Everything Is Not Enough
A Novel
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4.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
From Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström, international bestselling author of In Every Mirror She’s Black, comes the highly anticipated second novel, focusing on the lives of three Black women as they fight their own personal struggles in one of the most egalitarian societies, Sweden.
Can a career woman truly have it all?
Powerful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi has finally found the man she needs, but Tobias Wikström thinks she’s the most selfish woman he has ever met for asking him to give up his life in Sweden and move to the US for her own comfort. Will Kemi be forced to stay if she wants to keep him while chipping away at her hard-earned career? As things begin to sour and challenge her relationship with Tobias, someone else moves back into the picture.
Can having it all be a gilded cage?
Looking into divorce in Sweden isn’t what former model-turned-flight attendant Brittany-Rae von Lundin anticipated. Only jointly owned assets are split evenly between couples. Brittany gave up her career and came with nothing into Jonny’s kingdom. Having had a child with him, her greatest fear for Maya includes being cut off from the resources she’s become accustomed to. With a man obsessed with a ghost, trying to get away isn’t going to be easy. And the deeper she digs into his past, the darker the secrets she unravels.
Can you run from your past to have it all?
After fleeing her home through a client to seek a new life in Sweden, Yasmiin finds love in the arms of Yagiz Çelik while carving out her own small corner. But as someone from her past forces Yasmiin to become a caretaker before she’s ready, she now must confront and move beyond her teenage history, while following her dreams of becoming a makeup artist.
Everything Is Not Enough follows the loosely intertwined and messy lives of Kemi, Brittany, and Yasmiin as they interrogate themes of place, prejudice, and patriarchy in Europe, proving—yet again—that Lola Akinmade Åkerström is the next great voice of nuanced contemporary women’s fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Åkerström's overheated sequel to In Every Mirror She's Black offers more stories of Black immigrants dealing with race and class dynamics in Stockholm. Yasmiin, a Somalian who supported herself with sex work in Rome, moves to Sweden and marries entrepreneur Yagiz Celik. One day, the police question Yasmiin about Muna Sahhed, a younger acquaintance and fellow Somali immigrant who allegedly attacked a man before jumping in front of a train and ending up in a coma. Yasmiin assumes Muna acted in self-defense and vows to care for her when she wakes up. Meanwhile, Brittany, a Black American woman and former flight attendant, hopes to divorce Jonny von Ludin, the golden son of one of the richest families in the country. She's convinced that Jonny only married her because she's the spitting image of his high-school love Maya Daniels, and she fears his racist family may have had something to do with Maya's long-ago disappearance. A third story line involves Brittany's frenemy Kemi, also from the U.S., who's having an affair with married colleague Ragnar Pettersen, Jonny's best friend at the company where he is CEO. Unfortunately, the author's exploration of the problems of racial fetishism is muddled by the convoluted plot. Readers will be left at a loss.
