Bitter Honey

• Author: Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: May 15, 2025
• Publisher: William Morrow

Two women. Four decades. A lifetime of secrets.

1978: A scholarship draws Nancy from Gambia’s warmth into Sweden’s winter. When her friendship with charismatic scholar Lars blossoms into something more, she thinks she may have finally found her place. But there’s more to Lars than his charming persona, and Nancy is about to discover the danger of being drawn into his world.

2006: Tina has had her taste of fame as the nation’s sweetheart pop princess. But beneath her glittery façade, Tina is desperate to discover who she really is. Her mother, Nancy, seems desperate to keep the past under wraps, but will an unexpected figure help open the door?

Spanning four decades and three continents, Bitter Honey is a story of mothers, daughters, and the importance of carving your own path.

Reading my way around the world has opened my eyes to a lot of translated literature, and taught me so much about other cultures and societies. This historical fiction novel sounded fascinating to me, and I was really intrigued about adjusting to a different life; in this case moving from Gambia to Sweden.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Délé Ogundiran and Palmira Koukkari Mbenga, who did a fantastic job narrating this book. One narrator handled Nancy’s timeline, while the other did Tina’s. I was impressed with the narrator who did Tina’s voice, who sounded convincingly young and had a Swedish accent, as I’d have expected to hear from someone who was born and raised in Sweden, no matter where their families may have come from. Nancy’s narrator had a generic American accent, although she was able to speak in Mandinka and when she narrated Nancy’s conversations, it was in English, but had a convincing accent. 

Both main characters, Nancy and Tina, were inherently likable characters, although I found myself gravitating to Nancy more since she’s an adult, while Tina is standing on the cusp of adulthood. While the climate couldn’t be more different, Nancy likes the world that she has entered courtesy of a scholarship. As a star student, Nancy’s family encourages her to continue with her higher education in hopes of her being the first female president in Gambia. But as Nancy starts living a completely different life in Sweden, she discovers the positives of her new home. She’s in classes that fascinate her, and she is enraptured by both her fellow classmate from Gambia and her charismatic professor, Lars. There are elements of a love triangle, and this was not my favorite trope to find in a story, but it worked really well here. 

Tina, on the other hand, is biracial and struggling to find her way in an increasingly polarized world. She’s a talented singer, and has risen to national prominence as Sweden’s representative in the Eurovision contest. However, she’s also having a hard time seeing where she fits. She’s questioning everything in her life, which isn’t unusual at her age, but she realizes that there are things about her mother and her own beginnings that she doesn’t know. But when a new figure comes into the picture, Tina is poised to learn more about her mother.

There are side characters, and all are impressively rendered. I especially liked Tina’s brother, Tobias, for his snarky and deadpan humor, as well as the role he plays in her life as a big brother. He has a completely different viewpoint on the issues that Tina is facing, both as a man and someone who is older, and does a great job of supporting Tina. She is facing pushback from certain aspects of right-wing Swedish society, who hold protests telling her to go back home, despite the fact that she was born and raised in Sweden.

Seeing the society in Sweden and the experiences of immigrants in that society was eye-opening. However, I was left with the sense that no matter where we come from or live, we all deal with the same emotions and questions about who we really are, especially in our early adulthood. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the story. Watching Tina grow as a person and maturing over the course of the book, even when she was in crisis, although my heart broke for her while reading. My heart also broke for Nancy, who had a very different struggle than her daughter, and felt that she had to keep secrets from her children to protect them. As we know, though, keeping secrets to protect children doesn’t always work out as intended, and we get to see Nancy grow as well over the course of the story. I especially loved the ending of the story, and highly recommend this one.

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