Honest Thoughts on The List: Relevant But Underwhelming

I just finished The List by Yomi Adegoke, and… I have a lot of mixed feelings. To be totally honest, this book didn’t really work for me — but I can definitely see why some readers are loving it. It’s sharp, topical, and unafraid to dive into murky waters, but at the same time, I found it hard to stay emotionally engaged and often felt let down by its execution.

Let’s start with the premise, because it's incredibly compelling: Ola and Michael are this power couple—young, successful, Black, media darlings—who are just days away from their wedding when Michael’s name appears on an anonymous online list accusing men of sexual misconduct. From there, their seemingly perfect life implodes. The setup has all the makings of a tight, tense psychological drama, and the themes? Huge. We're talking cancel culture, digital justice, truth versus perception, trust in relationships, feminism, the complexities of believing women—massive, timely stuff.

And Adegoke deserves serious credit for going there. She doesn't spoon-feed the reader an answer or force a moral stance, which I really respect. Instead, she leans into the ambiguity. Is Michael guilty? Should Ola stay? Should the public get to decide someone’s fate based on anonymous claims? There are no easy answers, and that grey area is exactly where the book lives.

But here’s where things broke down for me: I never fully connected with the characters. Ola is at the centre of the story, and while her situation is heart-breaking—and, honestly, infuriating at times—I struggled to feel like I really knew her. Her internal monologue started to feel repetitive after a while, and her decisions sometimes left me more frustrated than sympathetic. I wanted to root for her, but I couldn’t always make sense of her choices.

Michael, on the other hand, is written to be ambiguous—maybe innocent, maybe not—and while that works in theory, it also meant I never fully felt invested in his character arc. He often came across as passive or emotionally detached, even in scenes where his life was crumbling. Instead of feeling like a layered, complex portrait of a man in crisis, it sometimes just felt flat.

And then there’s the pacing. I have no issue with a slow burn, but this one felt sluggish. There were chapters where very little happened plot-wise, and I found myself waiting for the story to do something. There’s a ton of reflection, dialogue, and social commentary—which again, might be exactly what some readers are looking for—but I kept wishing the plot would move forward or the characters would evolve in some more meaningful way.

That said, the book does handle the central themes with care. The idea of an anonymous list feels terrifyingly realistic, especially in an age where social media can be both a platform for justice and a tool for destruction. Adegoke does a great job capturing the double-edged sword of online accountability—the empowerment it can bring, but also the chaos it can unleash. There’s a real tension between wanting to believe victims and fearing the fallout of false allegations, and the book explores that tension without ever tipping the scale too far in one direction.

And while I didn’t love Ola and Michael as characters, their relationship did feel painfully real at times. That push and pull between love, betrayal, and self-preservation was probably the most compelling part of the book for me. Watching them unravel—not just as a couple, but as individuals—made for some genuinely powerful moments.

In the end, though, I finished The List feeling underwhelmed. I appreciated what it was trying to say, and I think it's important that stories like this exist. But for me, the execution just didn’t hit as hard as the premise promised. It felt more like a thought experiment than an emotional journey—and I think I needed more of the latter to really love it.

It does have:

• Great premise

• Relevant and timely themes

• Thought-provoking moral questions

• Flat characters

• Dragging pace

• Left me more detached than invested

Would I recommend it? Honestly… maybe, depending on what you’re looking for. If you’re into messy, character-driven fiction that’s more about ideas than plot, you might love it. But if you’re looking for something with momentum and emotional payoff, this might fall flat.

My rating: 2/5 — didn’t work for me, but I completely understand why others are raving about it.