Book 15/30.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
On December 29, 2022 at the Chasing Paper Book Club inaugural in-person review, I met a few African women who all mentioned that they did not enjoy The Sex Lives of African Women as much as they thought they would. The general consensus was that the essays were not fully fleshed out and I agree with them. They were too many and too short and at the end of each essay I was left wanting more. More details and/or substance in the women’s stories, more information on how some stories panned out, more insights into some of the characters. Just, more. The essays were (probably) overedited as they were too truncated for my liking.
Another thing I didn’t like— the syntax. Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah‘s arrangement of words and phrases was a bit lacking, especially when it came to punctuation. There were times I had to reread sentences as the grammar was off and I could not immediately grasp the author’s meaning.
That said, this book has a lot of wisdom and insights to offer. When I was not rereading sentences to make sense of them 😅 I was rereading them for their wisdom and insights, and if I were the annotating type I would have annotated the hell out of the novel. The collection of essays was divided into three sections (Self-discovery, Freedom and Healing), each of them had something to teach me and I will carry those lessons with me for the rest of my life.
PS: I read this after the Six of Crows duology, aka my favourite book(s) of all time, and I was nursing THE BIGGEST BOOK HANGOVER OF ALL TIME upon finishing it. So this was NOT the best pick to read after the duology, but I have never really had a book hangover before and was not prepared for it. Next time I will be better prepared and will pick a book better equipped to nurse my hangover.
View all my reviews
** A guide to ratings **
1 star – did not like it
2 stars – it was okay
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
Lwile the Leo 