The Lagos Wife

December 1, 2022

One of the Nigerwives--foreign women married to rich Nigerian men--Nicole Oruwari left drizzly London behind to lead a life of luxury in Lagos. When she disappears, her estranged auntie Claudine boards a plane for Lagos and starts investigating, discovering things about Nicole that an aunt would never want to know about a niece. From London-born, Brooklyn-based debuter Walters.

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May 15, 2023
A British woman goes missing in Nigeria in this solid thriller. Nicole Oruwari has lived in Lagos, Nigeria, for seven years, but she's never really felt quite at home. The Black British woman moved to the city with her husband, Tonye, where they planned to raise their two sons in the palatial home of Tonye's family. Nicole is a member of the Nigerwives, a group of foreign women in the city married to Nigerian men, and most of her social life revolves around the organization's parties, seminars, and fundraisers. When one of her friends from the group suddenly leaves the country, Nicole withdraws and starts showing signs of depression: "The days went quickly and then not quickly enough....The hours passed in a haze. It didn't seem to matter whether she stayed in bed or not." Her relationship with Tonye begins to sour after she discovers bondage gear in his suitcase and a hotel receipt in his blazer; he gaslights her, and she eventually starts seeing a man named Elias--then she disappears after a boat trip. Enter Nicole's estranged Auntie Claudine, a Londoner who flies to Lagos determined to track her niece down. She finds Tonye, his family, and the police unhelpful and suspicious, and Nicole's friends fail to ease her mind with pronouncements like "All I'll say is people in Lagos are not what you think. Everyone is hiding behind a fa�ade that matters more than the truth. We play our roles too well." But every blind alley and dodged question make her more determined to find out what happened to her niece. Walters is gifted at building suspense, and the novel's ending is legitimately surprising. Her prose is fine, but her dialogue--sometimes funny--is the novel's real treat. This is a more than competent thriller; it's not earth-shattering, but it doesn't need to be. It's a satisfying thriller that works on its own terms. A surprising ending and well-done dialogue make this a perfectly good way to spend a night or two.

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May 5, 2023

DEBUT The dichotomy between the beauty and rot of modern Lagos is exposed from page one of Walters's first novel, the delicious tension building throughout this penetrating novel of family secrets and cultural dissonance. Nicole, of Jamaican descent, meets her Nigerian husband Tonye while at university in the UK. The birth of two sons in quick succession dampen her career ambitions, and Tonye's proposal to relocate to his family's Italianate compound in Lagos offers a respite from the exhaustion of motherhood. But the attentive Tonye whom Nicole married in London morphs into a withholding man who simmers under the thumb of his domineering father. By the time Nicole physically disappears, she had been psychologically absent from her British family for years, but that does not prevent her aunt Claudine, who raised Nicole after her mother's death, from getting on the next plane. Claudine's fearless questioning of Tonye's family, the bought-and-paid-for police, and the women who form the support group Nigerwives reveals that the idyllic life Nicole shared on social media had little basis in reality. VERDICT British poet and playwright Walters, once a Nigerwife herself, paints a vivid picture of the financial and social constraints that European women face assimilating into Nigerian familial structure. Already optioned for HBO, this cultural critique couched in a mystery is a sure winner.--Sally Bissell

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.