I got Everyone’s Thinking It, by Aleema Omotoni, as a blind date with a book from Macabre Librarian. I choose this one based on the mini-description as a prep-school mystery, with queer and Nigerian protagonists. I’ve enjoyed other private-school stories and other Nigerian fiction. (The mushroom sticker on the package didn’t hurt, either.)
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Iyanu’s just finished taking photos of a school matchmaking event, when someone steals her prints and adds a personal secret to each one, and sends them all around campus. Each message reveals something the recipient would like to hide. Iyanu wants to clear her name, of course, but she’s also curious about who could know all these secrets and who’d want to attack basically everyone in school.
I enjoyed the development of Iyanu and Kitan, two Nigerian cousins at a post British boarding school, and their complicated relationship with each other. Day student Iyanu is more comfortable spending time with her one bestie. When she takes photos for school events, it really works to highlight how she’s extra visible and outside the usual rules of the school.
Kitan is a boarder, with her parents back home in Nigeria. She’s done everything to adapt to upscale British life at Wodebury, including befriending the queen bee of their year and coordinating her clothes with her Wodebury besties. Both girls feel like the other has it so much easier.
Both encounter racism, whether it’s prep school boys who won’t date a Nigerian classmate or school rumors that play on racial stereotypes. But there are a lot of indirect moments too, which helped to develop their characters more. A teacher who praises their family as one of the good ones, as though there are so many similar and not-good families. A schoolmate who mixes them up.
Unfortunately, parts of this novel gave the private-school atmosphere a bit too well, as there are a bunch of characters with complicated relationships introduced quickly. I spent a lot of the novel checking back, wait, who had a fight in year 9? Who are the sets of cousins? Who plays rugby? Who’s got a crush? This affects the payoff, since it took me a lot of the book to figure out who was interested in whom, and who I wanted to get together, so I was much less invested in the romantic resolution.
The villains are believable baddies, with prep school teen motivations like becoming head girl or social media influencer or rugby star. One villain is a bit too evil, but we readers are led down to gently. Heather starts out with a relatable interest in her own heritage, but when she discovers she’s a tiny bit mixed, she starts wearing bronzer, and then chooses Beyonce for her costume… Eventually, she’s getting a new role as a diversity influencer. I liked this shift from interesting to a bit cringy to extreme because it developed her friends’ reactions.