Hope & Glory

Nov 17

Hope & Glory by Jendella Benson

Reviewed by Tanya
📘📘📘

Glory is a British Nigerian woman who returns to the UK after the death of her father and finds out a big family secret. The story packs a lot of detail and I was impatient about finding out the details of this secret but had to wait till the end 😬

Glory takes centre stage in this novel and through her, we discover many details about her family. She is a flawed character and I found Glory quite immature and selfish at points. Though she has struggles of her own and had her own reasons for running away to L.A she just didn’t take into consideration the shit her family was left to deal with. She’d get frustrated with her mum for dodging question not realising the trauma her mother went through. But thankfully she redeemed herself and I warmed to her by the end of the book!
I can’t wait to discuss this further and pick Glory apart at our event 😩😂

I also really appreciated how you get flavour of British/Nigerian culture throughout the book. It came across as authentic and I really enjoyed being immersed in it.

contemporary fictionFictionpeckhamjendella bensontrapeze bookshope & glorylondon booksblack authorsblack womennigerian authorsbritish nigerian

Tanya Ahmed

Soy Tanya. I’m the youngest of the group...and I don’t really know what to say except that I find these things really awkward. When Linda first came to me with this idea of an online bookclub/review page I was 100% down, although I was a little worried and felt like backing out on many occasions as I felt like my reviews were awful - I’m not good with words at all. If anyone was to ask me a year ago how I found a book, I’d reply: “good” - that’s my review done. But being part of this club with such amazing girls has really made me a lot more confident and comfortable. So I’ll forever be grateful. It’s always a laugh when we’re together, we are guaranteed to get side-tracked but our meetings are always productive and a lot of fun. This is just the beginning for us. I like reading all kinds of books from different genres but prefer romance/YA. With work being full on I like feel-good books that are light and easy. I’m currently in the middle of reading a few books lol but sticking to The Zanzibar Wife by Rebecca Rodriquez. Reading for me is a form of escapism, just getting away from the stress of real life and getting lost in book and falling in love with characters. I can’t list my top 5 or even top 10 so here are a few of my all-time favourites: The Sicilian by Mario Puzo To all the boys I’ve loved before by Jenny Han, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hoseeini, The Forty Rules of Love by Shafa Kelif Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith and Moonlight Over Manhattan by Sarah Morgan.