Review: Dancing With James Brandy?
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2014
Friend’s Choice by Tunmbi Olaleye is a fast-paced suspense novel centered on the adventures of Reba, a high school teacher who finds her world turned upside down by betrayal and bad decisions. Her boyfriend, Jose Ricardo, bilks her out of $750k on a Chinese business scam, leaving her in debt and no options in sight. Her flirtations with Akin, the school principal, and James, a party type living in the fast lane, are turning into dead-end relationships. Her old friend Belinda reveals she has been engaged in prostitution to make ends meet. Reba follows Belinda’s lead and eventually learns that a ‘friend’s choice’ is not necessarily the best choice or advice a person can make or take.Olalaye’s use of dialogue increases the flow of the storyline and effectively brings the reader into each episode. We are introduced to characters who help set the atmosphere and establish their motivations. Dino Adriano is the pimp whose sophisticated system allows him to identify his call girls by an individual code and their drug of choice to keep them happy as they ply their trade. He auditions Reba and assigns her to a specific list of clients, one which happens to be Johnson Barabbas. It is an interesting choice of surnames as Johnson experiences buyer’s remorse after his first date with Reba. They hit it off on a personal level, and suddenly Johnson finds himself emotionally attached to the ‘soiled dove’. It places him on a collision course with Jose, who looms out of Reba’s past and poses a threat to both her future and her life.There is an exotic flavor about the novel, largely because the author is a native Nigerian and the omniscient narrative reflects his own unique worldview. Yet we come to a fundamental dialogue about the choices we make, the transcendental power of love and the need for redemption that Reba comes to embrace. For thriller buffs eager for an introduction to a new writer in an emerging market, Friend’s Choice by Tunmbi Olaleye is truly a good choice.