Her older brother Dean, who’s a former Briar hockey star, comes to her rescue his buddies, who are still on the hockey team, need a fourth roommate for their townhouse. But as she’s about to move into Briar’s Kappa Beta Nu house, she’s asked to leave by the sisters, who don’t want her besmirching their reputation. Fortunately, her father has connections, so she’s now enrolled in Briar University, a prestigious institution about an hour outside Boston. Twenty-one-year-old Summer Heyward-Di Laurentis is expelled from Brown University in the middle of her junior year because she was responsible for a fire at the Kappa Beta Nu sorority house. In this opener to Kennedy’s ( Hot & Bothered, 2017, etc.) Briar U romance series, two likable students keep getting their signals crossed. (“One giant trash can,” he thinks.) Not every character gets his or her due (a romantic subplot involving a muckraking journalist feels unfinished), but the novel is marked by lively storytelling throughout.Ī well-turned tribute to the freedom and frustrations of a diverse city. (“Lagos would kill you if you wasted time on yesterday,” she writes.) Simplified statements are for the smug BBC reporter parachuting in to cover Sandayo’s story.

She avoids grand defining statements about Lagos, smartly letting the predicaments of each character show how the city’s lawlessness runs parallel to its bustle. Onuzo’s novel is at once a Robin Hood tale and a cross section of Nigerian society, and though she takes on a lot in terms of both themes and characters, she shepherds it along smoothly. (Chike’s brief stint directing traffic is at once comic and scarifying.) Fineboy stumbles across what seems to be an abandoned furnished apartment, but they’re actually squatting in the home of Sandayo, a former education secretary who’s stolen funds in hopes the money will go directly to schools instead of being squandered by bureaucrats. Together they travel to Lagos, which is hard on newcomers with limited means: The only shelter they can afford is in a camp town under a bridge, and the quintet can only piece together side hustles. But Yemi, one of the privates under his command, wants out, too together, they soon meet Fineboy, another deserter then Isoken, a young woman who’ll be raped if left with her family then Oma, who's escaping her abusive husband. When Chike decides to desert the Nigerian army, unable to abide its violence against innocent citizens, he plans to travel light.

A ragtag group of refugees from war, corruption, and domestic violence attempts to resettle in Nigeria’s chaotic capital in Onuzo’s second novel ( The Spider King’s Daughter, 2012).

Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo