BOOK REVIEW: Nothing Comes Close by Tolulope Popoola

Note: this book was read and reviewed by me in September of 2023 on a previous site that no longer exists.

There is something to be said about a book that effortlessly sticks in your memory, not because of its excellent writing, but rather because you found it so disappointing that it became a running joke among your friends, destined to be brought up frequently at birthday celebrations, lunch dates, and christenings. Nothing Comes Close by Tolulope Popoola is that book for me.

I've been picky about the books I read lately due to a recent series of DNFs, so picking this particular book wasn't random. It received a lot of 4- and 5-star ratings and was shortlisted for Best Book of 2012. One Amazon review even claimed that it would be a great read for all the romantics out there. Well, it turns out I'm not the hopeless romantic I thought I was because, in addition to disliking this with a vengeance, I'm now doubting the credibility of all 5-star reviews. I feel duped.

This is a 1-star review. It’s more of a rant than a review. I don't sugarcoat anything, so it won't be pretty. However, all thoughts are completely my own. If you loved this book of if you would like to love it, please avoid this review.

Consider this a formal content warning.

Confident, sassy career girl, Lola meets cool, handsome, unpredictable hunk, Wole at a party in London. He pushes all the right buttons for her, and sparks fly. Wole is also irresistibly drawn to Lola, and before long, they get together in a wonderful romance. But Wole is not all that he seems, and he is holding back some dark secrets. Things start to unravel when Wole’s past begins to catch up with him, and Lola has to decide if Wole is worth the trouble.

A 300-Page Tangle of Unrelated Events

“Nothing comes close to having you in my life. Nothing at all”

I should've known something was off when the Goodreads summary didn't give any information about the plot. In my experience (as a very opinionated reader with no qualifications whatsoever), whenever the book summary is so vague, it’s either of two things: one, the plot is so detailed that it can't be summed up in so few words without disclosing spoilers, or two, the plot literally has nothing to write about.

Sadly, in this case, it's the latter.

There are many events in this 300-page novel, but few of them fit into the primary plot. Honestly, many had no place in the story at all.

A plot, by story definition is a series of events where each occurrence affects the next, and so on. This cause-and-effect is central to what makes a plot a plot.

This principle is thrown to the wind in this book. Instead, what is left is a 300-page tangle of overdramatic events.

Even worse, 80% of those events are unrelated to our protagonists. Aside from one or two key moments, our main characters essentially serve as props while all these random things happen to everyone else around them.

It's like experiencing the story through the POV of a supporting character—you know, the ones who never experience significant events but who are constantly present to respond to what happens to others.

This has been done successfully before. The most popular examples would be The Great Gatsby told in the POV of Nick Carraway, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes told from the perspective of our favorite sidekick, Mr Watson.

The key difference in those stories is that it's obvious from the get-go that it is an intentional form and style choice. Meanwhile, here, it seems to be the unfortunate result of poorly done subplots.

The Worst Cast of Characters Possible

Aside from the main protagonists, the secondary characters include mostly Lola's friends and they're completely interchangeable except from one or two details. But those details are so detestable that they basically force you remember.

Titi is in a relationship with a married man.

Temmy is an unrepentant cheater.

Funmi is secretly in love with the male lead and attacks the female lead out of jealousy.

What a stellar group of friends, right?

There is one more friend but she doesn’t even matter because she gets written off randomly.

First off, they aren’t even good people, so, of course, they're even worse friends. This book contains the worst displays of friendship I’ve read in any work of fiction.

Their actions are shallow and selfish, prioritizing their own interests over others.

In one scene, Titi learns that she is the other woman in her relationship and is understandably devastated. Instead of showing compassion, Lola and Funmi simply leave her and return home. They then start gossiping about their friend. Worse, Lola calls her many names, including "Husband Snatcher."

This was extremely frustrating to me because I was hoping that these seemingly random events were written to highlight wonderful female connections. Nope. It turns out, they're just simply random events.

The Obnoxious Heroine Meets The Sleazy Hero

As for our main leads, they are plainly unlikeable.

Our female lead, Lola, is described as beautiful, smart, and funny. Beautiful, maybe. Smart and funny, very debatable.

She is supposed to be outspoken but instead comes across as obnoxious, gossiping about friends behind their backs, hurling insults, and gloating in the face of a friend’s misfortune.

Although she doesn't have much of a personality, whatever glimpse of character we do see is toxic. The kind of person you don’t want to be and the kind of friend you don’t want to have.

Wole, our male lead, on the other hand, is a caricature who appears fixated on the idea that Lola is "different from other girls". He draws this conclusion because her perfume is "different from what other girls wear" and her room "isn’t too girly". 

I'm not sure if these statements are meant to be flattering, but to any woman who has outgrown the inevitable pick-me phase that many women seem to go through, they come across as condescending. It definitely sounds weird to me.

What kind of perfume do other girls wear? And if her room is a riot of pink and frills, does that make her less desirable? Do women need to be less like other women to be appealing?

"You’ve got lovely hands and long fingernails," he said, "I hope you don’t break a nail helping me out."

This is something he actually says. In another line, he says that while he was fine with his male friends knowing his deepest secrets, he doesn't want Lola to know them since she's a woman and "women complicate things". 

These statements reveal an underlying sexist and misogynistic mindset. And having someone like this as the hero of a romance novel only reinforces that mindset that femininity is an inherently undesirable trait. That to be desired by men, one needs to be as unlike a woman as possible. Basically the motto of the pickme.

Granted, this was published in 2012, when society was in a much different place, so maybe we give him a pass on that.

What really made him unlikeable was how... slimy and sleazy he was.

In one sentence, he describes one of Lola's friends as having "curves pushing against her clothes, ready to burst".

Eww

I’m not saying that men with established love interests can’t notice other women, but at least in a story that is supposed to be romantic, those thoughts can be written out. Trust me, as a reader, I would rather not know.

Unfortunately, this happens a lot.

“I thought about Funmi and the chemistry between us, bubbling under the surface. I guess it was never appropriate to act on them before. Now it was a definite no-no”

In this paragraph (above), Wole, our lovely hero, references apparent chemistry with Funmi, one of Lola's friends. He then tells himself that he can’t act on that chemistry because Funmi will be married soon and things are now "getting more serious with him and Lola". This is after several months of dating.

* Side Eye *

At this point, I had to physically stop myself from DNFing the book and throwing away my phone.

We read romances to escape this kind of toxicity, not to have it be unironically romanticized.

Eventually, we get a glimpse into his past and it's pretty intriguing. It should have made him more endearing and sympathetic to me but by that point, I was already disinterested. His unappealing traits overshadow any potential for endearment.

An Utter Lack of Romance

Regardless of whether they're likable or not, the romance between them could have saved this book.

Unfortunately, there's no chemistry between Wole and Lola or between Wole and Funmi. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

Wole and Lola’s first date is an example of a sequence of scenes without purpose or conflict. The scene is bland, and the conversation is mind-numbingly dull.

The only glimmer of a spark between them happens when they bond over their similar taste in music. Listening to soul music, I suppose, is meant to make them intriguing and, you know, not like other people.

However, even this spark fails to ignite any real connection between them.

Wole's sleazy thoughts only make the absence of genuine chemistry more obvious.

“I stopped for a second, but he pulled me closer and kissed me again. Second time. Third time. More fireworks! Gosh, the chemistry was fierce!”

Do I really need to continue when there are kiss descriptions like the ones above? If the reader needs to be explicitly told that the chemistry is fierce with an exclamation point, then it probably isn't.

Writing That Felt Wattpad-Y (I'm Sorry)

It's amateurish. Not just simple, but simplistic.

Like all other stories written in the first person, it runs the risk of appearing overly cheesy, but this is more than that. Not only is it cringy, but it feels like an unpolished story straight off of Wattpad.

“She opened the door herself, like two seconds later.”

Lola's thoughts in particular sound childish. For example:

“Titi is such a silly cow. Is Dayo such a smooth player that she cannot open her eyes? I wonder about that girl sometimes.”

Lola's thoughts in various scenes had me laughing out loud because they're more appropriate for a middle schooler than an adult. Another one:

“Oh snap! The listening party is on the same day as my date with Wole! And I had more or less promised Funmi I would be there. Which one should I cancel now? Sigh. Does this mean I have to postpone meeting up with Wole? Unless… unless… maybe I can get him to come with me. But wait, I don’t want him to hang out with all my friends just yet. Oh this is hard!”

Oh, this is hard! ???

The tense is also inconsistent throughout the prose. It abruptly switches from past to present tense from one scene to another, within scenes, sometimes even within the same paragraph.

The dialogue is boring, forced, and often unnecessary. In one scene, Lola and her coworker talked about their weekend activities. In. Detail.

I don't even want to have such small talk in real life. Why do I have to read about it too?

The book is full of fillers like this. Scenes without purpose that don't advance the plot or reveal anything about the characters. Full conversations over nothing important.

There's also a lot of telling.

Lola does not have to tell us that she's still processing her last breakup. That should be obvious from her behavior. But maybe she needs to tell us because we would never guess based on how swiftly she moves into a new relationship.

Maybe the reason the author also tells us that Lola and Wole are in love is because, honestly, we would never know, considering the utter lack of chemistry.

And, because we readers are too dumb to realize that PA stands for "Personal Assistant", the author has to tell us that as well. 

“The personal assistant, or what we familiarly called PA for short.”

Obviously, I’m salty.

Final Thoughts

So disappointing that I had to rant about it.

To be completely honest, at the 30% mark, I was tempted to stop reading this book, but I persisted in the hopes that it would improve. By the halfway point, it was clear that it wouldn't, but I had to finish it so I could fully express my disappointment in this review.

Writing: 1. Too childish for my tastes.

Plot: 1. It feels disjointed, with many loose ends. The romantic relationships feels forced and unrealistic.

Character: 1. They lack depth. I couldn't connect with them or care about their struggles.

Themes: 2. There are hints of themes like friendship, loyalty, and grief, but they're poorly executed and fell flat.

Overall, I rate this book a 1.5 out of 5 stars.

There is an art to writing romance, and at least as of the time of this book, Tolulope Popoola had not yet perfected it.

Who Is It For?

If it wasn't already obvious, I don't recommend this book, but I will be reading more of her work. Probably a more recent one, as I'm sure her writing has improved over the years.

I'll leave you with the book's most thought-provoking sentence.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" The baby began to wail.”