Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Emelumadu debuts with an entrancing tale of two Nigerian girls whose fates are intertwined in Igbo myth and magic. While preteen Ozoemena is at her uncle's funeral, a mysterious boy touches her back, causing a burning sensation and leaving a welt. Her paternal grandmother tells her she was touched by the ghost of her dead uncle, who was able to change into a leopard when he was alive, and that he's chosen Ozoemena to carry on the family's tradition of becoming the leopard to fight injustice. Her mother, however, believes the myth is a sign of madness, and sends Ozoemena to a boarding school to protect her from her grandmother's influence. A parallel narrative follows Treasure, who's grieving the death of her father and is haunted by a spirit who wants to make her his wife. Treasure resists, although she agrees to procure three other girls to marry the spirit's dead friends in exchange for freeing her father from someone called the "Bone Woman." When Ozoemena learns from her sojourns in the spirit world that the girls were taken from her school, she has an opportunity to use her power as the leopard. Emelumadu's account of boarding school life feels a bit rote, with pages dedicated to the minutiae of students' social alliances, but she makes up for it with exhilarating depictions of the spirits. Emelumadu delivers the goods with her satisfying coming-of-age story. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, CAA. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT The day Ozoemena's uncle died, she developed an itch in her back. After the funeral, her grandmother takes Ozoemena to a priest who shares their family history. Ozoemena comes from a line of Leopards who protect the surrounding villages, and the itch in her back turns out to be a gift/curse from her uncle. She must learn to control her leopard, while navigating classes and new friendships, or risk losing herself to the beast as it hunts for evil spirits at her boarding school. Meanwhile, in another timeline, Treasure and her mother have fallen on hard times after the death of her father, and while trading at the market, Treasure is tricked into bargaining with a spirit. Tempted by the promise of being reunited with her father, Treasure goes on a hunt of her own to meet the spirit's demands. Much like the leopard's ability to travel through time and planes, Emelumadu takes readers on a journey across different timelines as they follow Ozoemena's and Treasure's paths. VERDICT Evocative and a little mysterious, this literary fantasy is immersive and full of Nigerian mythology. Recommend this lustrous coming-of-age story to those who like to read across genres.--Maria Martin
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a story imbued with magic, the lives of two girls in 1990s Nigeria run on a collision course. Ozoemena, the school-age daughter of a physician and a pharmacist, begins to experience odd complaints shortly after the death of her uncle. Episodes of visual and aural disturbances and skin eruptions continue, causing misery in Ozoemena's life. Gradually, her status as the inheritor--after her uncle--of her family's affiliation with an ancient and shadowy source of magical power is revealed by community elders. Running parallel to the narrative of Ozoemena's life is the story of Treasure, a young girl mourning the death of her beloved father, and her efforts to survive crushing poverty and social alienation despite her widowed mother's complete retreat from life and responsibility. Treasure's own immersion into the powerful world of Nigerian spiritual belief and practice comes about after an encounter with a spirit who insinuates that he can return her father to her in exchange for some things he wants from the land of the living. As the girls each struggle to negotiate the subtleties and details of their new--phantasmagoric--realities, their alternating narratives buttress a complicated plot that wends back and forth over time and includes a varied cast of characters, some mortal, some not. Breadcrumbs along the way hint at a relationship between the two but the cinematic final scenes contain further surprises as Ozoemena is forced to reckon with her unbidden powers and must determine how to incorporate them into her life--as Treasure attempts to outwit the slippery business practices of the not-entirely-benevolent spirits she bargains with. A densely detailed tale of tradition and girl power. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
