Title: The Sting Of Passion
Author: Adebayo Abidemi Zainab
Reviewer: Ogochukwu Uzokwe
Publisher: OAK Initiative
Adebayo Abidemi Zainab’s trilogy, The Sting of Passion, is a narrative that dwells on family problems, work ethics, integrity, lifestyle and others. The trilogy serves as a pathway for youths, especially deviants, to chart the right path.
Highlighting some of the non-confirming behaviours among youths, the collection reveals how some youths are influenced by their peers or latently coerced by those they look up to as mentors to do what they would ordinarily not have done on their own.
Published in 2022 by OAK initiative, a not-for-profit arm of OAK Foundation supporting indigent students, widows and the fatherless in Africa, the trilogy comprises A Family Affair, The Sting Of Passion and What Goes Around. Aside from encouraging reading culture, the books strive to make readers cultivate the right attitude.
One of the books, A Family Affair, is divided into eight chapters with Tolu Obalade, a widow, as the protagonist.
Ade Kuforiji, in spite of his niece, Mrs Obalade’s plight, swindles her of N150,000. The discovery spawns strings of issues within the family that elders in the family have to intervene to restore peace.
The second story, The Sting Of Passion, is divided into four chapters. The central character is a beautiful lady, Ayomide.
Knowing her endowment, she uses it, to attract big clients and contracts to her company. This puts her in the good books of her boss. This goes on for a while until she becomes pregnant for one of the company’s clients and secret lover, Dr. Ajani, the Chief Medical Director of Green Health Hospitals.
The pregnancy becomes a public discuss, especially as Dr. Ajani cancels the contract Ayomide brought for the company as a result of their love gone sour. The company relieves Ayomide of her job for this. This also caused the beautiful lady of her peace and happiness, as she muses why her lover wants her to terminate the pregnancy.
The third book, What Goes Around is about the things that happen in the school system. Divided into five chapters, Gbolahan, the Senior Prefect, is the main hero.
Known for his smartness, intelligence and culture, Gbolahan worms himself into the hearts of the school principal and the teachers.
While everyone sees him as a model to look up to, little did they know that the Senior Prefect pilfers and has been using his authority to suppress other students and also make them do unpleasant things for him.
However, things turns around when Gbolahan steals Mr. Olushola’s N5,000 and is caught. And after facing the disciplinary committee, he is relieved of his position and suspended from school.
Harping on everyday happenings, the author uses simple language and structure to make her narratives easy for readers to read and comprehend.
However, despite the didactic storylines, issues on some of the chapters were overdramatise and would have at bests been emerge into just a chapter instead of expanding them to two or three chapters.
Irrespective of this, the trilogy is a must read for any young person desiring to rise to power and for family discuss or moral and better society.
