Adanna

by Adesuwa O'man Nwokedi

Adanna, the haunting beauty married off to a man three times her senior. After enduring two decades of abuse, she and the rest of the household awaken to the murder of her husband, Chief Arinze Nsofor. With everything to gain with him being out of the picture, she is a key suspect. But also suspicious are his children, each of whom he has a strained relationship with...not to mention the other numerous people nursing deep grudges against him. In this tale of love, lust and revenge, the question remains; who killed Chief?

Genres: Romance, Fiction, Africa, African Literature, Thriller, Nigeria, Emotional

471 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 22, 2020

About the author

The Writer, who became an Engineer, who became an Investment Banker, who became a Fertility Spokesperson, who became…a Writer.
That has been the journey of A. T. Nwokedi, aka The Fertile Chick. A self confessed hopeless romantic, when she is not creating new characters, she devotes her time to creating memories with her husband and their three children.

Reviews

[Mololuwa Mustapha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to know who broke this writer. Books like these aren't born from mere imagination. I've lost count of how many times I had to drop this book to take a break from its toxicity, yet I still couldn't get enough of it. I felt a rollercoaster of emotions, from anger to sadness to relief, back to sadness.
I cried a lot, gave myself a pounding headache, and had to keep reminding myself that the book isn't real, it's just a work of fiction. I really hope no human being had to endure what Adanna went through.

[Shawnaci Schroeder · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5
This book was heartbreaking! I wasn’t the biggest fan because I had a tough time emotionally connecting with the fmc. It just felt like there was bad after bad happening left & right. This was a long book! This one wasn’t my favorite, but if you’re someone that enjoys reading about trauma, you’ll definitely get it in this story!

[ādà nnè m✨ · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book was quite terrible. i don't mind reading books that deal with trauma and hard topics, but it felt like the author just added every possible horrible scenario that could happen to someone and called it a book. the main character was unbelieveably stupid and made the most ridiculous and hard to believe decisions. aside from the ridiculous plot line, the author does not know how to write well.

[Meme · Rating 4 out of 5]

God abeg and the author had the audacity to say she is a hopeless romantic. There was nothing romantic about this book it was more hopeless. Severe trauma like severe tw ⚠️( severe talks about sexual violence ), because I am so dumbfounded, how did the author sit down and actually write this book. Like Adana, needs serious deliverance after this because there is no way you’ll be standing after all of that rubbish !! Even in the ending Akanna blood of Jesus 😭

[Amaka Azie]

A horrific and tragic tale, with very detailed sexual and physical abuse of a young woman married off to a much older wealthy man.
It’s such a brutal story filled with horrors that didn’t stop from beginning to end and even in the last chapter there was still a final attempt to horrify.
Yet, I finished this story.
The writer is brilliant at engaging a readers emotions.
If you enjoy sorrowful stories with detailed acts of violence, rape and abuse, this will tickle your fancy.
Otherwise, steer clear.
Triggers abound like a MF

[Abigail Anoko Amodu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I normally don’t like long books. I convinced myself that stories can definitely be told in many ways, so why make them unbearably long with excessively long chapters when they could be short, right? But I really like Adanna. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph… everything felt like it had an important role to play in this book.

I spoke to my friends while reading this book. I said many things, mainly about how much I try to understand what has been done to a lot of African writers, because the things they write cannot be a product of mere imagination. This book broke me with almost every page and every chapter, but did I stop? No. Because I just couldn’t. I was drawn in and just NEEDED to know how it ended. To me, that’s a good book—one that holds your attention. I loved how beautifully written it was, how I felt like, for some reason, I could feel the pain the characters in this book felt.

This book is TRAUMA personified. I genuinely don’t understand what I have just read. Will I be able to fall asleep tonight? It is a whirlwind of emotions. I told my friend that it is heartbreak in every sense of the word: trauma, grief, sadness, suffering—EVERYTHING. A true work of art. To think that the experiences in this book are experiences people had and ARE STILL HAVING in this day and age is scary. Adanna was truly a victim of a failed system that couldn’t care less about her, her dreams, her safety, her innocence, and any form of progress she could make in her life, which is truly sad. She was a victim of the “untouchables” produced by a system of corruption that feeds people the idea that power and strength can be used to prey on innocent people, making them feel powerless, vulnerable, and helpless. Where simply finding someone you could talk to was likened to “falling in love.”

[Hafsat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adanna the foolish goat😭
Idk but I was already guessing the shit that would happen, there was no unexpected change or plot development in the book.
Now about this Adanna, she’s a very foolish woman, after Akanna and Chief’s abuse, she was foolish enough she would find love with the gardener and get away????

But honestly she went through shit😭
That Akanna is an animal, a beast!!!

And then she foolishly thought she was in love with the doctor 😭???
Isn’t that mental illness?
When she kissed him I went through second hand embarrassment 😭
And she foolishly thought she could escape with Naeto after Akanna saw them together? Something is loose in her head.

And then the murder fiasco 🤣
At some point I suspected everyone, even Daluchi😭.

And then s he was foolish enough to forgive Akanna!!!! A whole Akanna!!!
Very foolish woman!
If not for how Naeto suffered to be with her, I would’ve wished for her to burn alongside Akanna

[Rosemary Rabera · Rating 1 out of 5]

My First Ever Book Review – Because What Did I Just Read?

This book is utterly outrageous. I don’t usually write reviews, but this one? I had to. The amount of trauma dumping in these pages is mind-boggling. It felt like the author was on a mission to cram in as much suffering as humanly possible, like there was a trauma quota to fill.

The characters are painfully shallow. Adanna, the main girl, is basically pretty and clueless. The husband/chief? I couldn’t tell you a single defining thing about him. His son Akanna is a psychotic bully with no depth. And then there’s Anayo, the love interest, apparently. She “fell in love” with him after what... a conversation and a half?

Now to the worst part: the sexual assault scenes. They’re not just disturbing...they’re excessive to the point of being exploitative. Why did he rape her after the abortion? How did that contribute to the plot? That scene alone made me question the author’s intent. It felt unnecessary, gratuitous, and deeply unsettling.

I’m honestly mad I wasted two hours on this.
And no, I didn’t finish it. I’m not planning to either.

[Adii S.]

A heartbreaking tale of a girl trapped by obligation to family, desperate for someone or something, anyone or anything to save her from an existence more cruel than death.

I had to sort-of dissociate myself from this book while I was reading, to protect myself. I couldn’t allow myself be fully immersed in the fictional world as is my usual practice, and even at that, it was still so gut-wrenching reading all that Adanna endured as a young girl and as a woman. There seemed to be no respite. She endured so much.

As much as I want to tell myself “it’s just a book”, we all know there are countless women living in such terrible conditions. & even if it were only one woman, it would be one woman too many.

In an ideal world, every woman is free, whatever “free” means to her.

My heart goes out to every victim of abuse. This is one of those books that will stay with you.

[Uche Ezeudu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have seen villains before but Akanna is a discovery. Tufia!! 😫😫
From a first-person singular perspective, Adanna tells the story of the protagonist, Adanna who becomes a child bride at 16 after her family falls on hard times following the death of her father. In a desperate bid to save them, she accepts Chief Arinze’s marriage proposal, trading her freedom for financial security. What follows is over two decades of unimaginable suffering in his household.
The relentless sexual abuse and humiliation she is made to endure in the hands of her husband’s first son, Akanna whom I’d say is the devil himself will leave your jaw on the floor.
This book is beautifully written and utterly immersive. I was completely engrossed, unable to think of anything else until I reached the final page!
I saw a whole lot about how traumatizing this book is but I’m here to tell you that this author has written such an excellent story that it’ll be a huge crime for you not to read this book. I strongly and wholeheartedly recommend it!! 💯

[Mosope · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so heartbreaking but so good!

[Ugochukwu Ani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adanna. . .the eponymous title of the crime mystery/thriller from Bambooks bestselling author The Fertile Chick.

A couple of things did leap out at me with Adanna; first was the eponymous title. Second was the hook.

I dived into this novel, not knowing what to expect from the read.

The Fertile Chick’s thriller offering, offers up more than just a thriller or a crime mystery; it offers up so much more. From the beginning, the tension between the characters is incredibly acidic and porous, diffused by only about just one chapter of Adanna’s life wherein she had a semblance of a normal life, a crush, even hopes for a future involving books and a thrilling, fulfilling career.

However, from there, this story swiftly went from 1000 to 100 to zero in terms of horror; the horror of what any Nigerian who’s lived in that clime would aptly term the “Female Nigerian Experience”. And from there the story kept going down the more, if that is actually possible. Reading Adanna from The Fertile Chick is just like chancing upon a train wreck, with mangled bodies, blood oozing from destroyed orifices, soaking into metal and sand; flies buzzing everywhere and around everything, the stench of human suffering suffusing the air so much so that you want to retch violently—and yet, you cannot look away. Try hard as you might, do the best you can, but you cannot look away. That is the apt description of the events of this novel; this rollercoaster ride that will take you through the gamut of love, sheer terror, abuse—domestic, physical, emotional, sexual and psychological—and the desolation of the human spirit.

Some readers have described The Fertile Chick as having a fertile imagination, or rather, a wild imagination. I do so agree, but for whatever reason, I cannot help but wonder why one person would choose to invest so much in horror and suffering for the characters she created; Adanna.
Nothing more aptly captures the reality of the Nigerian Woman—not all, but that does not mean that we should not have this narrative and a discourse around the patriarchy structure firmly in place within Nigeria to subjugate women at all times—whose fortune is tied to a man in her life, be it her father, her brother, her spouse, or even a third-party abuser.

At some point during the reading, the reader is struck by the sheer magnitude of occurrences that women do go through, and at other points you cannot help but pause and tell yourself that no, no person literally can go through all that monumental horror from a young age and come out sane and unbroken. No way, you tell yourself.

The Fertile Chick’s writing is light-handed and easy to breeze through, so super easy to breeze through that the pages fly by like light paper careening across a windy landscape, but be that as it may, her writing is also incredibly dark and disturbing. Exceedingly disturbing, I must add. Do you want severe, incredibly improbable physical abuse? It is splattered across Adanna like gory gore, spread literally with a gleeful sense of malice and perhaps a wish to make you question your love for your humanity and that of those around you. Do you want severe, terrifying sexual abuse that will leave your mouth agape in horror? Ah, pick up Adanna and dig your teeth in; you are in for a ride. Do you want to read about the total and complete breaking of the human spirit? Adanna would be happy to take you on that ride as well.

At all times extreme, at many times shocking, at some times cringy, Adanna is equal parts highly thrilling and also highly disturbing, you take your pick. But one thing I do guarantee is this: pick up The Fertile Chick’s Adanna and dig in, and I can assure you that you will be hard pressed to put it down until you have read the last page. That is, unless you have a severe aversion and viscerally negative reaction to traumatizing fiction.

But be that as it may, Adanna spotlights a lot of issues that is wrong with our society; of the dysfunction in family dynamics, of the abuse that is usually swept under the carpet because it is perpetrated by men against women.

Adanna is equal parts horrifying and also quite a teacher and a preacher: against “child” marriage, against certain vices particular to the Nigerian society.

[Temi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book unfortunately didn’t work for me. There were lots of trauma and while empathizing with the main character, it just missed the mark. It felt like the author had so many ideas and they weren’t fully developed.
It also seemed quite unbelievable at one point with everything that was going on…..also the plot twist at the end wasn’t even plotting because that was very predictable. The end was deeply unsatisfying…

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adanna's story is harrowing, raw and unforgettable - my heart broke for her over and over again. If your heart can take it, I highly recommend diving in. The author is such a gifted storyteller - I couldn't put it down.

[Nkemakonam ENEBELI · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know Adesuwa is a good author, but with this book she proved herself to be a very good one. She toyed with my emotions so much that at a point I dropped my phone to cry really ugly tears. I felt anxious, I cried, I felt worried, and sometimes I wanted to hit most of the characters including Adanna.

This story is the saddest one I have read in recent times, but I am glad Adesuwa tried to give Adanna a happy ending

[adanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart bled for Adanna. She had to be married off at such a young age, endured series of abuse from her husband and his son and was disgraced publicly countless times by them. My only wish while reading this book was that Adanna should have a happy ending, and that she did.

[bookish eni-olak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adana’s story is so tragic that I wished multiple times I could enter into the book and hurt some characters 😩😩😩😩. I was so happy with the ending of the book, glad the evil people met their Waterloo and the good ones found their happily ever after.

[Ngozi Eluemunor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping tale of love, betrayal, tragedy and heroism. It is a non-stop start to finish succession of events that will enthrall you and leave you unable to put the book down until the end. The use and translation of the Igbo language was both magical and ingenious. A must read.

[Takyiwaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea the book was this long. I enjoyed it, I think it should have been a two part series.

Adesuwa is a greater writer.

[Kelecia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly, I should have known how much of a dumpster fire shitty trauma soup this was going to be from the synopsis. I wasn’t expecting spectacular nuanced writing or anything like that, just something mildly entertaining enough to keep me reading out of a miniscule amount of interest and to kickstart my reading year, but even that was too to ask much it seems. I finished reading this book purely out of hate, just so I could see if my conclusions were valid and boy were they validated 1 million times over.
Everything up to her move to the house was tragic but after that we deep-dived straight into hell, an unnecessary hell in my opinion. The scene where Akanna raped Adanna was harrowing but even more so was the reaction of everyone else to it, a young girl getting raped repeatedly and no one, not even her husband, the rapist’s father doing anything about it was foolishness.
Additionally, the dynamic between chief and Akanna is STUPID, no father has that much fear towards his son, nor should he when he is in total financial control. The scenes of him physically abusing his father in front of the entire household staff even beating him with a belt….were far-fetched and unrealistic.
Another major problem I had with this book was the poor way in which Adanna’s character was written, the writer never truly fully explores the way how all that trauma from the frequent rapes and abuse changed Adanna, it felt like all of that successive trauma happened to this 16 year old girl until she was a 36 year old woman and that at the end of it she was only mildly affected which is impossible since between a rock and a hard place is too euphemistic to describe this poor girl’s life and yet I don’t think I got the full story of how she came to ‘make peace’ with all that happened to her which is why all that trauma was UNECESSARY. I wanted more on how that torture affected her psychologically and physically, yet I felt all that necessary description was left out.
Another thing I have a problem with this book is the use of sexual relationships of Chief with both mother and daughter, twice. It’s salacious, it’s revolting, nasty and again pointless. Chief is portrayed as a philandering old man who treats women like playthings, we get it, but why did we need a revelation that he was sleeping with his own daughter?
Another point that irked me when reading this book was Adanna’s puppy love with Anayo, it’s understandable yet still annoying. We get that a 16 year old girl would feel very deeply about an interaction like that which she had with Anayo, but to say it was love annoyed me tbh even though I don’t judge Adanna too harshly for that because again….she’s 16, but the problem is, I felt like she was 16 all the way through her 30s in every relationship and some decisions she made like why did she need to go to the club with a man she just met and wasn’t truly interested in? Why did she need to continue sleeping with Akanna for money? Another issue for me was Adanna’s descriptions of the women Chief brought to the house. It was very off-putting for me. I didn’t like the way she described women like Chiasoka as ugly, and while this may have been due to the influence of Uzochi, it was another part of what made this story unenjoyable for me.
Another MAJOR issue I had with this novel was the lack of nuance in Akanna’s character, seems like he’s just the devil incarnate which made it hard to view the story seriously and takes away the gravity a bit. I’m not saying to humanize him to make me like him, I’ll forever hat that cabrón, but it felt really lazy to just have him be an all-round evil. He felt like a cartoonishly evil villain, not like a real person. It’s even worse when as I pointed out I don’t see how all those experiences made her grow. So Akanna’s and Chief’s sole purpose is to torment Adanna whose purpose of being tormented is……just for the sake of it?
And the biggest WTF moment of all, after all those years of rape, abuse and victimization, she’s gonna say she forgives Akanna? Has the world suddenly been upended where we’re now forgiving rapists? Where we are comfortable enough to sit and drink with our rapist chatting like old friends? Instead of that bullshit, I needed Adanna to have a crazy bitch moment, just straight up crazy, I’m talking carve out Akanna’s heart with a bread knife and eat it crazy but no, instead we get that scene. That moment I actually felt pure unbridled RAGE while reading because the way it was written made it seem like again something that just happened and that Adanna got over….yet no actual description of how she got over it, more tell than show. This is the problem I had with the last chapter, after that incident where Akanna nearly killed her and Naeto 3 years pass and everybody is all happy go lucky…….where’s the detailed description of her mental state? Where’s the reflection of her 20 years of hell and near-death experience? Nothing is treated with the severity it deserves and that is my problem with this novel as it felt like the author was just trying to torture this character as much as humanly possible and just have her bouncing back from these hits having been barely changed by the numerous downright horror-filled experiences she suffered which spoiler alert ISN’T FUCKING POSSIBLE. It felt like her suffering had no purpose.
Also, from the synopsis, it seems like it would surround the relationship he had with his children more and explain why they all had motives to kill him…. it didn’t. ¾ of the book focused on Adanna being in stasis, just having to endure terrible things that didn’t serve a purpose character-development wise and then the other ¼ was just adding shock factor and then the last couple chapter we just tied a cute little bow around a steaming pile of shit. And as much as Adanna deserved a happy ending, the writer half-assed it. 33 chapters of suffering, a 3 year time skip and then 1 single chapter of calm…..foolishness.
So, here endeth my ramble on why reading Adanna is a grand waste of time.

[Mwongeli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a Shelf Love 📚 selection.

The story is narrated in first person by Adanna, our protagonist, who, due to poverty is married off to a much older wealthy man and ends up going through some very terrible things. And I mean terrible 😬 While I understand that the author has a flair for the dramatic, this felt like trauma porn.

That said, the book was so well written that before I knew it, I had read the 600 pages in no time. Also, the main plot twist was done so well.... 10/10 on that one. Giving credit where it is due, the author is very talented.

I didn't like the protagonist because she thought her only value was in her beauty, yet she was academically gifted. I also didn't like how she didn't make much of an effort to save herself and was waiting for a man to save her 🤢🤢

Adanna is lucky that this was fiction so we got a happy ending at literally the last few pages of the book. But I'll take it!

Last thought.....I hope that the things that happened in this book don't happen in real life 🙏🏾

[Yung Yagami · Rating 4 out of 5]

An emotional and thought-provoking story about resilience and personal growth. Nwokedi’s prose is evocative and deeply impactful.

[Nimitein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, there were multiple places in this book that brought me to tears.

[mel j]

Sucks

[Bhavika · Rating 4 out of 5]

An emotional and thought-provoking story about resilience and personal growth. Nwokedi’s prose is evocative and deeply impactful.

[Raye · Rating 4 out of 5]

* This reader was too stunned to speak*

[Levy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just wow. I need time to recover 💀

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (ps: if anyone deserves the world, it’s Adanna)

[Adhiambo Oyugi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still infuriated . This book made me mad

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️
Horrific tale (scarier than The Shining actually), yet I couldn’t look away

[Maniki_021 · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW: incest, rape, death, murder, grief, resentment, abortion basically every trigger you can think of is here.

Adesuwa O’man Nwokedi can definitely write. My issue with the book is that it’s
unnecessarily long with way too many twists and turns. That said, it’s a page-turner and extremely engaging.

I found myself frustrated with Adanna so many times because of her childishness and how easily she fell for every man she met but later I understood it was the trauma, the lack of validation, that shaped her.

Her father? A coward who died too soon, and I hated him for that.

I always knew Anayo was a good man and would come back to apologize.

Akanna and Uzochi got exactly what they deserved.

Chief, on the other hand, died far too easily. I wanted him to suffer. That man was twisted a coward with a Jezebel spirit. Disgusting.

Imagine: your mother despises the love of your life who dies, you then sleep with your maid while her sick husband is literally watching, impregnate her, and then sexually abuse your own daughter? Your jealous son sexually abuses your wife and you look away and accuse her of infidelity while you also have your way with her. Sick and beyond twisted.

At least Naeto and Adanna got their happy ending.

And I was right about Uzochi all along a witch through and through. The rollercoaster of this book is insane. The wildest part? Finding out she killed Chief.


May Chief never rest in peace.