I enjoyed this, and it is a little unfair to compare Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to herself, but this one fell flat for me. In reading Purple Hibiscus, I could sense the seeds of the post-colonial, Nigerian, and human themes that Adichie would portray in later works with more feeling and nuance.
This feels like a first novel, because the characters were not fleshed out, and the pacing was off. While on one hand, I could see the emotional distance with which the characters and story were written as an intentional choice to depict the emotional distance with which the main character (and her family) operates in a perfunctory manner in order to function under the authoritarian mandates and domestic violence of her father, it blunted my ability to empathize.