Blunted on Reality - Book Review

I was contacted by the author to do a review for his book, Blunted on Reality. Chinedu Achebe (no relation to the great Chinua Achebe) is a Nigerian author based in Houston, TX. The book centers around main character, Obi Ifeanyi who is about to turn 30 and wanting more in his life. He faces the dilemma most young people face today regarding career and their personal lives. Obi is torn between staying in his comfortable job where he is making good money but is still lacking something or venturing out and doing more community stuff. In his love life, he is torn between his African American on and off girl, Tamika and fellow Nigerian who he had gone to college with, Nkechi. The story is told with the focal point being the election of Obama as President and how it affected African Americans and Nigerian Americans alike. The book touches a lot on politics, race, doing more for the community and various topics and stereotypes as viewed by Nigerians.

What did I think of the book?

I thought the overall message of the book was nice and relatable in terms of being a black/Nigerian person in America or having Nigerian parents overseas. The language would be familiar. I would hate to compare it to Americanah because there is a difference but the similarity of love stories interwoven through political topics is there. I felt the message of the book also made you think, in terms of what can you do better or what more can you do to contribute to society but overall I think it was not executed or conveyed very well. There were a lot of grammatical, spelling and tense errors which could spoil your groove. You could tell the author infused some of his own personal experiences into the book but it was like he wrote as he spoke without some editing and creativity to the story line. The book does get detailed in describing the sex scenes. I think what bothered me the most was for a book with a positive storyline about educated youth trying to do better and contribute to society, the language used in their regular conversations didn't quite match up with a lot of cursing and the use of the n word to address each other, almost as if the characters were trying too hard to be cool.

Overall, it is a book where you can tell it is the author's first book and he had achieved a dream of publishing a book, for which I have to give kudos because completing a book or any dream at all is no simple feat. If you would like to support the author the book can be found on Amazon or Barnes & Noble for $4.99. It's an easy read, so feel free to support a brother. If you have or plan to read it, what did you think of it?

PS The title of the book is also the title of the Fugees debut album. The Fugees happened to have a concert in the book and I suspect is a favorite of the author's.