Tomilola Coco Adeyemo Creates A Sanctuary for the Brokenhearted in “A Nollywood Christmas” 

What happens when you mix family trauma, Nollywood glamour, forbidden love, depression, friendship, second chances, and long-awaited reunions? You get Tomilola Coco Adeyemo’s A Nollywood Christmas. The story follows Anu Fashoranti, a woman in her forties who’s content with her carefully built life—until she meets a younger man who turns her entire world upside down.

The novel opens with Anu at breakfast, abruptly interrupted by an email that shatters her morning calm. She’s being summoned to Ibadan for a film production, a city she fled years ago, haunted by painful childhood memories. Despite her resistance, she reluctantly returns to oversee the project. Anu has built her life around control and distance. She buries her pain in fleeting physical relationships, and her success ensures she has her pick of partners. But increasingly, these men want what she can’t offer: commitment, permanence, marriage. Anu has convinced herself she isn’t built for that kind of life. Everything shifts when she reconnects with Tai Smith, an old childhood friend whose gentle presence begins to melt the ice around her heart, piece by careful piece.

Adeyemo crafts a compelling narrative structure through the alternating perspectives of Anu and Tai. By employing first person for Anu’s chapters and third person for Tai’s, the author creates a balanced lens through which readers experience their world. We inhabit Anu’s fractured psyche directly, feeling her defense mechanisms and buried wounds, while observing Tai from a thoughtful distance that allows us to appreciate his patience and his own complexities.

At its core, this is a love story, but one shadowed by the weight of unhealed trauma. Anu’s childhood isn’t merely sad; it’s devastating. No child should witness their father beating their mother to death and emerge unscathed, yet Anu survived while shouldering the burden of protecting her younger siblings. Adeyemo handles this trauma with remarkable skill, showing us how Anu’s shattered pieces have been carefully rearranged into the façade of a successful, independent woman. Her pattern of avoiding emotional intimacy isn’t framed as a character flaw but as a survival mechanism, armor she’s worn for so long she’s forgotten flesh remains underneath.

The novel’s thematic heart beats with various forms of love: familial bonds tested by tragedy, friendships that endure despite distance and time, and romantic connection that demands vulnerability. Adeyemo makes a powerful argument that brokenness doesn’t disqualify anyone from deserving love—that even those who have built walls are worthy of someone willing to climb them.

What elevates the story beyond typical romance is Adeyemo’s evident insider knowledge of Nollywood. The film industry details feel lived-in rather than researched, from the chaotic energy of production sets to the politics of creative collaboration. This authenticity gives the title its full resonance—this isn’t simply a Christmas story that happens to mention Nollywood; the industry itself becomes a character, a backdrop that influences decisions and relationships within the narrative.

Like most great love stories, this one begins with an unsuspecting meet-cute. Anu encounters Tai on her first night in Ibadan while actively seeking casual company, and immediately tries to dismiss him. After all, he’s her brother’s old friend, a relic from the past she’s spent decades trying to outrun. But fate, as it often does, has other plans. When they’re thrown together on set—him as the lead actor, her as his superior—their connection becomes impossible to ignore. The power dynamics, the professional boundaries, the ghosts of shared history: everything that should keep them apart instead becomes fuel for a forbidden attraction that neither can resist.

The beauty of Adeyemo’s storytelling lies in her understanding that love stories persist not despite obstacles, but because of the ways characters choose to overcome them. She orchestrates multiple chances for Anu and Tai to collide, each encounter peeling back another layer of Anu’s armor. The novel’s emotional climax arrives when Anu finally confronts the demons she’s been fleeing. Her reunion with her siblings carries weight, a testament to the idea that healing, though never linear, is always possible. These scenes pulse with hard-won catharsis.

Among the supporting cast, Temi—Tai’s ex—emerges as the most intriguing figure. Adeyemo grants her unusual narrative space, dedicating two chapters to her perspective, which naturally raises expectations for her role in the conflict. Given her characterization as a glamorous, cosmetically enhanced woman scorned, I found myself anticipating dramatic sabotage: leaked videos of Anu and Tai’s relationship, public accusations of workplace impropriety, or exposés framing their romance as an abuse of power—a Nollywood executive exploiting her position with a younger actor. The ingredients for scandal were all there, simmering.

Instead, after many rejected attempts to reconnect with Tai, Temi stops visiting his parents and withdraws from the narrative. At first, this felt like a missed opportunity for further tension. But upon reflection, it’s a deliberate choice that reveals the author’s true intentions. A Nollywood Christmas isn’t interested in the schadenfreude of messy revenge plots or the cheap thrills of manufactured drama. Adeyemo has written a feel-good story in the truest sense—one that believes in grace, even for characters who could easily become villains. It’s a book designed to comfort rather than stress.

This intention extends even to the novel’s paratext: Adeyemo includes a curated playlist, inviting readers to enhance their experience with music, perhaps while lounging by the beach or curled up during the holidays. It’s a generous gesture that frames the reading experience as an act of self-care.

Ultimately, A Nollywood Christmas offers unabashed sincerity. And you can tell that the male protagonist, Tai, was written by a woman. In a world saturated with cynicism, anger, and betrayal, Adeyemo creates sanctuary for the brokenhearted. She writes with conviction that genuine love still exists, that people carrying grief don’t need to be fixed before they deserve connection. For anyone who’s ever felt too damaged for happiness, this novel extends a message: you are worthy of love exactly as you are, scars and all.