Love, jealousy, betrayal, and angst add some spice to the story, making for some mostly entertaining reading material. He finally does appear and melts Afi’s heart. He is so much more than she imagines – and the young woman falls in love with her prince. Though their initial meeting goes well, Eli leaves again, giving no indication of when he might return. In the meantime, he suggests that Afi might want to enroll in school to help her fill her days. Learning of her skills as a seamstress and her interest in fashion, he sends his sister around to take Afi to the city’s design schools. I will say some of the promotion tried to compare it to Crazy Rich Asians and there are some similarities (mainly with wealth and a difficult spouse’s mother) but His Only Wife very much stands on its own. I also thought it’s more serious than Crazy Rich Asians. The synopsis This book’s review meme is for my Love & Hip Hop fans. For those of y’all that are exceeding your reading goals instead of catching up on VH1, here’s a little context LOL. I'm giving this a three because the middle section of the story was a bit of a slog. I loved the set-up and the many faux-pas Afi committed in her rags-to-riches journey (such as the uncertainty a buffet of unfamiliar foods might bring and throwing her weight around with the help to assert authority) and I thought the ending was an interesting twist and subversion of the usual OW plot, but the middle section definitely lost steam a bit along the way and I did find myself skimming a bit. It's still a really interesting story and I loved the Ghanaian setting and domestic drama elements of it.

Bottom line: I could say something about the clear and straightforward writing style, or how this somehow felt both too long and too short, or probably a bunch of other stuff, but what it comes down to is I'm nosy. Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own…A brave young woman confronts modern-day sexism and classism in Peace Adzo Medie’s novel His Only Wife. How did Afi end up in this predicament? Afi’s dad died and her mother was unable to provide for her and they lived on the charity of Aunty Ganyo. They felt so indebted to Aunty Ganyo so when she suggested that Afi marry her son, Elikem Ganyo, her mother forced her to say yes! Afi ends up marrying Eli, moving to Accra to live in a fancy new apartment, having a driver to take her around, and starting her apprenticeship as a fashion designer—all while waiting to meet her husband Eli for the first time. Afi is well aware that Eli has another 'woman' and a child who he lives with close by, but she is married to him and there are some expectations for a marriage. This is a heroic story about a woman learning that she deserves more, she deserves better, she deserves a man who wants her to be his only wife. Afi loves to sew and gets the opportunity to pursue it. This part of the plot was really nice since it showed that Afi didn’t think she didn’t need to work. I liked that Medie wrote about her insecurities around other people who seemed to have accomplished a lot. How far will her dream go?

Afi wants to be the only wife to her new husband, Elikem. And should anything the contrary be an optio The story matured along with the protagonists. The women in the community were so adamant and unique with their age. We could see the different set of minds—Afi's mother didn't bother to get her married to a man who was in love with other women. Eli's mother was so adamant and got him married to Afi. These choices made their life miserable. Throughout Afi's marriage, she learns that she's not the only woman that Eli loves and that some things just won't change. Afi has to gain a voice and not settle for anything if she wants things to change—not just in her household but for the Ganyo's as well.

Afi Tekple is a young seamstress in Ghana. She is smart; she is pretty; and she has been convinced by her mother to marry a man she does not know. Afi knows who he is, of course --- Elikem is a wealthy businessman whose mother has chosen Afi in the hopes that she will distract him from his relationship with a woman his family claims is inappropriate. Afi does eventually move into the house but the relationship goes through ups and downs. However, they eventually get into a routine—until she is face to face with the other woman. What are some of the key ways that Eli showed he was more committed to other woman?

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The book is set in Ghana and narrated by Afi – a young woman who lives with her widowed mother in a small town, and works as a seamstress. The book opens in the house of her Uncle Pious, her father’s oldest brother and family patriarch (a role he largely sees as a means to extract money from his family) – Afi is being married to Elikem (the son of her mother’s boss – Auntie – or Faustina Ganyo – who has been a great benefactor to the family) but Elikem is absent and his brother Richard stands in. HIS ONLY WIFE is a witty, smart and moving debut novel about a brave young woman traversing the minefield of modern life with its taboos and injustices, living in a world of men who want their wives to be beautiful, to be good cooks and mothers, to be women who respect their husbands and grant them forbearance. And in Afi, Peace Adzo Medie has created a delightfully spunky and relatable heroine who just may break all the rules. Plot-wise to me, there were a few holes and I had questions but not enough that I couldn’t understand what was happening or go with the flow. I just I suppose didn’t get the direction of the book and don’t really understand what it wanted to accomplish. When we were introduced to Yaya’s friends, I expected more to come from that nugget to create dramatic effect. The building of tension between Afi’s family and the Ganyos was fabulous, I only wish more had been done with that potential plot angle. The author was great at creating potential opportunities for tension but she often just releases them without exploring further or stoking the flames so there were lots of moments were my expectations for more drama were built and then allowed to fall flat. The resolution and the conflicts felt a little too easily achieved when a book such as this was BEGGING for more dramatic effect. I’ve never been this conflicted about a book. Feel free to thoroughly curse me out if I say anything in my review that is disrespectful to the culture in the book. I do understand that this book was portraying the reality for a lot of women in Ghana, but I was still very uncomfortable with many parts of the plot. Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding." When I read those words, I thought surely this novel was set in the past because who does that in the present. While the book is set in the past, it's not in the distant past, it's 2014.

And her best is pretty darn good... Accra is a big city, with big dreams. It's time for Afi to find herself and discover what it means to truly be free. But there’s one thing missing from this fairy tale – the husband. Elikem Ganyo misses his own wedding (sending his brother as stand in) and only makes an appearance in the apartment six weeks after the wedding. Elikem, it turns out, is in love with another woman and they have a daughter. Afi was the ploy used by his disapproving family to break this entanglement. The question is whether Afi will settle for playing second fiddle or insist that she is Elikem’s only true wife.This is the literary equivalent of a friend of a friend telling you a two-hour story about people you don't know. And while that wasn't boring, it was like...I'd prefer if someone else were telling me this? Or maybe if I was having a different conversation. At the center of the novel is young Afi Tekple. Not clever enough to earn a spot at the university like most of her classmates, Afi works as a seamstress in the small town where she has lived all her life. She and her widowed mother live in the home of her uncle along with his many wives and children. While her situation is far from dire, Afi is also well aware that her options in life are limited. Quotidian spaces and seemingly ordinary conversations lead to fraught disagreements and disconcerting realisations. Afi's flashy new abode is the setting of many tense scenes, with her husband, the Ganyos', her mother. The drama 'caused' by the 'Liberian woman' creates a lot of conflict between Afi and her husband (and the Ganyos in general). As Afi grows tired of her circumstances, of being told to be grateful and to sit tight, she begin to crave autonomy and power in her own marriage.