Review: Masquerade, by O.O. Sangoyomi

Masquerade, by O.O. Sangoyomi

Genre: Historical

Release Year: 2024

My Rating: 3 stars

"Set in a wonderfully reimagined 15th century West Africa, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale exploring the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future. Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey of epic power struggles and political intrigue that turn an entire region on its head."

(From Goodreads. Full blurb here.)

★★★

Things I liked:

1. The setting. I love that this story is so rooted in African history and mythology!

2. How the intimacy was handled. Everything that did happen (which was minimal) took place between characters who were married to each other, and nothing was graphic or drawn out.

3. Òdòdó's cleverness (sometimes) and leadership (although maybe not at the very end).

Things I think could have been done better:

1. My main beef is that I wish that Òdòdó's main want/goal had been established before she got kidnapped (that's in the Goodreads description, I didn't spoil anything). As it was, it felt like she adapted to and fully accepted her new situation way too quickly. It also made her character a bit murky for me; I was never quite sure what her motivations were or WHY she was feeling the way she stated to the reader that she was feeling or WHY she acted the way she did (she honestly didn't seem to know why herself half the time).

2. I also wish Òdòdó's relationship with her mother had been set up better, so that the end of that particular subplot didn't feel so abrupt and, if I may use the word, unearned. (Perhaps we could have learned that *SPOILER* Okóbí was raped and that's how she conceived Òdòdó *END OF SPOILER* BEFORE the very end of the book. I understand it was supposed to be a big reveal, but I feel that in this case it would have made more sense at the beginning to establish their feelings toward one another.)

*SKIP #3 IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS*

3. Why did it take Òdòdó SO long to realize that Kòlò was supplying weapons to people?? Who would just ASSUME that some arrowheads "accidentally" got "mixed in" with gifts to Kòlò's family??!! Òdòdó was so smart in other regards (like affairs of state), so it really annoyed me that she didn't realize something was off about Kòlò before. I understand that this was part of the whole "everyone betrays me so I'm just gonna betray my hubby because I'm super angry and want to be in charge" part of the plot, which I guess you could say was Òdòdó's main character growth, but it really pissed me off. 

*END OF SPOILERS*

4. I wish the timeline had been clearer. Did this all happen over a year? Six months? Three months? I believe Òdòdó mentions how long she's been trying to find her mother towards the end of the book, but if she did, it didn't sink in, and the pacing just felt odd to me.

5. This is trivial, but the author kept using "who" where "whom" would have been correct, and one of the only times she did use "whom" correctly, she ended the sentence with a preposition!!

Have you read Masquerade? I'd love to hear your thoughts!