Adichie is a young, female Nigerian writer who has written a couple of other very well-regarded books–Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun–that I enjoyed, but this one really hit home for me. I’m about 90% sure that this is because a lot of this book is set in the U.S., which probably speaks poorly of my ability to empathize with people in other situations. But whatever the reason, the characters in this book felt so real to me it’s like they were walking around next to me and I was just eavesdropping on their lives. Summaries of the book tend to describe it as a love story spanning the years as two teenagers meet in Lagos, drift apart, and meet up again in the present day. And it is that. But it’s also an immigrant story–Ifemelu (the female half of the couple) ends up in the U.S., while Obinze goes to England, and the stories show different sides of the immigrant experience. And it’s about race–in the U.S., in the U.K., and in Nigeria.

I feel like this might make the book sound heavy, and it’s not a romantic comedy, that’s for sure. But again, Ifemelu and Obinze are both such layered, complicated people that I felt like I knew them, and I was interested in finding out what happened to them in the same way I’m interested in my friends’ lives. And it seemed like Adichie felt the same–I felt as if the author really liked these characters and was treating them with respect, even when bad things might be happening.