Hope and Glory Audiobook By Jendella Benson cover art

Hope and Glory

A Novel

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Hope and Glory

By: Jendella Benson
Narrated by: Kelechi Okafor
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $25.19

Buy for $25.19

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

One of the year’s most anticipated by Marie Claire, Essence, Debutiful, & Goodreads

A brilliant debut by a British-Nigerian author—a heartfelt family drama that will delight book club readers/listeners and fans of books like The Girl with the Louding Voice and Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows.

“Jendella Benson has drawn such a compelling world. The book and the characters stayed with me long after I'd turned the final pages!” —Candice Carty-Williams, bestselling author of Queenie

Glory Akindele returns to London from her seemingly glamorous life in LA to mourn the sudden death of her father, only to find her previously close family has fallen apart in her absence. Her brother, Victor, is in jail and won’t speak to her because she didn’t come home for his trial. Her older sister, Faith, once a busy career woman, appears to have lost her independence and ambition, and is instead channeling her energies into holding together a perfect suburban family. Worst of all, their mother, Celeste, is headed toward a breakdown after the death of her husband and the shame of her son’s incarceration.

Rather than returning to America, Glory decides to stay and try to bring them all together again. It’s a tall order given that Glory’s life isn’t exactly working out according to plan either, and she’s acutely aware that she’s not so sure who she is and what she wants.

A chance reunion with a man she’d known in her teens—the perceptive but elusive Julian—gives her the courage to start questioning why her respectable but obsessively private Nigerian immigrant family is the way it is. But then Glory’s questioning unearths a massive secret that shatters the family’s fragile peace—and she risks losing everyone she deeply cares about in her pursuit of the truth and a reunited family.

""Filled with unexpected, but earned, twists, Hope and Glory balances moments of rich humor and devastating profundity...deeply authentic."" —Kirkus Reviews

""A sumptuous and satisfying meditation on family and the meaning of home.” —Publishers Weekly

©2022 Jendella Benson (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers
African American Family Life Genre Fiction World Literature Fiction Heartfelt Witty
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_webcro805_stickypopup
Engaging Story • Compelling Characters • Humorous Elements • Satisfying Conclusion • Pleasing Performance
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
Was looking for a new author / book and wasn't disappointed! Great story I could empathise with ; a credible MC (who's neck I constantly wanted to wring!) ; didn't like the abrupt ending though - only because it didn't fit into my dislike of 'unfinished' endings (this is supposed to be fiction, so stoeies should be neatly tied off, otherwise I'd read non-fiction!)
However, it does not detract from the story and I can't wait to see what is next. The narrator (Kelechi Okafor) did an amazing job. The accents and 'tone' were on point.

Great story and performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I appreciate the way each character is well developed. Able to associate to people and situations realistically; even down to the way Glory touches a pet peeve in me. p

Well Written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I really enjoyed this book.
I would not listen twice.
I would consider listening to other reads by this author.
Narration was good.

Aspiring tale of loss and love and Hope

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I’m white in USA, so can’t speak 100% to the accuracy of cultural representations of Nigerians in England. But I can say that the representations seemed authentic. Good and moving story line. Well developed characters and character relationships. A few stumbles by narrator, but overall pleasing - especially with the lilt of Nigerian voices.

Held my interest

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Enthralling, easy to follow, beautifully performed (and I’m picky about narrators) surprising, and heart wrenching. I finished it in a day and a half. What a wonderful story.

Wonderful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Secrets should never be a tool used in families. Glory flies back to London after the death of her father, knowing something was missing in her life, but not being sure exactly what that something was. Upon careful researching via family, family friends, photos and instinct she is able to find out exactly what her parents had been hiding for years. Once the secret is revealed and it all comes to a head, Glory has to determine if she can put the family back together or if she will be ostracized, again.

Secrets beget lies...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I enjoyed the caring and believable attention in rendering very painful topics of African Diaspora life.

I loved this story!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This debut novel chronicles the path of a British- Nigerian woman & her family. The protagonist, Glory, had relocated to Los Angeles but returns to England after her father dies. She encounters unexpected family problems upon her return, and struggles to help while also trying to resettle and sort out issues of her own as well as family secrets. The book is moving and uses humor to lighten some painful scenes. Each character is well characterized as are the relationships between the characters. I felt empathy for each character & for the family. I haven't enjoyed a book so much in a long time. Hearing it enhanced the experience and the narrator was outstanding.

New British-Nigerian book, worth it!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Great story and performance all around. Very relatable themes around family, finding your purpose, relationships, etc. Not a big fan of the ending, it abruptly ended in a bit of an awkward place. But overall good book, would recommend!

Great book, ending left me wanting more

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Loved the book and the narrator as well. I did not want the book to end.

It was good book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews