Book Chat - The List

Most of you all know I run a book club over on the Nerd Night Out (NNO) meetup group. With the “nerd” theme, we read mostly speculative fiction, Sci Fi, fantasy and lots of dystopian fiction (because I guess a *different* dystopian world feels comforting sometimes?).

But every now and then, I read a book that I immediately want to talk about but that 100% doesn’t fit with what we read for NNO – so why not post a Book Chat event over here?

Meet “The List” by Yomi Adegoke.

Summary from Goodreads:
Ola Olajide, a celebrated journalist at Womxxxn magazine, is set to marry the love of her life in one month. She and her fiancé Michael are considered the “couple goals” of their social network and seem to have it all—that is, until one morning when they both wake up to the same message: “Oh my god, have you seen The List?”

It began as a crowdsourced collection of names and somehow morphed into an anonymous account posting allegations on social media. Ola would usually be the first to support such a list—she’d retweet it, call for the men to be fired, write article after article. Except this time Michael’s name is on it.

This is her first work of fiction and it has some missteps that so many debuts have…but I found her to be such an interesting voice. Yomi Adegoke is a British journalist and author. Of Nigerian heritage, Adegoke was born in East London and raised in Croydon. She attended the University of Warwick and studied law.

There was a lot going on here around #MeToo and related movements, the skewed reality of social media, African communities in Britan, and all the “isms”. Was this the best book I’ve ever read? No. But did I stop multiple times during this book and questioned my own shifting emotions and perspectives on these characters AND will I keep thinking about this book for years to come? Yes and YES.

Note: I did this one as an audiobook and I found it to be an excellent way to experience this (and to get all the names and unfamiliar terms pronounced correctly).