Title: Pride and Joy
Author: Louisa Onomé
Genre: Contemporary
Rating: 3.50
Pub Date: March 12, 2024

I received a complimentary eARC from HarperCollins Canada via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. #Gifted

T H R E E • W O R D S

Dramatic • Dry • Lighthearted

📖 S Y N O P S I S

Joy Okafor is overwhelmed. Recently divorced, a life coach whose phone won’t stop ringing, and ever the dutiful Nigerian daughter, Joy has planned every aspect of her mother’s seventieth birthday weekend on her own.

As the Okafors slowly begin to arrive, Mama Mary goes to take a nap. But when the grandkids go to wake her, they find that she isn’t sleeping after all. Refusing to believe that her sister is gone-gone, Auntie Nancy declares that she has had a premonition that Mama Mary will rise again like Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday.

Desperate to believe that they’re about to witness a miracle, the family overhauls their birthday plans to welcome the Nigerian Canadian community, effectively spreading the word that Mama Mary is coming back. But skeptical Joy is struggling with the loss of her mother and not allowing herself to mourn just yet while going through the motions of planning a funeral that her aunt refuses to allow.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I was initially drawn to Pride and Joy based on the cover alone - the cow and the florals. The premise intrigued me, as did the fact it was written by a Canadian author, to add it to my list of new releases for 2024.

Through multiple POVs, the plot follows three generations of a Nigerian Canadian family as they navigate the untimely and unexplainable death of their matriarch. The various perspectives allows for fully fleshed out characters, getting to know the family intimately, and an deeper understanding of their family dynamic. I greatly appreciated the variety in reactions and how their grief manifests differently depending on a number of factors.

While the bones of the story and the characters are solid, somehow it inconsistently held my attention. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what was missing. Additionally, it doesn't surprise me Louisa Onomé primarily writes books geared towards teens, as I did find it reads juvenile at times and is filled with a lot of drama.

With a touch of humor, Pride and Joy explores familial roles and bonds, traditional and contemporary societal and cultural expectations, and what it means to truly lose someone. It is a journey in forgiveness and healing and learning to accept the things we cannot control. I will most definitely be keeping my eye on Louisa Onomé's writing career from this point forward.

📚 R E A D • I F • Y O U • L I K E
• imperfect families
• Black Cake

⚠️ CW: death, death of parent, grief, sibling death, toxic relationship, religious bigotry, overdose, homophobia, lesbophobia, alcohol

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"We are not ourselves. No one can be in the face of grief. Nothing hurts like death."

I loved this book. It had the perfect beats of emotion for me. The complicated characters and family were fun, and frustrating, and felt very real. The characters were so rich! Joy, the counselor with poor boundaries felt like a lot of people I know. She could have been too much, to rigid, to controlling, but the author gives us what we need to empathize with her and see her story for what it was. Aunty Nancy started for me as an intolerable religious zealot, but by the end I just felt sympathy for her loss, and the wild way grief manifested for her. Many other characters had similar complexities and I loved every minute of the mad weekend they all spent together. The author knows how to illicit true feelings of grief and sorrow, while balancing it with absurd humour of death and families. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes books about families and how imperfect we all are.

This was an ok read for me. Some sections held my attention, others I skimmed through. I liked the characters & the story idea, but found some of the dialogue a little forced. I think this would have made a wonderful short story, was a bit long for a novel.