Author Image Source :Sunday Post
The real wahala here is how the hell the author, Nikki May, came up with the most infuriating group of main characters ever. The premise of "Wahala" drew me in immediately because it was women's fiction, it was African, and it was about female friendships. Sold. Sold. Sold.
What I didn't know was that I would be reading about four infuriating mixed-race women who, in my opinion, have no business being friends and have a penchant for making one mistake after another.
Now mind you, I am the last person to cut anyone down for making bad choices—heaven knows I've made a ton—but damn!
So let me tell you what Wahala is about, without the spoilers.
The story follows four Nigerian-British friends living in London. Three of them—Ronke, the single dentist who overcompensates for her inconsistent boyfriend; Simi, the anxious, insecure friend with a need to always look perfect; and Buki, the tired, overwhelmed mother and wife—are college friends. Isobel, Simi's childhood friend, becomes the newest addition to the friendship.
Now Isobel is interesting. Gregarious, larger than life, confident, and seemingly concerned with nothing except having a good time. She is friendly and skillfully weaves her way into each of the characters' lives, getting to know their secrets and flaws—and she uses this information to cause some real problems. So the question is: is she just messy, or does she have an agenda?
Skrrt! You'll have to find out for yourself.
But let's talk about a few signs that a friendship could be heading downhill; That these heifers decided to ignore!
The glaring red flags - Listen, I've been in friend groups before. When you introduce a new friend into the group and they immediately start hanging out with your other friends without letting you know, that's a waving flag in blood red! If they start telling you things, observations they've made about the other friends to you, it's a soaked tampon type of a red flag. Yet these characters, Simi for instance, chose to ignore all the signs until it was too late.
The love bombing - Oh honey, love bombing isn't just for toxic exes anymore—it's gone fully platonic! When Isobel started throwing gifts around like Oprah on her "Favorite Things" episode and whisked Bo off for shopping sprees faster than you can say "we barely know each other," my suspicion meter broke the dial.
I've encountered these "generous" friends before—the ones who perform charity work on your life just to add it to their LinkedIn profile of good deeds. They'll shower you with presents while mentally photographing your reaction for their "Evidence of My Greatness" scrapbook. Then when things inevitably go south, suddenly they're starring in their own documentary called "I Found This Person in a Dumpster: My Heroic Journey of Friendship" that they're screening for everyone from your mutual friends to the cashier at Tesco. "You should have SEEN her before I intervened!" they'll gasp dramatically, clutching their pearls. "I practically INVENTED her!"
The misplaced loyalties - Passing information that you know damn well you don’t have permission to share amongst friends is a sign of trouble. Now don’t get me wrong we love to keke about stuff here and there. But feigning innocence while passing on damaging information told in confidence is ugly work and instigative behavior. This ain’t gossip girl!
The gloating - You know when you share your struggles with a friend expecting comfort, but instead they transform into a competitive suffering Olympian? "Oh, you think YOUR day was bad? Let me tell you about MY catastrophic Tuesday that would make ‘Stay With Me’ look like a Disney fairytale!" Or worse, they hit you with that "I can't relate" face—that special expression that says "My life is so perfectly arranged it belongs in an IKEA catalog while yours resembles their warehouse dumpster." Their eyes glaze over with the vacant stare of someone mentally calculating how many minutes of nodding they need to do before they can talk about their promotion again. That's not friendship—that's just an audience member waiting for their turn at open mic night.
This made reading this book so difficult to read because the toxic friendship signs were displayed all over. And even when the villain is revealed, the reaction was very anticlimactic for me.
I also wondered why all the main characters were mixed-race with a character like Boo portraying some anti-Black undertones. Maybe it was to present their unique experience, but it felt disingenuous with a subtle posture of "we have it harder but you all don't understand our plight." I wondered if this decision had a personal connection to the author's own experiences.
I did love the dialogue and sub-characters in the book. I do think the topic of toxic friendships is an important conversation for sure. The character development was also very well done, showing the subtle triggers that led to the final outcome of the book. I also think when a writer creates characters so infuriating that you're trying to throw hands, that might be a good sign of great writing.
Wahala by Nikki May moved from a 2.5 to a 3.75 stars for me after much pondering.
Afia Kwakyewaa is a Ghanian writer and a marketing executive who is learning to pick up the pen again. She loves books, music, and makes a mean salad. Connect with her on Fable, Tiktok, or Threads
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