Genre Inspirational Romance and Suspense.

Blurb “Nikky goes missing a few days after her birthday. Her roommate and best friend, Amanda, is worried about her and reaches out to CJ, Nikky’s boyfriend, a notorious defense attorney, for help. CJ is in for a shock when he discovers Nikky’s lifestyle but agrees to follow a wild lead to find her, questioning his motives because of his attraction to Amanda. The lead ends the duo on a bush path, but only opens another deadly one with Amanda on the run for her life and CJ desperate to keep her from harm to pursue their mutual attraction.”

Dialogue Started out well but dipped by the middle as the characters started sounding alike. Written in English with smatterings of Nigerian Pidgin. The dialogue is very Nigerian.

Themes Love, Friendship, Family, Religion, Good vs Evil, Forgiveness, Redemption and Second Chance.

Editing Needs structural editing.

Plot Amanda, a beautiful final year law student is troubled about the fact that her housemate and friend, Nikky seems to have disappeared after an outing. When Nikky’s fiancé, CJ visits their house to look for Nikky, she lies about her whereabouts to cover up for her friend. Soon, Amanda is forced to seek CJ’s help to find Nikky and to protect herself from imminent danger. They both have to fight against their attraction to one another and focus on unravelling the mystery of Nikky’s disappearance while caught in a web of gun chase, kidnap and prostitution.

What worked?

Lady B Look who is back – yayyyyyyyyyy!!!

Mo It feels good to be back after my long hiatus from reading and reviewing books.

This book started out as an engaging ‘unputdownable’ story about CJ, a 34-year-old hotshot defence lawyer, his fiancée, Nikky, a twenty-year-old university student who has gone missing and Amanda, her twenty-four-year-old house mate and friend. The plot unfolded from the very first scene, the pacing was fast. Bang, bang, bang, everything happening so quickly, you’re feeling the car chase and your adrenaline is high. But the momentum was not maintained, we get to that later.

As the story unfolds, we are introduced to the murky world of ‘runs girls’ as they are called in Nigerian universities. Students involved in prostitution, drugs and other illegal activities. It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s real and believable. Well, until it isn’t…

The short sharp chapters with the (almost) cliff hanger endings makes you want to continue reading. It is one thing which worked in this story.

The other thing is that the story telling makes one feel connected to the characters and you become invested in seeing what happens to them. The ability to convey the emotions into words is good. It’s a story about redemption and love. And it has the right amount of feels.

What didn’t work?

Lady B This story started to ‘lose the plot’ by the middle of the book and by the fortieth chapter till the end, it became a real mess. There were just too many inconsistencies, too many eye rolling moments and too many holes in the story. For instance, CJ went from being a workaholic not-a-care-in-the-world man to being someone with a God-hole in his heart desperately seeking to fill it up. This should have been introduced earlier so that when he admitted to it in the end, it would be believable.

The suggestion of a sequel doesn’t remove the need to explain how some things happened, for example, how Emeka was able to capture Chief. And how Alaba, Nikky’s other housemate, who had CJ’s number, didn’t call him but showed up at his office. Unless I missed something, I couldn’t work out how she got his office address.

The parts about law and the legal system were superficial and needed more depth as it was dealing with more recently practised concepts like non-custodial sentences and plea bargains.

The narration had disjointed sentences and too many Nigerianisms. It lacked proper editing overall, not just proper copy editing. For instance, when Amanda met CJ, she couldn’t see what Nikki could have seen in him. Yet in the next paragraph, Amanda admits that CJ is good looking and too good for her and Nikky.

Mo This isn’t my best Sinmisola’s book. It lacks fluidity. The plot was fast paced from the get go and then became tepid after a while. In short, the plot started losing the plot. The suspense around Nikky’s disappearance lost steam towards the end with that reveal. I was expecting something but not what I got.

Number of pages 140.

Publisher PWG Publishing, Lagos.

Damage $3.06 on Amazon Kindle.

Rating 5.8/10.

Her Lover is Available on Amazon and Bambooks.

Many thanks to Sinmisola for sending us a copy of her book in exchange for an honest review.