Wahala

The novel opens with a brief prologue. An unnamed woman sits in the corner of her bedroom, clutching a leaded brass sculpture of a head. Her dress is ruined. She stares into the sculpture's eyes, willing it to confirm she is the victim, then picks up the phone and calls for help. The narrative jumps back four months.

Ronke, a dentist in her mid-thirties, arrives at Buka, a Nigerian restaurant in London, for lunch with her best friend Simi. She is annoyed to find Simi seated with Isobel, a glamorous stranger celebrating her divorce. Simi explains that she and Isobel were childhood best friends at a primary school in Lagos, Nigeria, bonding as two of the only mixed-race children in their class before losing touch. Isobel is wealthy, her father a former Nigerian government figure, and she has recently escaped a controlling ex-husband named Chase. After Isobel leaves, Ronke shares her real news: She and her boyfriend Kayode are flat-hunting together. Simi is skeptical, citing Kayode's unreliability.

Boo, the third friend, is a part-time researcher stuck at home with her five-year-old daughter, Sofia, after her husband Didier, a cheerful Frenchman, forgot to watch the child. Boo seethes with resentment about her domestic role. She grew up as the only mixed-race girl in a small Yorkshire village, never having met her biological Nigerian father, and found a sense of identity only at university in Bristol, where she met Ronke and Simi.

Simi, a brand executive at a fashion agency, lives alone while her husband Martin, a forex trader, completes a nine-month secondment in Manhattan. His absence has triggered her recurring impostor syndrome, which first appeared when she was publicly humiliated as a child after her father's business collapsed and resurfaced when she dropped out of medical school. Isobel contacted Simi out of the blue after more than 20 years, having found her through a tagged Facebook photo, and quickly becomes a captivating presence in her life.

Ronke holds her annual memorial for her father, who was killed in a carjacking in Lagos when she was 11. Aunty K, her father's twin sister, remains Ronke's vital link to Nigeria, while her mother has erased all traces of her late husband. Kayode fails to appear, deepening the pattern of unreliability that defines their relationship.

Isobel's confidence reshapes Boo's self-image. She christens Boo "Hot Boo," pushes her toward risk-taking, and coaches her into expensive clothes and gel manicures. In their private conversations, Boo shares the story of her absent father, Dele Babangari. Isobel briefly mutters that Ronke's father "wasn't" perfect, then waves it off.

Simi wins a major pitch at work, but her boss attributes the success to Simi's "urban vibe," a coded reference to her race. When Martin assumes her celebratory call is a pregnancy announcement, his disappointment stings. On a spa weekend, Simi confides to Isobel her deepest secret: She is still on the pill and terminated an early pregnancy without telling Martin. Isobel is unfazed, advising Simi to tell Martin she has been medically cleared as fertile.

As the months pass, Isobel sows division among the friends. She tells Boo about Simi's abortion, framing Simi's silence as distrust. She encourages Boo's flirtation with her boss Neil, and Boo sleeps with him at a work conference. The experience is hollow; he calls her "exotic," which repulses her. She returns home to find Didier and Sofia have prepared a welcome dinner, and she is overwhelmed with guilt.

Simi hosts a couples' dinner for the six friends, deliberately excluding Isobel, and the evening is warm. Isobel is furious at the exclusion. She later invites Ronke to her father's opulent Chelsea townhouse and reveals that she and Kayode were once a couple, suggesting he only dates mixed-race women to plant doubt about his motives. Ronke confronts Kayode, who is evasive and defensive. At a lavish dinner, Isobel gives each friend a custom replica of a leaded brass Ife head, a sculpture depicting an African royal figure, as a "sisterhood" gift.

Having learned about Simi's secret abortion through Isobel and Boo, Ronke confronts Simi at Buka. Simi erupts, shouting that Ronke has never had a real relationship and is deluded about Kayode. They manage a fragile reconciliation. At an extravagant owambe, a festive Nigerian party hosted by Isobel's family, Ronke overhears Simi, Boo, and Isobel mocking her relationship. Devastated, she flees. Kayode picks her up and invites her to Lagos for Christmas.

Simi's father, upon hearing Isobel's surname, warns that the Babangaris are "dangerous" and full of wahala, a Yoruba word for trouble. Simi dismisses him. She reconciles with Ronke and, after Martin reveals he wants them to relocate to Manhattan, accepts her boss's offer to run the agency's new office there.

Then Isobel arrives at Ronke's dental office with a voicemail and texts that appear to prove Kayode is pursuing her. Ronke confronts Kayode, who insists Isobel was the obsessive one, claiming she showed up at his family home pretending to be his fiancée and destroyed his career. Ronke does not believe him.

The three women's lives collapse. Didier discovers Boo's affair on her laptop and takes Sofia to France. When Boo ends the friendship, Isobel explodes, calling her an "ungrateful little bitch." Martin finds Simi's contraceptive pills and the abortion consent form hidden in a shoebox and leaves. Simi initially blames Ronke but learns from the building's doorman that Isobel delivered an envelope addressed to Martin that same day.

Simi's father reveals the truth: Ronke's father was having an affair with Isobel's mother. When Isobel's father discovered it, he had Ronke's father murdered and staged it as a carjacking. Simi's father knew but was too afraid to act. When Simi goes to Ronke, Aunty K has already told her the same devastating truth.

Simi and Boo piece together Isobel's full manipulation: She exposed Simi's secret to Martin, sent damaging messages to Didier from Ronke's phone, and orchestrated each woman's downfall while posing as their confidante. Boo discovers that Isobel's father is Dele Babangari, the same name as her own absent biological father. She and Isobel are half-sisters. Horrified, Boo flies to France.

The police call Simi early one morning: Isobel is at the station and has asked for her. Simi finds Isobel battered. Back at Simi's flat, Isobel says Kayode came to her house wanting to talk about Ronke and that she killed him in self-defense with the Ife head. As Isobel speaks, her tone shifts from anguished to triumphant. When Simi says she must go to Ronke, Isobel turns vicious, sneering that Simi has always been pathetic.

Simi tells Ronke about Kayode's death. Ronke goes to Isobel's house. Isobel opens champagne and speaks casually, revealing that her driver-bodyguard Vadim created her bruises to fake the self-defense claim. As a child, Isobel overheard her mother and Ronke's father planning to run away together and told her father, knowing he would stop it. She killed Kayode because he came begging to reconcile with Ronke: "You don't get to be happy." Ronke stumbles into the snow, and Simi catches her. "I've got you."

Nine months later, the three friends reunite at Buka. Boo has a new job at University College London (UCL) and is in couples therapy with Didier. Simi and Martin live in a Tribeca loft. Ronke has attended a grief support group, has grown closer to her mother and brother, and has met Tony, a dependable widower who has asked her to move in. The case against Isobel remains open with no evidence to prosecute. Ronke pushes open the door and sees Simi's smile and Boo's open arms. It feels like coming home.