Blog tour: The Three of Us

Welcome to the blog tour for The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams!

More about the book…

A nice house, a carefree life, a doting husband, a best friend who never leaves your side. What more could you ask for? There's just one problem: your husband and best friend love you, but they hate each other.

Set over a single day, husband, wife and best friend Temi toe the lines of compromise and betrayal. Told in three parts, three people's lives, and their visions of themselves and one another begin to slowly unravel, until a startling discovery throws everyone's integrity into question.

Full of intrigue, idiosyncratic wit and a healthy dose of wealth and snobbery The Three of Us is part-suburban millennial comedy of manners and part-domestic noir that will leave you wondering: whose side are you on?

More about the author…

Ore Agbaje-Williams is a British-Nigerian writer from London who has written for gal-dem, Glamour and Wasafiri.

She is an editor and wrote the novel in NaNoWriMo during lockdown.

It was originally submitted to editors under a pseudonym.

My impressions…

Seen over the course of a few hours and even more bottles of wine, this is a snapshot of the relationship among three people: the wife, the husband and the wife’s best friend. As it happens, we only find out the name of the friend, Temi. Why is that? Perhaps because she seems to be a catalyst for change. Whether the change is for better or worse, that’s to be seen. What that change is going to be is also up for discussion. My guess is that, after we turn the last page, either the friendship between Temi and the wife or the marriage between the wife and the husband will have run its course. But that’s just my interpretation of this book, which would make a great choice for a buddy read or a book club read.

The publisher asked reviewers to pick a side. What team am I on? A question that’s not easy to answer because none of the three characters are particularly pleasant or endearing. Temi is completely manipulative, displaying a narcissistic behaviour. The husband appears to have the weakest personality out of the three of them but is also manipulative, albeit in a different, more direct way. The wife… well, the wife is the character that I found it harder to fathom. She seems to be torn between the loyalty towards Temi and that towards her husband, taking on almost two different personalities depending on who she’s interacting with. I don’t think, however, that she does that with malice. And perhaps this is exactly why I am going to be on #TeamWife, hoping that she will soon start to make decisions for herself instead of being heavily guided by others.

Three words to describe it. Witty. Fierce. Brilliant.

Do I like the cover? Yes, it’s bold and fresh, just like the book itself.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, this is a dazzling debut!