Another excellent book from Adichie! Told from the perspectives of four women, it covers their lives, their loves, their families, their hopes, their disappointments, their dreams.

Four single Nigerian women--connected to one another. Chiamaka [Chia] , a travel writer [of a different sort]--living in the US. Zikora, Chiamaka's best friend, a lawyer. Omelogor, Chiamaka's cousin, a banker. Kadiatou [Kadi, the only non-privileged woman], who immigrates to the US to become Chiamaka's housekeeper. Kadi is raped by a powerful man in a hotel where she has a second job as a cleaner; this part of the narrative ultimately involves the other women and the Author's Note is a must read.

The books are chapters in each woman's voice but they are interwoven as the stories overlap and flow into the other sections.

Friendships--mostly between the women, but some with men. Failed relationships [with men] abound. Hopes and dreams and regrets. The coronavirus--when will it come to Nigeria? How will the country [be able to] handle it? What will it mean? How does it affect the protaganists in Nigeria and the US? And, with Chia, one gets the perspective of how a Nigerian views America/American culture.

I quite enjoyed this book but found it uneven, Some parts I sped through, others were more of a slog.

I love a book that's well written and offers a glimpse into another culture; this fits the bill. There is much on the Nigerian upper class which I found quite revealing. My favorite part--Omelgor's work in the Nigerian bank--so vivid!

The writing and many descriptions--images and understanding/s jumped off the pages. Prose that struck me. To wit:
"suburban silence"
"mind furred in gloom"
"...the calibrated charm of a person who can turn fully nasty in a heartbeat"
"we inherit our parents' scars more often than we know"
"Some surfaces I prefer to leave alone because I fear what I will find underneath."
"his laughter was a rain of darts aimed at his brother"

I LOVED Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun--one of my favorites--read if you haven't!

And: NB: a Glossary would have been extremely helpful--perhaps when released as a paperback!

An Amazing journey through the lives of four women and is told through each women perspective and intertwine into one emotional story. We have Chia that’s a travel writer looking for love, Zikora a lawyer with hopes of a family, Omelogor a banker that has done some shady/illegal business, and Kadiotou a housekeeper that has come to America to be with someone she loves and to give her daughter a better life.

This book will not disappoint, it is an emotional roller coaster and will take you around the world.

This is a brilliant story of four strong, brave women. Their combined experiences
show their true courage and grift, their refusal to fail, their refusal to accept the
world in which they were born. I was immediately pulled completely into this
booked, slowing my reading as I was so engrossed in concomitant thoughts
I was forgetting to turn the page. Reading this brilliant, well crafted story
I was reminded about the other books I have read by this gifted Author and
I believe it’s a true privilege to become a part of the world as others see and
experience life. We are reminded that we really are very much the same.
Please do not miss out on this book.
My thanks to Alfred a Knopf Inc via NetGalley for the download copy’
of this book for review purposes.

This book did not keep me as engaged as I expected based on Adichie’s other books, but I enjoyed learning about the characters’ lives and thought there were a lot of interesting plot points. I was not the biggest fan of the switching perspectives, especially given the long chapters - it felt like 4 different books in a way. Also, COVID is not nearly as important to the plot as it seems from the summary - COVID doesn’t happen until the end of the book. But overall, a good novel and I am glad to get the opportunity to read it.

The story is of four women and how it weaves their relationships into each other. The themes are love, loss, heartache, motherhood and loneliness and how their culture can define them. The story unfolds in the early beginnings of the pandemic but Covid is not a central part of the story.

Chia is the travel writer who binds everyone together. During her lockdown from Covid,she examines her life and what she thought and dreamed it would have been. Omelogor is her cousin who is a high profile banker in Nigeria.
Zikora is Chia’s friend who is a lawyer and single mother. Kadiatou is Chia’s Guinean immigrant housekeeper who has a tragic event happen to her. All the women come together to help Kadiatou.

Adichie does a wonderful job with the women and their culture and stories. My favorite was Kadiatou and Chia.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the arc.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote this perfectly and had that element that I was looking for and enjoyed from this type of book. The overall feel of this story worked with the romance genre. I was hooked from the first page and enjoyed getting to read this and am excited for more.

Masterful. This book deserves every bit of hype it will get. It’s Chimamanda at her best; writing about the nuance of relationships (both romantic and familial—especially mothers/daughters), holding a mirror to American and West African cultures in light of each other, and immersing you in multiple perspectives that weave beautifully into one story line.

Thanks to Knopf for the ARC.

I’d also add a potential SA trigger warning if that applies to you. But, as evidenced in the author’s note, her intentionality in telling that part of the story as a redignifying act was powerful and not in vain

I really enjoyed this novel. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the best story tellers of our time. The stories of Chia, Zikora, Omelogor, and Kadiatou are gripping and insightful. Expirations of gender, class, race, nationality and culture are all intersecting. This book failed suffered a from being about 100 pages too long. The story of Omelogor did not feel as connected and necessary as the other points of view. I think a story with just Omelogor would be beautiful but in the context of this novel, her story dragged out the book. I
This a great novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the story of four unmarried African women with different backgrounds and economic means. Each character is searching for love and fulfillment but never achieves this, either due to poor choices in love partners, inexcusable actions by men, or the inability to accept that love is different than in one’s dreams. The women are trying to find happiness while also trying to understand their families and the culture that has influenced them. The interrelated stories are told from the point of view of each of the women. Three of the four are affluent and well educated. The fourth character is a poor immigrant from a small village and is the housekeeper of one of the other women. Her story is the most compelling and is inspired by a real crime committed against a hotel worker in New York City. I found the story of the housekeeper the most compelling and the story of Chia, an unfulfilled travel writer, the least compelling. Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC.

I have received a Pre-Publication copy of dream count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by net gallery for review all opinions written here are my own and I received compensation for this review.
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I enjoyed this story very much. Parts of it were so full of drama.they were almost hard to read because of the graphic detail, I don't necessarily recommend this book for just anyone. Based on that alone, there is quite a bit of it. At the same time I appreciated the fact that it was there pulling back the sheet of what is acceptable and exposing what is underneath. Also talking about something that we all shared in the pandemic of 2020 being what it was the time to reflect a time to wonder too much time to think
The only criticism that I would give this book is that I wish the chapters had been broken down a little bit more. It would have been easier to read or listen to with that small adaptation. Also it was sometimes difficult to follow which characters perspective was being shared at the moment
All in all, I'm glad I read it. It was something outside of my comfort zone

Content warnings: rape, domestic violence

Adichie returns to the publishing world 10 years later with Dream Count, stories of four connected African women and their complicated relationships to America, men, and violence. As always, Adichie does a wonderful job immersing the reader into the world of the novel and it’s a captivating read from the start.

My 2-star rating is entirely due to the lack of enjoyment I got from reading. For a novel supposedly about women, most of the book is spent on the men in their lives and the mistreatment the main characters suffer at their hands. Maybe worse, they all center these horrible men so as the reader you’re forced to live in their regrets- maybe one kind word and they wouldn’t have faced the abuse they did! What?! Adichie is clearly making a point with this but GOD it’s not actually fun to read!

One of the main characters is loosely based on Nasiffou Diallo, who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape. I didn’t realize this until the final Author’s Note and that put a lot of plot and character developments into perspective. If you liked A Little Life, this may be for you because this portrayal was punishing in the same way. Since Kadi is based on a real person her fate, her suffering is set. There’s no flexibility in creating a world Adichie can create her own themes and messages in, just the imagined real-life suffering of a portrayal of a real-life woman. Again, there’s a point to be made here but not one that was enjoyable or for me, even particularly moving to read.

Thank you, NetGalley for the eARC and especially for making such a hot release available for all reviewers!

Fairly predictable but an enjoyable read.. Well written, great characters and well told. hanks for the opportunity to read this and much luck on publication.

Oriented but not even mostly set during the pandemic, this tells the stories of four African women and their relationships. Dream Count refers to Chia’s partners, none of whom have successfully demonstrated life partner qualifications. Zikora embarks abruptly on single motherhood. Omelogor is something of a seer—her professional moving and shaking has given her the gift of seeing others’ faults, from ideological conformity to systemic injustice. And Kadiatou, whose arc is based on a real woman’s assault allegation against the head of the IMF in 2011, is the luckless example of all of these personal and systemic misfortunes.
Put like that, this should be a much more depressing book, but it’s not. The characters are warm, funny, self-aware, and generally supportive of each other. I enjoyed the interconnected storylines and characters’ perspectives on each other. Of course, the writing is great. And as always, refreshing to read a take on America that’s zoomed out more than usual.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie doesn't disappoint with her most recent novel! The writing and voices of the four main characters is superb. The 'glue' holding the four women together is Chiamaka - a Nigerian-American travel writer who dreams of romantic love that is all-encompassing and knowing. This beautiful dreamer brings together her best friend, Zikora, cousin, Omelogor, and housekeeper, Kadiatou, into a four-perspective, first-person narrative structure. All four are rediscovering themselves and their relationships in the midst of the pandemic. I personally loved how distinct each woman's voice is - I was incredibly impressed with the way Ngozi Adichie embodied these characters. The themes she's able to cover through these four characters are incredibly impressive: grief, American privilege, betrayal, the immigrant experience, both romantic and platonic love, feminism, sexual assault, political and financial corruption, power, motherhood, daughterhood, toxic masculinity, and more. I loved how Ngozi Adichie was able to shape such an incredibly complex and interconnected narrative that truly reflects the realities of the world we live in, and she does it while holding on to the messiness of people. These characters feel real. They're dynamic, they have blind spots, they change and grow, and they keep their discordant parts. Absolutely phenomenal storytelling and a book that I'll want to re-read and have in my home library when it is published!

title: Dream Count

author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

publisher: Knopf

publication date: March 4, 2025

pages: 416

peppers: 1 (on this scale)

warnings: none

summary: The book follows four women in their quests to find love, have families, and figure out what makes them happy.

tropes: Since this book isn't a romance, it isn't trope-heavy.

what I liked: some of the characterization

what I didn’t like: the narrative voice, even when in the first person, seems very removed from the action/emotion, as if always telling the stories from years later. I really wanted to like this book because I love Americanah and Purple Hibiscus, but I did not ever get grabbed by this book. In fact, I DNFed it at 41%. 

overall rating: 2 (of 5 stars)

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon Vintage, Anchor, and NetGallery for an Advanced Readers Copy of Dream Count in exchange for my honest review.

Synopsis: This story follows the lives of four friends: Chia, Zikora, Omelogor, and Kadiatou. The story narrates their experiences with lovers, life, others' expectations for their lives, their own expectations, and reality. The interwoven stories of these characters are as beautiful as they are brutal.

What I liked: This is the first novel I have read by Adichie and it will not be my last. Never have I annotated a novel like I did with this one. There were so many poignant, beautiful sentences that spoke truth and answers to questions I did not know I had. This is a novel that I will continue to think of long after I have read it!

Rating: 4.5/5

Gripe: The only thing I did not love was how long some of the sections/stories were because it made it more difficult to switch to another characters' perspective after fully becoming invested in the other characters' stories. It would have been easier for me to oscillate between them if they were broken up a little.

I do believe the book necessitates a content warning for sexual assault, mutilation, and loss.

Overall: I highly recommend this book to anyone with a love for stories about the complexities of life and beautiful writing!

Three Nigerian entitled women in their thirties, around the time of COVID pandemic, travel back and forth to major cities on four continents for fun and work. Their search for love and marriage reads like a romantic novel of manners in the tradition of Jane Austen and the professional women of Sex and the City. It is sex in several forms–female sexual matters, pornography as an academic study, sexual violence, sexual privilege, and lots of G rated sexual activities–becomes the governing theme of Adichie’s novel about women successful in high end professions.

The second half of the novel circles around the maid of one of the three friends, who came of age in a village in Guinea and, through a series of tragic events, found her way to the United States. As things get better for her, they get worse. With the introduction of the maid’s story, Adichie contrasts the highs and lows of women–the freewheeling search for Mr Right compared to arranged marriages, the perks of travel as cosmopolitans compared to the pitfalls of immigration. Men at all social levels come across as disappointments, many of them pale stereotypes. This is, undoubtably, literature written for women. Still, male readers who appreciate literary works might want to read this book, if only for the blog articles by one of the women penned as advice for her male readers.

Thank you to Knopf Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advanced readers’ copy.

A reflective look at what happiness means to each person. Inspiring and moving. I couldn't get enough of how well written this book was.

This book was dreamy, introspective, charming, and real. I love the way she writes, it’s so evocative. I loved her characters and the narration. Can’t wait to see more from her!