ARC Review: Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

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ARC Review: Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Book Info

Released: January 18, 2022
Genre: Womens Fiction
Pages: 384

“…the reader really gets to see her growth throughout the book.”

~ Under the Covers

Recommended Read!

Despite having a good education and a solid job, Yinka’s family prays over one thing: for her to find a husband. While Yinka was always a strong believer that love will happen in its own time, her cousin’s engagement and fast-approaching wedding has Yinka doubting time and takes matters into her own hands. Armed with a spreadsheet, Yinka is determined to find a date to the wedding at all costs, even if it means losing herself.

This was unlike your average rom-com. Unlike other rom-coms I’ve read I didn’t find myself easily guessing who she’d end up with (or if she’d end up with anyone at all); the book quickly became more about Yinka’s journey to self-love than it did finding a date or husband. It’s that different perspective that made this book truly enjoyable to read—it’s a rom-com that focuses on Yinka loving herself, not someone else.

The other way in which this perspective is different than any other rom-com I’ve read is that it’s from the perspective of a single woman with deep Nigerian roots. While Yinka was born in the UK, her family is from Nigeria and her mom and aunties all foist their traditional ways onto Yinka. In this respect it reminded me a little of Dial A for Aunties (in that it involves overbearing family members who come from a place of tradition and mean well) but more of a realistic rom-com and less comedy of errors. Anyyway, I haven’t had the opportunity to read about a contemporary Nigerian main character, so learning more about Nigerian culture and tradition was great. Again, the way Blackburn brought something totally new to the rom-com table was so refreshing.

While I was a strong advocate for Yinka and her self love journey, there were definitely times I was so frustrated with her! Some of the situations Yinka gets herself into are because she lied to her family and friends, to conform to the pressures she felt they were putting on her. There were so many times I just wanted to should, just tell them the truth! But Yinka had to find her own way in her own time and because of that the reader really gets to see her growth throughout the book.

With short chapters and easy to read prose, this is definitely a quick and enjoyable read. I’d recommend picking this one up if you’re looking for a women’s fiction or rom-com, but with a different perspective.



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About Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Lizzie Damilola Blackburn is a British-Nigerian writer, born in Peckham, who wants to tell the stories that she and her friends have longed for but never seen – romcoms 'where Cinderella is Black and no-one bats an eyelid'. In 2019 she won the Literary Consultancy Pen Factor Writing Competition with the early draft of Yinka, Where is your Huzband?, which she had been writing alongside juggling her job at Carers UK. She has been at the receiving end of the question in the title of her novel many times, and now lives with her husband in Milton Keynes.

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3 Comments

  1. Always good to meet a new to me author with an authentic voice of another culture…thank you!

  2. i loved this one, too. It felt more women’s fic with a bunch of humor to me because of all her soul searching. Loved the Nigerian family and background to this one.

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