Thank you Harper Collins and NetGalley for this digital early read. The premise of this book, family drama, secrets, etc was very appealing to me. However, I thought Glory was very immature in seeming to throw tantrums when she didn’t get what she wanted. Her relationship with Julian seemed very juvenile. I had a difficult time relating to any of the characters and the story was predictable. I found myself skimming many parts of the book just to get through it.

Hope and Glory is an impressive debut novel about Glory, a young woman who returns from the US to London after her father’s sudden death. Glory comes from a Nigerian immigrant family, a family so private that even though Glory used to have a twin, her name - Hope - hasn’t been spoken in years. Now, as Glory returns to her childhood home, she has to face not only her own life falling apart, not only everything that happened while she was away, but also the secrets her family has kept for decades.

This novel is a fascinating and character-driven story about starting over, loss, family, and making difficult choices. Despite the fact that I come from a very different background than Glory, a lot of her struggles felt very relatable to me, especially those connected with work and wanting to please your parents. Glory is a very flawed character - she’s impulsive and a bit selfish - but that is what made me care and root for her. I loved the subplot with Glory’s brother, Victor, who was sentenced to prison and whose trial Glory refused to follow. It was a great commentary on the prison system and racism, and I appreciated how Glory and Victor’s relationship grew. I do wish that the book was longer or that it was a series because by the end I didn’t feel satisfied with the conclusion - I wanted to learn more about some characters and there were some questions that went unanswered.

TLDR: Hope and Glory is an emotional story about the importance of family, understanding our parents and their choices, and figuring out how to become our own, independent person.

Glory Akindele returns to London from her seemingly glamorous life in LA to mourn the sudden death of her father, only to find her previously close family has fallen apart in her absence. Her brother, Victor, is in jail. Her older sister, Faith, appears to have lost her independence and ambition. Worst of all, their mother, Celeste, is headed toward a breakdown after the death of her husband and the shame of her son’s incarceration.

Rather than returning to America, Glory decides to stay and try to bring them all together again. And, a chance reunion with a man she’d known in her teens—the perceptive but elusive Julian—gives her the courage to start questioning why her respectable but obsessively private Nigerian immigrant family is the way it is.

I found this to have a slow start and hard to get into. I can deal with that from time to time depending on how slow the beginning is. But when I get almost midway through the book I start questioning when does the story actually start.

The story ended up being slightly good. The emotions, faith and insecurities of the characters are relatable. With families everything isn’t straight black and white With that, we either deal with it and walk away. Although if I was Glory in this case, I would’ve walked away because nothing seemed 100% repaired.

However, I didn’t see much growth within the characters. I believe with the amount of bickering and going in circles it stopped them from reconnecting as a family and focusing on recreating a bond. Or, coming together to find a way to live a new life without their husband/father. Then there was the ending. While the book did provide some closure on Glory’s sister Hope, there’s a lot of questions still about Victor’s fate and does nothing with it.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow and Custom House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Glory is a twenty-something Londoner returning home, after years of trying establish herself in America, to attend her father's funeral. She expects this reunion will be awkward especially since chose not to come home for her beloved baby brother's criminal trial. But Glory's Yoruba Nigerian family is so much more fractured than she could have imagined she sees her mother is a religious hoarder, her sister as suburban Stepford wife and when she learns a shocking family secret wonders if she ever knew her doting father. As Glory navigates her new reality, she builds new relationships, pieces back togther fractured ones, all the while learning who she is in the process.

I adored this book, Glory was just loveable flake whom you could not hate no matter how much she enraged you because as the reader you always knew her heart was ultimately in the right place. Jendella Benson is a strong storyteller who utilizes simple prose, her writing shines in the book's awkward moments like when Glory tries to reconnect with her brother. Benson keep the reader engaged not only with family drama but with a complicated budding romance and a nefarious family secret. Well done!!!

Hope and Glory follows Glory Akindele, a woman who leaves her job in Los Angeles to return home to London for her father’s funeral. When she arrives at home, she finds herself suddenly having to deal with the problems her British-Nigerian family have been facing in her absence. Her mother Celeste’s mental health appears to be getting worse, her brother Victor is in jail, and she thinks her sister Faith’s husband is having an affair. Glory decides to remain in London to help her family find some stability, but instead she discovers a secret that will change her life and bring even more chaos into the lives of her family members.

I’ll start with the good:

Glory’s relationships with Faith and Victor felt like realistic portrayals of siblings. Wanting to follow their relationships as siblings made it easy to care about what was happening in their family. The conversations Glory had with Victor were my favorite parts of the book, and I think Victor was my favorite character. Everyone else in the book was a disaster mentally, and he always seemed like the voice of reason they desperately needed.
This book had gorgeous descriptions of food and the process of cooking. I didn’t even know that I cared about that until I read this book. I googled every Nigerian dish that was mentioned because Jendella Benson made them all sound delicious.
I liked that it included mentions of a man’s experience with self harm, especially a black man with a tough exterior.


Now let’s talk about what I didn’t like:

Glory’s relationship with Julian was my least favorite part. It felt pointless, and so disconnected from every other part of the story. They spent the entire book fighting over nothing. They were childish and annoying to read about.
I thought the book was just slightly longer than it needed to be.
Sometimes it didn’t really feel like a story that flowed together very well, and the dialogue sometimes felt unnatural. There were parts where the entire thing just felt choppy. It wasn’t so bad that I wasn’t able to enjoy the main story, but it was definitely noticeable.

I think that this book was entertaining enough. I’d recommend it if the plot sounds interesting to you, but I don’t think it’s an absolute must read.

As someone who doesn't typically read contemporary novels, I was slow to get really into this family drama, but once the hook reveled itself I couldn't put it down. Families can be so messy and emotionally draining and this story really captures how deeply these things can effect a person -- even if they've run away from them. This novel asks the reader to think about what makes a home or a family in a way that will stick with me for a long time.

After many years of being away, Glory returned home to Britain to be with her Nigerian family just in time to attend her father's funeral. That's when her family takes center stage.

There is a lot of drama with every character which at times feels unsettling. Her mother, Celeste, feels the pain of her husband who is now gone and the frustration of her daughter that has been away too long. Her sister, Faith, is upset that she has been the only one to keep peace in the family. Her brother, Victor, is in prison. She wasn't there for the trial and hasn't called him since. Her boyfriend, Julian, is someone she likes -- at times. Yet, there is one childhood friend, Lara, who seems to have it together. All the characters could easily be visualized.

I would understand why she had moved to LA with a boisterous family. Glory's mother said all these years that her sister was dead. Yet, when she returned to the family home, she found clues to make her think otherwise. She wanted her twin to be alive and was willing to do everything in her power to find the sister she longed for. The author used some words to give it a feel of realism from Nigeria. It was believable yet predictable.

My thanks for allowing me to read this advanced copy with the expected release date of April 19, 2022.

Hope and Glory just drove me bonkers. I hope it's intended to be a character study, because while there's a little bit of a plot, there's only a little bit. I can't say that the characters do much for me either - going around in circles without much growth. Glory, the protagonist, returns to London from LA after her father dies and then proceeds to dig her heels in on finding out what happened to her twin sister. Whom nobody in her family talks about. Ever. And they don't want Glory looking into it. Why? Her mom has mental health issues, her brother is in jail, her sister (the one that didn't disappear) has an emotionally distant husband who can act like a jerk and Glory is a hot mess that tends to make everything worse instead of better. To top it all off she gets involved with someone she reconnects with at her father's service and they proceed to have a random and toxic relationship. None of these people seem to want to be around each other, and a large majority of the book is different iterations of them bickering with each other with the random other events thrown in to seemingly fill space, like a wedding, Glory rekindling a relationship with her old friend Lara (who is quite possibly the most level-headed person in this book) and Glory resuming a waitress job for a catering company because she has no idea what to do with her life. And while the book provides some closure on Glory's sister Hope, it opens a can of worms on her brother Victor's situation and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with it. This could have been an inspiring book about reconnecting with family but it just felt like an endless, exhausting mess to me. A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thanks to the Book Club Girl Early Read program for access to this wonderful debut novel by Jendella Benson. I was hooked from the beginning and quickly devoured this novel!

Glory returns home to London from LA for her father's funeral to deal with her mother's hysteria, her brother, Julian's unjust incarceration, her older sister, Faith's family life and the mystery of her dead twin sister, Hope. Family dynamics keep the story moving and interesting.

It was a very enjoyable read and I look forward to more from Jendella Benson.

4 stars. The pace was just right and I love a family drama. The struggle was Glory because I kept getting frustrated with her. I agreed with everyone who called her out. However, I began to appreciate the skill involved in creating an "unlikable" protagonist while keeping the reader into the story. And it made me question if Glory was unlikable or just young. This book was a journey

Hope and Glory is a novel about family, and familial indentities, and the secrets we keep from each other in a family.

Glory is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants in Great Britain, who has been living in LA, when she receives news her father has died. She drops everything, quite her job, and returns home to find a family in disarray, with her older sister struggling to hold it all together. At the funeral for her father, Glory is reminded of events from her childhood and goes digging in the past, upsetting nearly everyone around her in the process.

As she works through her discovery, she has to re-evaluate what she knew about her parents and her own childhood and how she viewed her parents. At times I wished the book would delve more into her mother's character, or even her sister and brother. That said the development and growth of Glory through the events of the novel was satisfying. The ending gives the reader hope for the future of the family, while still neatly concluding multiple storylines, albeit a bit quickly.

I think this would be interesting to readers who enjoy books that explore family dynamics and how they effect our lives.

Thank you to Book Club Girl, William Morrow and Custom House, and NetGalley for the electronic ARC copy of this novel for review.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced readers copy!

I did find this one a little slow to get into and it didn't really pick up for me until about 30% of the way in. I didn't really connect with any of the characters at first but they all grew on me in time.

Hope & Glory centers around a Nigerian family and a long kept secret. Once it's made known what the secret is I was very pulled in hoping that Glory would find peace with what she found out. And she did! While a bit messy and maybe a bit rushed, the ending gives the satisfaction that a family secret uncovered can have a positive outcome.

I did struggle with the relationship with the relationship with Glory and Julian. I almost felt there was no point to it- there could have been more time spent around the family relationships which is what this novel is truly about.

This is an interesting read set in London. Glory is a British-Nigerian woman who come home to London from LA for her father's funeral. While there, she deals with family drama and a budding romance. This book will appeal to younger readers, and learning more about the Nigerian immigrant experience is fascinating.

Love, Secrets, Redemption. This is a story of discovering yourself and finding your true home and the importance of family.

Mixed emotions abound as the prodigal daughter, Glory, returns home to England for the funeral of her father and learns there are secrets from her childhood that only her family has the key. They are a Nigerian-British family, bound by traditions conflicting with new. Her brother Victor is incarcerated, her mother is suffering and unbalanced, her older sister Faith is struggling in her marriage and they all are resentful for the many years of absence and neglect by Glory. But Glory wonders about Hope. Her twin. Thought to have died when she was a child, Glory wrestles with the guilt of never mourning her and having no memories. No one will tell her anything. Meeting a childhood friend, it gives her the courage to start asking questions that create turmoil in the family.

Hope is aptly named as that is what she represents to this family. A new beginning that will bring this family home again, together. The characters are believable and relatable, showing that there is more to a person than what is portrayed on their social media platform. Their names speak of their destinies and place in the family. Their struggles and joys can be embraced by the reader as you experience the ups and downs in this story. Easily drawn in, this story moves flawlessly throughout their lives to the very end. I loved this book.

Many thanks to #netgalley #hopeandglory #jendellabenson #harpercollins for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is the story of a Nigerian immigrant family, reunited by the death of the father. Glory returns home for the funeral of her father, but she returns to multiple issues. Her mother is involved with a shady religious group, her sister has many problems.

Returning to Los Angeles creates more issues.

This is a very interesting book, presenting a portrait of a family and culture that is quite fascinating.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

A captivating debut by a British-Nigerian author who puts the focus on an emotionally struggling family who comes together for the funeral of their father. It highlights how easily family's can fracture under the weight of misunderstandings and lack of communication. A long buried secret unites them in a search for the truth. The characters were so lifelike and were easy to relate to while their struggles were universal.
Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC>
5*

I absolutely loved the premise of this story! I also appreciated reading about the Black experience in London and the incorporation of Nigerian culture/ religion and Yoruba language. The plot was well paced and each character was well developed. My only criticism would be at the end during the reunion dinner; there was mention of Victor scheduling his phone call during Hope and Joan’s arrival but he never called. Even if we didn’t learn the result of his joint enterprise appeal, he was missed at a very crucial part of the story. Overall this was so well written and I cried on multiple parts!

I will prepare a more official review for Amazon Goodreads and Barnes and Nobel and also feature this book with a review on the Instagram page @balancedbookshelf closer to the publication date. I have previously posted this book as being apart of my NetGalley library and current read through Instagram Stories and look forward to promoting this story more!

Thank you!

Hope and Glory held my attention as it introduced a variety of paths for the story to take. Glory, a British-Nigerian young woman, returns to London upon her father's death. She had been living abroad in LA, but is ready to be back home despite all the uncertainty that it brings. The story includes a lot of family drama, such as an incarcerated younger brother and a discovery about Glory's twin sister that turns everything on its head, and also contains a budding romance and the ennui of a twenty-something coming home to the unknown.

Jendella Benson explores each narrative path she introduces, but in the end it felt a little overambitious in that there were too many to address. It was impossible to resolve each and every one, and some of them were very abrupt. In a way, it seemed like there could be more coming. Perhaps Benson will give us a sequel? If so, I would definitely pick it up!

Hope and Glory is, in every respect, a family drama. It opens with Glory Akindele returning to London after leaving her life in America to order to mourn the death of her father and to help her family through this difficult time. Unbeknownst to Glory, the family she left when she moved to America is not the same family she returns to. Glory, herself, is at a cross roads and decides to stay in London, closer to her family, not running away for once. While she begins to uncover who she is, she also begins to uncover some family secrets that can either break the family further or set them free.

There is just something so alluring and relatable about a main character who is perfectly imperfect - and believe me, Glory is that and more. In many respects she is all of us - so adamant about making it on her own and prove herself. Desperate to avoid truths in order to remain in the comfortable familiarity that she grew up in. I personally love messy family dynamics and tend to gravitate to books that include them especially involving immigrant families. There is such a dichotomy between the familial conflicts and external struggles faced as immigrants. Hope and Glory depicts so many real struggles so accurately and makes the reader understand the complexity behind every struggle - the grey rather than just the black and white. Hope and Glory is truly a testament to the adage that family is forever, you may not always like your family, but you will always love them.

@archived_reads