British-Nigerian author Lizzie Damilola Blackburn’s debut novel Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? is one month away, set for publication in January 18 2022. This is one book we are anticipating for the ways it challenges our assumptions about love stories and romance heroines.

The novel, described as a witty, feel good love story, centers a high-achieving Nigerian woman in Britain navigating marital pressures from family and friends. The novel will be published by Pamela Dorman Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Read the publisher’s description of the story and see pre-order options below:

Meet Yinka: a thirty-something, Oxford-educated, British Nigerian woman with a well-paid job, good friends, and a mother whose constant refrain is “Yinka, where is your huzband?”

Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story.  But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right.

Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date for Rachel’s Wedding. Aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend, Yinka is determined to succeed. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs to find is herself?

Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? brilliantly subverts the traditional romantic comedy with an unconventional heroine who bravely asks the questions we all have about love. Wry, acerbic, moving, this is a love story that makes you smile but also makes you think–and explores what it means to find your way between two cultures, both of which are yours.”

Blackburn was born and raised in London. Yinka Where is your Huzband? is her debut novel, reportedly drawn from her own experience with singlehood. She lives with her husband in Milton Keynes, England.

Pre-order the book: Amazon | Bookshop.org