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The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives: A Novel
SOON TO BE A NETFLIX SERIES!
Award-winning author Lola Shoneyin delivers an irresistible and entertaining story of marriage, family, power, and heartache set in modern-day Nigeria in her debut novel.
When Baba Segi woke up with a bellyache for the sixth day in a row, he knew it was time to do something drastic about his fourth wife’s childlessness.
For Baba Segi, his collection of wives and gaggle of children are a symbol of prosperity, success, and a validation of his manhood. All is well in this patriarchal home, until Baba arrives with wife number four, a quiet, college-educated, young woman named Bolanle. Jealous and resentful of this interloper who is stealing their husband’s attention, Baba’s three wives, begin to plan her downfall. How dare she not know her place, they whisper. How dare she offer to teach them to read. They will teach her instead, they vow, and open their husbands eyes to this wicked wind who has upturned the tranquility of their home.
Bolanle’s mother worked hard to educate her daughter and save her from a life of polygamy and dependence. She cannot understand why her daughter has chosen such a fate. But Bolanle hides a terrible secret—a secret that will unwittingly exposes the deception and lies, secrets and shame upon which Baba Segi’s household rests.
A stirring rale of men and women, mothers and children, servitude and independence, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives illuminates the common threads that connect the experiences of all the hardships they bear, their struggle to define themselves, and their fierce desire to protect those they love.
Award-winning author Lola Shoneyin delivers an irresistible and entertaining story of marriage, family, power, and heartache set in modern-day Nigeria in her debut novel.
When Baba Segi woke up with a bellyache for the sixth day in a row, he knew it was time to do something drastic about his fourth wife’s childlessness.
For Baba Segi, his collection of wives and gaggle of children are a symbol of prosperity, success, and a validation of his manhood. All is well in this patriarchal home, until Baba arrives with wife number four, a quiet, college-educated, young woman named Bolanle. Jealous and resentful of this interloper who is stealing their husband’s attention, Baba’s three wives, begin to plan her downfall. How dare she not know her place, they whisper. How dare she offer to teach them to read. They will teach her instead, they vow, and open their husbands eyes to this wicked wind who has upturned the tranquility of their home.
Bolanle’s mother worked hard to educate her daughter and save her from a life of polygamy and dependence. She cannot understand why her daughter has chosen such a fate. But Bolanle hides a terrible secret—a secret that will unwittingly exposes the deception and lies, secrets and shame upon which Baba Segi’s household rests.
A stirring rale of men and women, mothers and children, servitude and independence, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives illuminates the common threads that connect the experiences of all the hardships they bear, their struggle to define themselves, and their fierce desire to protect those they love.
- GenresFiction
Audible Audio
Published January 19, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 1, 2025
What a masterpiece! This book is beautifully woven together, and the author did an excellent job. It provides insight into the home of a polygamist whose wives each have their own secrets, alongside shared ones. I applaud Bolane for not settling for less and for finally realizing that what happened to her as a child was not her fault and should not dictate her future. Overall, it’s an amazing book.
December 6, 2025
Phenomenal reading by the author. The story was captivating in itself, but the fact that I listened to the author's voice and her wonderful impersonations really brought the narrative alive. Highly recommended!
July 27, 2025
I enjoyed this book. Baba Segi and his wives were very good characters with a lot of depth. I thought the way each characters back story was told was timed perfectly to progress the present plot forward. The dynamic between the wives was interesting but I understand what motivated each wife in the end. I think this book tells each woman’s perspective and story well and even though each wife is different motherhood is a central element and how men and society tie a woman’s worth to her womb. Overall an excellent read and I will look for other books by this author.
May 22, 2026
I liked this novel. There were moments I absolutely loved it. Yet there were also moments when I found myself deeply frustrated by it. Such an engrossing, almost intoxicating whirlwind of a reading experience from this, my first encounter with Lola Shoneyin, and surely not to be my last. My only regret with the novel is that it had every right to be a 5-star read, but ultimately earned a 3-star from me, most disappointingly, because of some very costly narrative and authorial choices which, in my view, weakened the ending of what had otherwise been a remarkably compelling novel.
Lola Shoneyin has a great story to tell here, and for most of the book, she tells it wonderfully. From the very first page to the unfortunate missteps, my personal read, that accompanied the climax of the narrative at the very end, the reader is held hostage by the addictive prose Shoneyin so effortlessly spoils us with. The more one reads, the more intriguing the narrative becomes. Not to mention the ensemble of characters, such an incredible feast of distinct personalities, each one carefully fleshed out and accented by a unique history, temperament, wound, and private logic. By the time the novel gathers momentum, the reader feels as though they actually know Baba Segi, his quirks, appetites, vanities, insecurities, idiosyncrasies, and all. The pacing too was apt; the narrative never felt rushed, nor did it drag itself out needlessly. Shoneyin’s technique of allowing the various core characters to narrate standalone chapters from their own POV, crisscrossing with the main narrative chapters, ensured that the story retained freshness, movement, and intrigue throughout.
Having said all that then, it feels paradoxical, if not outright hypocritical on my part, to render the book 3 stars when evidently I greatly enjoyed it. Even worse, there were moments while reading when I quite seriously flirted with the idea of this being a 5-star novel. Ultimately, what felt like a needless “own goal” was how Shoneyin, for lack of more apt wording, mishandled the ending and post-climax of the novel. It read and felt like she wanted to overwhelm the reader powerfully towards the end, when finally the secret of Baba Segi’s wives is revealed. But instead of allowing us, the readers, to fully sit with how this obviously distraught, humiliated, and shocked father comes to terms with the fact that the nine children he thought he had with his three wives were not his, we are also asked to deal with Segi’s death as well. Both are enormous narrative blows, delivered within the same one or two odd chapters, back to back; heck, one of them, Segi’s death, occurring right in the middle of the other.
Needless to say, both intended jolts ended up blunting the emotional force and shock-value of each other. Of course, I as the reader felt terrible that Segi, this innocent young girl, dies most unfortunately due to the egregious intentions and actions of her own mother, Iya Segi, which backfired most cruelly. But I was not allowed to be fully emotionally vested in that tragedy, because I was also partly invested in how Baba Segi would go about reconciling the earth-shattering revelation regarding his wives and children. Shoneyin perhaps did not need the additional jolt of Segi dying. Having her almost die due to the poisoning pretty much delivered the intended horror to the reader. Her actual death, rather than deepening the climax, congested it. It made the ending feel less like a carefully earned emotional reckoning and more like the novel trying to detonate every remaining explosive at once.
Not to mention, with the extra narrative time and emotional space taken up by Segi’s death, I feel we lost critical and, in fact, necessary further dialogue from all the wives as to why they did what they did. Having Iya Segi speak on behalf of all three felt like a cop-out to the reader. The novel had spent so much time giving these women their own voices, their own injuries, their own calculations, and their own complicated reasons for becoming who they became. So when the secret finally erupts into the open, why then are we denied the fullness of those voices? Why does the reckoning suddenly become so compressed? So suddenly, when the jig is up, it is now that the very loud, bullish, and self-centered Iya Femi loses her voice?
Even Baba Segi’s decision, or better said, choice, to still accept the children and keep his adulterous three wives defeated, at least for me, the logic of the character himself. As his own friend, “Teacher,” advised him, since the children were not biologically his, they would invariably, when older, seek out their real biological fathers. Yet Baba Segi still chooses to keep them, and everyone, as if a catastrophic, soul-crashing revelation never occurred. Shoneyin’s explanation for this, per the narrative, is that by sacking the wives and children, Baba Segi would expose to the whole community that “his balls are empty,” hence why he chose to forgive and keep everyone, but with new rules. And yes, this explanation is not without some logic, especially given Baba Segi’s obsession with public masculinity, virility, and reputation. But still, it does not fully jive with the larger-than-life, extremely traditional, patriarchal, wealthy but culturally “local man” essence and personality which embodied Baba Segi throughout the novel.
To be fair, I could accept Baba Segi choosing concealment over public disgrace. In fact, there is something very believable about a man like him preferring to preserve the appearance of masculine authority rather than expose the truth of his own infertility to the world. But the problem is that the novel does not sufficiently dramatize the emotional and psychological process by which he arrives at that decision. It is not the decision itself that is wholly impossible; it is that the journey to it feels too thin for the magnitude of what has just been revealed. A revelation that should have shattered the man, or at least forced a fuller confrontation with the wreckage of his self-image, is resolved too neatly, too quickly, and with too little of the internal devastation one would expect from Baba Segi of all people.
Shoneyin, in the afterword of the book, admits that one criticism levied against her is that she “tried to make everyone happy” at the end. Ultimately, I will have to agree. But at the cost of what? Sacrificing a nudge of painstaking character development so the ending could arrive at a more palatable peace? That, to me, is what makes the novel so frustrating. It had the prose, the pacing, the characters, the intrigue, and the emotional machinery of a 5-star novel. But the ending, most unfortunately, did not quite trust the strength of what had already been built. It needlessly reached for additional shock where the existing revelation was already devastating enough. In effect, among others, it gave Baba Segi an ending that may make narrative sense on the book pages but did not, at least for me, fully satiate the emotional logic of that character.
Lola Shoneyin has a great story to tell here, and for most of the book, she tells it wonderfully. From the very first page to the unfortunate missteps, my personal read, that accompanied the climax of the narrative at the very end, the reader is held hostage by the addictive prose Shoneyin so effortlessly spoils us with. The more one reads, the more intriguing the narrative becomes. Not to mention the ensemble of characters, such an incredible feast of distinct personalities, each one carefully fleshed out and accented by a unique history, temperament, wound, and private logic. By the time the novel gathers momentum, the reader feels as though they actually know Baba Segi, his quirks, appetites, vanities, insecurities, idiosyncrasies, and all. The pacing too was apt; the narrative never felt rushed, nor did it drag itself out needlessly. Shoneyin’s technique of allowing the various core characters to narrate standalone chapters from their own POV, crisscrossing with the main narrative chapters, ensured that the story retained freshness, movement, and intrigue throughout.
Having said all that then, it feels paradoxical, if not outright hypocritical on my part, to render the book 3 stars when evidently I greatly enjoyed it. Even worse, there were moments while reading when I quite seriously flirted with the idea of this being a 5-star novel. Ultimately, what felt like a needless “own goal” was how Shoneyin, for lack of more apt wording, mishandled the ending and post-climax of the novel. It read and felt like she wanted to overwhelm the reader powerfully towards the end, when finally the secret of Baba Segi’s wives is revealed. But instead of allowing us, the readers, to fully sit with how this obviously distraught, humiliated, and shocked father comes to terms with the fact that the nine children he thought he had with his three wives were not his, we are also asked to deal with Segi’s death as well. Both are enormous narrative blows, delivered within the same one or two odd chapters, back to back; heck, one of them, Segi’s death, occurring right in the middle of the other.
Needless to say, both intended jolts ended up blunting the emotional force and shock-value of each other. Of course, I as the reader felt terrible that Segi, this innocent young girl, dies most unfortunately due to the egregious intentions and actions of her own mother, Iya Segi, which backfired most cruelly. But I was not allowed to be fully emotionally vested in that tragedy, because I was also partly invested in how Baba Segi would go about reconciling the earth-shattering revelation regarding his wives and children. Shoneyin perhaps did not need the additional jolt of Segi dying. Having her almost die due to the poisoning pretty much delivered the intended horror to the reader. Her actual death, rather than deepening the climax, congested it. It made the ending feel less like a carefully earned emotional reckoning and more like the novel trying to detonate every remaining explosive at once.
Not to mention, with the extra narrative time and emotional space taken up by Segi’s death, I feel we lost critical and, in fact, necessary further dialogue from all the wives as to why they did what they did. Having Iya Segi speak on behalf of all three felt like a cop-out to the reader. The novel had spent so much time giving these women their own voices, their own injuries, their own calculations, and their own complicated reasons for becoming who they became. So when the secret finally erupts into the open, why then are we denied the fullness of those voices? Why does the reckoning suddenly become so compressed? So suddenly, when the jig is up, it is now that the very loud, bullish, and self-centered Iya Femi loses her voice?
Even Baba Segi’s decision, or better said, choice, to still accept the children and keep his adulterous three wives defeated, at least for me, the logic of the character himself. As his own friend, “Teacher,” advised him, since the children were not biologically his, they would invariably, when older, seek out their real biological fathers. Yet Baba Segi still chooses to keep them, and everyone, as if a catastrophic, soul-crashing revelation never occurred. Shoneyin’s explanation for this, per the narrative, is that by sacking the wives and children, Baba Segi would expose to the whole community that “his balls are empty,” hence why he chose to forgive and keep everyone, but with new rules. And yes, this explanation is not without some logic, especially given Baba Segi’s obsession with public masculinity, virility, and reputation. But still, it does not fully jive with the larger-than-life, extremely traditional, patriarchal, wealthy but culturally “local man” essence and personality which embodied Baba Segi throughout the novel.
To be fair, I could accept Baba Segi choosing concealment over public disgrace. In fact, there is something very believable about a man like him preferring to preserve the appearance of masculine authority rather than expose the truth of his own infertility to the world. But the problem is that the novel does not sufficiently dramatize the emotional and psychological process by which he arrives at that decision. It is not the decision itself that is wholly impossible; it is that the journey to it feels too thin for the magnitude of what has just been revealed. A revelation that should have shattered the man, or at least forced a fuller confrontation with the wreckage of his self-image, is resolved too neatly, too quickly, and with too little of the internal devastation one would expect from Baba Segi of all people.
Shoneyin, in the afterword of the book, admits that one criticism levied against her is that she “tried to make everyone happy” at the end. Ultimately, I will have to agree. But at the cost of what? Sacrificing a nudge of painstaking character development so the ending could arrive at a more palatable peace? That, to me, is what makes the novel so frustrating. It had the prose, the pacing, the characters, the intrigue, and the emotional machinery of a 5-star novel. But the ending, most unfortunately, did not quite trust the strength of what had already been built. It needlessly reached for additional shock where the existing revelation was already devastating enough. In effect, among others, it gave Baba Segi an ending that may make narrative sense on the book pages but did not, at least for me, fully satiate the emotional logic of that character.
April 1, 2025
Super funny! Really enjoyed this read and totally DID NOT expect the plot twist/ending. So Yoruba in the most authentic way possible lol
May 29, 2026
The first time I read this book, I was riding a train to another city. The ending had me SHOOK! Ms Shoneyin did that!
She writes in such a way that invites you into the book. She drops you straight into Baba Segi's compound. You can smell the stew, hear the whispers, feel the tension in the air resulting from the competition for affection, attention, intimacy and finance between co-wives.
The theme predominant in this book is Polygamy. And Ms Shoneyin pointed some of the issues found in such homes including the issue of infertility. It is common belief in Nigeria that infertility issues are related to the woman. Hence, the stigma, the shame and the urge by the 'barren woman' to get a child elsewhere as her co-wives, meanwhile global study points to how men also contribute to infertility issues in marriages.
She writes in such a way that invites you into the book. She drops you straight into Baba Segi's compound. You can smell the stew, hear the whispers, feel the tension in the air resulting from the competition for affection, attention, intimacy and finance between co-wives.
The theme predominant in this book is Polygamy. And Ms Shoneyin pointed some of the issues found in such homes including the issue of infertility. It is common belief in Nigeria that infertility issues are related to the woman. Hence, the stigma, the shame and the urge by the 'barren woman' to get a child elsewhere as her co-wives, meanwhile global study points to how men also contribute to infertility issues in marriages.
January 22, 2026
Full disclosure - I think I would have rated this higher if I read the physical copy, instead of listening to the audiobook. Because of the many relationships and connections between characters, this book would probably be easier to follow-along with in a format where you could easily flip between chapters, pages, etc., to keep track of things.
That said, I did really appreciate the complexity of characters in this novel, as well as the nuanced setting for the story to unfold. There is a wonderful level of depth to the stories woven together here, and many powerful takeaways for married women, if all ages.
That said, I did really appreciate the complexity of characters in this novel, as well as the nuanced setting for the story to unfold. There is a wonderful level of depth to the stories woven together here, and many powerful takeaways for married women, if all ages.
March 21, 2026
I found myself pulled into this story although I didn’t like the characters very much. Besides Bolanle, I didn’t care for any of them until their individual stories began to be told. Although it didn’t change my opinion of some of them, the origin stories were essential to providing insight into their current motivations and actions. So with this, I found myself captivated by and reading this book much quicker than I’d anticipated. Our book club discussion of this book next week should be very interesting!
3.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️’s
3.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️’s
January 7, 2026
Only a foolish woman leans heavily on a man's promises.
― Lola Shoneyin, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives
Overall, this was a fun reading experience. Great characters made strong by the depth and power of their background stories and how those connected to their present actions and decisions. Not necessarily my ideal ending but it works. Definitely had some good laughs and some tender moments. There were, however, a few times that the writing might have been less than ideal.
― Lola Shoneyin, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives
Overall, this was a fun reading experience. Great characters made strong by the depth and power of their background stories and how those connected to their present actions and decisions. Not necessarily my ideal ending but it works. Definitely had some good laughs and some tender moments. There were, however, a few times that the writing might have been less than ideal.
April 20, 2026
This book had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. The characters felt so real, and I found myself having almost like a movie playing in my head as I read. I had so much fun researching the Yoruba words throughout the book. I enjoyed the characters and their respective complex and dynamic stories. I recommend this to anyone looking for a captivating story. It makes you really question how culture places emphasis on gender roles and how that can have dangerous consequences.
September 12, 2025
J’ai adoré comment on a montré que parfois ce qui paraît être de mauvais choix nous rend plus fort. L’histoire de bolanle est tout simplement magnifique le caractère du personnage est trop bien et les scènes sont si bien faite vraiment trop bien.
October 5, 2025
One of my favourite reads this year. The plot twist!!
October 16, 2025
Polygamy, secrets, sex and humor made this a pleasurable read!
January 9, 2026
Great book, left me yearning for a sequel
January 13, 2026
Such a great book! I would love to see a movie or play of this!
January 23, 2026
I read this book twice and might read it again in a year or so. Baba Segi is a typical traditional Nigerian man, but his wivesssssssss, were the real MVPs.
March 10, 2026
4.25/5
March 13, 2026
4.5 stars!
April 13, 2026
This book left me almost at a loss for words. I kept thinking, Ah these womennn. It was such a page turner. I loved how each character was given their own back story. It made it easy to understand their motivations and why they made the choices they did. I’m looking forward to the movie adaptation later this year
February 22, 2026
Entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews