife community.

Walters' inside point of view immerses the reader in terms of setting, mores, culture, community, everyday life and the upper echelon of Nigerian society.

Nicole Oruwari is one of those wives who seems to have it all....until she goes missing. With no answers and no one seemingly looking for Nicole, her auntie Claudia makes the trip from England to Lagos get answers. She is stonewalled at every turn.

The book is told in a then and now timeline, with Nicole's disappearance being ground zero. As readers we're privy to it all. We get to know Nicole in those before chapters. And I'm not quite sure how I feel about her. I questioned some of her thinking. I adored Claudio though. She often acts before she thinks, speaks her mind and is fiercely loyal to her family. But there are dark chapters to her life as well.

Did I see the who, why and what coming before the final pages? A wee bit, but I was surprised. And that last page? Perfect.

The Nigerwife was fresh, different and enjoyable.… (more)

As with me, most people’s first reaction to this book will be to it’s title. To be clear, it does not use the infamous n-word but rather refers to Nigeria (pronounced with a soft-g, not a hard-g). Further, it is used in real life to describe a group of women in Lagos, Nigeria, who are foreign-born wives of Nigerian men living in Nigeria. As described in this book, they meet in an organized group and have witnessed the rise and fall of hopes for rekindled Nigerian strength. While telling a suspenseful tale, Vanessa Walters shows the seeming pettiness of a two-class economic system in the cities coupled with less structured rural environments.

Nicole Oruwari, the wife and mother of a prominent family in Lagos, suddenly goes missing. Outwardly, she seems to have a perfect life of comfort, yet surprisingly, no one seems especially worried about her disappearance except her aunt Claudine, who raised her and lives in the UK. Claudine voyages to Lagos to explore. She finds that Nicole, Nicole’s family, and just about everyone else have dark family secrets that imprison their lives. The story unfolds in a series of paired chapters set before the disappearance and then after the disappearance. As the plot develops, Claudine discovers that she and Nicole, too, have disturbing family secrets that they have been harboring. Then the story reaches a powerful, punctuated climax followed by a surprising, short denouement.

This work’s main strength is a complicated but unique and surprising ending, which ties together a complex plot. The climax and conclusion are both plausible and unpredictable – a tough pairing to pull off. I suspect that Walters wrote the entire book with this ending in mind. Therein lies its main weakness, too. The book takes a long time to unfurl and can get a bit boring. I’d suggest that it might be improved by a few subplots and character development. All the “Easter eggs” are laid very carefully, but Walters might lose some readers before her stellar ending. It needs something more to draw in reader interest to move it from merely good to great.

The Author’s Note exposes part of the larger social problem. Under a hopeful governmental leader, many talented, educated Nigerians (and there are many across the world) moved back to Nigeria with the hope of strengthening the country. Thus came the group of Nigerwives. However, cultural inertia then led to widespread corruption under a new government. Directionless lifestyles of cultural elites are on full display in this work, and culminate in the life story of Nicole. The often-meaninglessness of a life of wealthy leisure degenerates into secret vices that constrain everyone. Having once lived as a Nigerwife herself in Lagos, Walters calls for the rejuvenation of the original, spiritually rich aim of national renewal.… (more)