Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ALC of Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi. All opinions are my own. 

Before this book, I had never read any books set in this time period or region of Africa. The story sounded interesting, so that’s why I wanted to read it. 

While this book is marketed as more of a fantasy, I would say that it is historical fiction with a few fantasy elements. 

There are quite a few rave reviews for this book so far, but this book just wasn’t for me at all. There were too many issues with it for me to enjoy it. 

Here’s what I did like: 

I loved the setting and how not only was the geographical location cool, but I enjoyed the magical elements of this place as well. 

The audiobook narration was great! The narrator had an accent that fit the character but was still easy to understand (even at 2.5x speed!). I was also impressed with all the hard names she had to pronounce and how effortless it seemed. 

The author did a great job keeping my attention throughout the story with enough tense and fast-paced moments to keep me wanting to read more. 

However, my main issue with this book was the main character. Òdòdó had questionable motives and made a lot of poor decisions. The romance was weird considering her circumstances. She didn’t seem to think it was a big deal in how she got together with the love interest, but in my opinion, it was really toxic and messed up. 

Also, the decisions she made outside of her relationship made no sense to me! 

Maybe it was because of the time in which this story took place, but there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary deaths. Also, be warned that there are a few graphic scenes that I hated. 

Overall, I just felt angry after finishing the story. I wasn’t really satisfied with how things turned out, and a lot of the plot just didn’t make sense to me. I do think some people will really enjoy this story, but this just wasn’t my kind of book.