Unsettling rumours swirl in the privileged halls of Nithercott Academy. Students are disappearing and if they return at all, they’re uncannily changed.
As figures lurk in the shadows, watching and waiting, new student Ife will do whatever it takes to survive.
But when the scales of power are tipped against you, what is the cost of fighting back?
*sigh* where do I even start with this? 🥴
(First of all, I actually got this book while someone else was after it. When I put it on the counter, the sales assistant looked at it for a minute and was like… “there it is.” He then told me another employee had been frantically searching for it for a customer, but couldn’t find it because I’d been walking around the shop with it. I could have missed out! Now I wish she’d got to it first.)
You might look at that cover and think “ooh spooky!” Because I certainly did. But it isn’t. I also thought it was YA, but it isn’t that, either. It’s actually a children’s book, even though the characters are 16/17, but that’s fine too, because kids’ books can still be creepy, and I mean, just look at the cover!
Ife Adebola is a new student of Nithercott School as part of their Urban Achievers Programme. As one of the few black students there, and not being financially well off, she doesn’t feel as though she fits in with the other students. She also misses her best friend, Zanna, who she can’t contact when her phone gets confiscated. (And yes, you’ll wonder why she doesn’t use the School’s internal facetime system to contact Zanna like she does her parents, but that would be a glaring plot hole so we won’t talk about that).
As luck would have it, another Urban Achiever, Bijal, is determined to befriend her, not respecting the fact Ife doesn’t want anything to do with her, and pissing me off in the process because she just won’t leave well enough alone. She even has the audacity to claim Ife makes everything about her, and doesn’t care about anyone but herself. To which Ife replies:
You’re the one who chose to try and make me your friend any way possible. That’s not how friendships happen, Bee. You can’t make people like you. It’s suffocating!
And I was like yes! You tell her, Ife. And I hoped she’d be rid of her for good and leave it at that, but no. We get a very sudden turn around from Ife, and then they’re mates. Bijal reads horoscopes and looks into conspiracy theories, but won’t believe in The Changing Man as a supernatural being.
Ife and Bijal also befriend Ben, whose brother mysteriously disappeared during the prologue, and who Ben has been trying to find ever since. And you’d think the serious nature of a missing sibling would make a character sullen and distracted, and for the first five minutes he is, but the rest of the time he’s played off as a silly boy who’s a little odd, and keeps strange things in his pockets. Like he’s the younger version of Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter. He’s also called “Intellectually intimidating” by the booksmart Bijal, despite the fact that during the prologue, he was texting his brother to help him cheat in his English assignment. At least unlike the gaslighting Bijal, Ben has a nice word to say for Ife, calling her ‘determined and brave,’ though what he’s basing that on, I’ve no idea.
In part, because Ife suffers from anxiety, and I could believe that’s what makes her stutter at the start of almost every sentence, if only she was the only one who did it. And speaking of repetitive behaviours… Ben smirks. All the time, and especially at his ‘friends’ Ife and Bijal, which I found an odd writing choice from Oyemakinde. Smirking is usually a negative response, so it reads as if he’s looking down on, or laughing at them.
Ife’s interest in anything Changing Man related begins when one of her only friends at the school, Malika, begins behaving oddly. Choosing to hang out with girls she’d made fun of before and taking all her earrings out. I think that’s it. To be honest, as an inciting incident, it’s a pretty weak one. I don’t think we saw enough of Malika in the book to warrant it having that much of an impact on Ife. She’s supposedly so concerned about Malika, but there’s only a brief exchange about nothing serious, where she doesn’t show any concern…then nothing. She’s not even background noise for the rest of the book.
I got so bored reading The Changing Man, that I was tempted to DNF. The premise was interesting, but bore little resemblance to what you actually get. The plot starts to move forward toward the end (the point at which you’re already bored silly) but that’s where it really feels like a kids’ book. There’s a villain who, out of nowhere, starts speaking in rhyme, bad guys who get taken out by pickle juice, of all things, stupid flower names, and a blatant ripoff of Animorphs.
The pacing throughout is slow, with no atmosphere or creepy setting to make up for it, and I can’t believe anyone in the children’s age group would find this engaging. As an example, here’s the type of description you get.
To my left there are stairs. We climb them and reach a shallow tunnel opening. Walking through, we come out into a forest of shrubbery dappled with colour. Out ahead is a black door with golden details. It stands freely with nothing seemingly around it. There’s a rustle to my left.
Wow. Engaging.
On the writing style the word ‘glorious’ gets said by at least three different characters, there are at least five instances of missing full stops, one instance of two commas used consecutively, and for an English writer writing about English characters…American words?? (Yams, bangs, and cotton candy). There’s also a page where Ife kicks off her shoes, and then on THE VERY NEXT PAGE, she kicks off her shoes. And for the love of god, if a character frowns, just say that! Someone ‘squishing their eyebrows together’ sounds cute and different the first time, but not every time, and from every character.
The beginning of The Changing Man had the tiniest hint of One Of Us Is Lying with a passing resemblance to The Loop, and inspiration from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and Animorphs, clearly). But The Changing Man wasn’t creepy or suspenseful. If you want that, read The Call.
I’d been excited to read this one for Halloween, but the only spooky element came from the cover. It was slow, boring, and a struggle to get through.
WHEN THE BOOKENDS 