About Book
Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage–after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures–Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time–until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant. Which, finally, she does–but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine. An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.
My Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐✨
This book depicts the life of a married woman filled with the sadness and pain every childless woman in an African home go through. The emotional abuse by inlaws, annoying and taunting family meetings by members of the family, that all they care about is not your wellbeing or how to help your childlessness but how to ruin your home with a second wife.
This book shows another dimension by which one can be betrayed and it also shows the dangers of having a secretive spouse. At a point I didn’t realise what was happening in the story. I was so focused on yejide’s predicaments and all she had gone through; the visit to the man who made her dance with a goat saying that was her baby; her carrying an empty bulgy stomach for months before realising there was no baby, the embarrassment by her husband’s second wife in her place of work and many others that I found hilarious and also saddening.
But then later on, I found out that there was something to be revealed, there was a secret lurking in the shadows, that birthed more sorrows, anger, grief than a childless woman can bear.
The twist of the story and how there seemed to be unending newness to every part of it made me read through the 304 pages without feeling stressed or bored.
Quite a piece of art, Yejide’s story is an eye opener, especially for wives who got married as virgins, there’s probably a lot they don’t know, just like yejide had to discover in this interesting book.
4.9/5 stars
