Review: The Accidental Diva

The Accidental Diva by Tia Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"She was a skittish, trembling Question, and he was the Answer."

This is now a Tia Williams stan account. Truly. Her three adult novels share two things in common that I love: sharp humor and excellent contemporary world-building. Williams builds a social environment that is so rich and authentic it gives me a sense memory of being that Black girl living in New York. And she does all that by showing not simply telling: the dialogue, the cultural references, the characters are all so real, it give me shivers.

So I enjoyed this one a lot. In a nutshell, a smart, talented and well-loved southern girl moves to New York and soon finds her professional footing on the beauty magazine beat. Though she's the lone Black girl in the office, in her social life, she's surrounded by a tight circle of Black women in similar creative positions at the center of the beating heart of the city. It's like if Sex and the City actually looked like the multicultural city it was set in. And she falls in love with a man who's irresistible, brilliant, and, on the surface, all wrong for her. Drama ensues— and it gets messy at times—but The Accidental Diva is a delight all the same.

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NPR's Code Switch Celebrates Black Kiss-Story (and I'm there for it)!

So NPR Code Switch did a fun and thoughtful episode on Black historical romance and invited me to be a part of it. Listening to these amazing authors—Beverly Jenkins, Alyssa Cole, and Piper Huguley talk Black history and romance on Code Switch was a treat and a half this Valentine's week. Getting to take part in it and say my piece? Unreal! 

You can listen to the episode and read the essay referenced in the discussion here: Black Kiss-Story

For a list of some of the best Black-authored and centered histroms out there see my list on Book Riot: 15 MUST READ BLACK-AUTHORED HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVELS OF THE LAST 25 YEARS

My Review of Wild Rain in The New York Times

Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an exciting one. I had the extreme pleasure of writing about WILD RAIN for The New York Times. You can read my review online:

"In Beverly Jenkins’s Romance Novels, Black History Is Front and Center"


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Review: Snapped

Snapped by Alexa Martin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are several different things going on here and some definitely work better than others. First and foremost, Snapped is an unusually candid portrait of a biracial woman coming to terms with the internalized anti-black attitudes she swallowed while growing up in a white family and predominantly white community. And the toxic folly of the color blind philosophy she was steeped in for so long. Author Alexa Martin knows this territory from the inside out— this aspect of the story is very personal for her— and she writes Elliot incredibly specifically and well.

As a result of Martin’s insight, Elle is infuriating at times but she’s also very real. Some Black people raised the way she was go out of their way to deny racism as a form of self protection and protection for the families that raised them. That’s a serious phenomenon and I haven’t seen that laid out so clearly in romance before in a story that acknowledges how messed up that is. It’s humane but honest.

That said, there were some things I didn’t get about Elliot—parts of the portrayal that undermined the strengths Elliot was supposed to have. She’s supposed to be good with people but doesn’t think that Quinton might have a really good reason for keeping his father out of his movement and his foundation? People have complicated relationships with their family for many very good reasons and yet she assumes he’s just ungrateful or petulant. That’s a silly way to generate more conflict. Even worse, Elliot has watched and studied football all her life and prides herself in being at least sensible to really blatant racism even if she doesn’t see racism as ubiquitous, but doesn’t understand that the league has discriminated against black quarterbacks, and isn't familiar with the racist stereotypes about Black athletes and how they influence who gets to play what position in the league. This might just be an awkward and unintended consequence of using Elliot as a proxy when the author wants to educate readers about a point, but it's a pretty big part of NFL history. Elliott's ignorance strains both credulity and threatens her credibility, tipping her turning a blind eye to race to the absurd.

Apart from these points, the other ways that Elliot has swallowed micro and macro racial aggression in order to get along generally tracked. Snapped is also a romance and that works too even if the burn is very slow. Elliot’s love interest Quinton is a fictionalized Colin Kaepernick type character with a secret, very personal motivation for his activism. He’s fighting for better and more equitable treatment of Black athletes and veteran, retired football players struggling with the devastating health effects of the brutal sport they play. Elliot and Quinton are thrown together when Elliot is tasked by the team owner with channeling his protest into more socially acceptable forms that reflect well on the team. I liked Quinton as a romantic hero, but the portrayal of the movement politics he’s engaged in is by far the weakest link, especially at the climax which goes off the rails and is far too simplistic and ahistorical about how change is made. Overall Snapped tells a difficult and meaningful story about a woman coming to terms with her family and identity imperfectly but well. For me it was well worth the time and consideration.

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Review: The Prophets

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite parts of a heartbreaking but thoroughly beautiful book.

“They thought we was something dirty, but it won’t nothing like that at all. It was easy, really. He the only one who understand me without me saying a word. Can tell what I thinking just by where I looking—or not looking. So when he took my hand . . . the first time anybody or anything ever touch me so, everything in my head wanna say naw, but nothing in my body let me.”

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Girl, Woman, Other. Chapter 2: Her Warring Thoughts

Chapter 2: Carole, Bummi, and LaTisha.

Fictional Carole's story caught me by surprise with its sort of duality—how it contained two things at war with each other in the same space— her privileged adult life with a pretty happy ending, loving mother and genuinely loving husband on one hand, and the violations she's endured, big and small, as an adult and as a child, and how hard she works to expunge thoughts that don't fit the life/ narrative she's built or simply don't serve her in it.

Like, for example, this section in which Carole is psyching herself up for an early morning meeting with a "new client based in Hong Kong whose net worth is multiple times the GDP of the world's poorest countries" but "can't help remembering all the little hurts":

---

   she can’t help thinking about the customs officers who pull her over when she’s jetting the world looking as brief-cased and be-suited as all the other business people sailing through customs – un-harassed

   oh to be one of the privileged of this world who take it for granted that it’s their right to surf the globe unhindered, unsuspected, respected

   damn, damn, damn, as the escalator goes up, up, up

   c’mon, delete all negative thoughts, Carole, release the past and look to the future with positivity and the lightness of a child unencumbered by emotional baggage

   life is an adventure to be embraced with an open mind and loving heart 

---

Also, that last sentence reminds me of another nice detail revealed just prior to this quote, that Carole's bookshelves are stacked with motivational books "ordered from America." She vows that the meeting will be "fan-bloody-tastic!" Just as the books say— "if you project a powerful person, you will attract respect." 

She's retrained her mind with these self-help books. Or she's trying to. But it seems like a constant fight to keep reality at bay. Carole's story isn't as dramatic as some of the others in Girl, Woman, Other, and she isn't always entirely sympathetic. But she seemed really human to me and not just because of her name. ;)

Please note: All book links to Amazon on this site are affiliate ones. If you buy a book through those links, I will make a small amount of money on that sale, which comes out of the company’s profits. It does not change the cost of your purchase.

Review: Girl, Woman, Other

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I truly loved it. I couldn't stop reading and stayed up late, then got up early to finish. The only challenge in writing a review is that my highlights aren't as useful as they usually are because I highlighted way too much (literally hundreds of paragraphs), seemingly almost everything because every line has meaning. For example, this passage on the indelible Amma:

Amma was shorter, with African hips and thighs perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation whereupon she walked right back out again

Girl, Woman, Other is many things: a brilliant social novel, heavy on well-observed, sharp societal commentary, but organically so, and never weighed down by it. Very specific in its characterizations and voice. A tapestry in verse. An engrossing, often witty, ensemble drama about Black British women of different backgrounds, sexuality, and social strata with some surprising formal anomalies like no periods and little capitalization. Those formal elements are partly responsible for creating Girl, Woman, Other's wonderful sense of lyricism. They also effectively mimic trains of thought and conversation. Eventually, though, they easily fade into the background.

One passage I loved in the first section, partly because it made me laugh, was when Yazz, the daughter of Amma, now a playwright/theatre director, and Roland, a professor/public intellectual, was mentally running through how she had won an argument with her Dad, taking him down a notch by questioning lofty position as "the country's first Professor of Modern Life." I enjoyed Yazz's loving intergenerational warfare with people who are used to being/thinking of themselves as the avant garde.

Dad didn’t reply
he wasn’t expecting this, the student outwitting the master (grasshopper rocks!)
I mean, how on earth can you be a Professor of Modern Life when your terms of reference are all male, and actually all-white (even when you’re not, she refrained from adding),

And I was moved by the interplay between Yazz and her uni friend Waris, who's from Somalia, which appears shortly after that, and the conversation with her white working class friend Courtney about relative privilege and context, which is an interesting counterpart to Yazz's triumph over Roland:

Yazz doesn’t know what to say, when did Court read Roxane Gay – who’s amaaaazing?
was this a student outwitting the master moment? #whitegirltrumpsblackgirl

Funny, poignant, ironic. Brilliant.

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Review: The Art of Theft

The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a huge fan of the Lady Sherlock series. The way that Sherry Thomas weaves together an emotionally affecting and socially realistic mystery with solidly feminist sensibilities and social commentary is impressive and gratifying. With the first book especially, I felt the kind of well-being I get from books that feed my political and literary/aesthetic sensibilities at the same time. This, I keep thinking, is what political art and entertainment should feel like. Organic. Not didactic, but powerful. Showing, not just telling, but bold.

So I’ve loved this series for several reasons, but especially:
* The deft conceptualization of Lady Sherlock: Charlotte Holmes is a great character because she is challenging in a way that’s true to Sherlock Holmes, but appropriately adapted for the character’s different social position as a young gentlewoman, someone raised in privilege but wholly without power and so desperate for it she's willing to ruin herself to get it. Thomas does a great job of reinterpreting what it would mean to be someone like Sherlock, a genius, but also a woman in a sexist society, how one would have to navigate that differently than any other version of the Sherlock Holmes character. She reminds me a bit of the lead character in The Kiss Quotient —an analytical genius who is socially awkward, though not necessarily on the spectrum and living at a time before anyone ever heard of autism or Asperger’s Syndrome. But she does still have relatable desires even if she doesn’t need companionship in the same way as someone more neurologically typical.
* Charlotte’s relationship with Lord Ingram.
* The complexity of the female characters overall, especially Olivia who suffers from terrible social anxiety but is a talented writer and Mrs. Watson, a former actress/former mistress.
* Olivia’s relationship and potential career as a novelist and Sherlock Holmes documentarian.
* Both sisters’ relationships with Mrs. Watson, who’s also on the periphery of respectable society.

That said, on book three, The Hollow of Fear, I realized that I was starting to lose some steam as reader as stasis set in with regard to character development and relationship growth. With each book, the mysteries grow more grand and complex, while the characters barely change at all. The Art of a Theft is the fourth installment and that feeling has only strengthened. This time the mystery is very high stakes; it centers on a black mail scheme involving an international crime syndicate and a power struggle between India and British Colonial power. Meanwhile, our main characters are barely advancing at all. It seems like they’re wading through molasses and I’m stuck with them.

A reviewer on Goodreads remarked that the repeated references to Charlotte's dieting and restricted eating made her cringe. I can understand that, especially in light of her atypical personality and disregard for social convention, the way her size is referenced seems overdone. There is a practical component as Charlotte has noted, however, to her concerns about eating and appearance. She isn’t a wealthy woman; she doesn’t have the budget for a new wardrobe so exceeding a certain size would be a problem, and being considered conventionally attractive is an asset as she recognizes. But the refrain is a bit more prominent than I’d expect.

I find myself getting impatient with several aspects of the series as it unfolds: Charlotte’s self-deprecating mentions of approaching "maximum tolerable chins" is one. Her sister Olivia’s constant anxiety about anything new or different is another with little self-examination is another. Frankly she's making me nervous. Most concerning, the relationship between Charlotte and Lord Ingram is really kind of a mess, and not in an intriguing way.

Compared to book three, in the Art of Theft, the relationship between Charlotte and Lord Ingram may even be in retreat. The situation doesn't seem promising in relation to a happy ever after, but I'm not sure I’m still fully invested in that. Charlotte strikes me as someone who might truly not have conventional HEA type romantic desires if there was space to explore that. I’m not sure what her romantic and sexual identity might be to put it in modern terms. I’d like to hear more about what Charlotte secretly yearns for in her relationship with Ingram, what she misses living a celibate/single life, rather than just reading about what she doesn’t want from him when he engages the topic. It’s a very reactive situation for a dynamic woman.

Collectively, for me these elements symbolize a broader issue. Of course human beings are like this. They get stuck. They repeat the same frustrating behaviors day after day after year. But I’m having trouble discerning which attitudes and behaviors are learned, reflecting social pressure, and which stem from the individuals' true desires. How do I root for them when I don’t know what they actually want?

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Review: Accidentally Engaged

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a confession. I love food and romance but I don’t necessarily love foodie romance. Accidentally Engaged, however, was a joy to read. Some of the beats will feel really familiar— in particular the unwanted arranged or facilitated marriage that becomes a steamy love match— but it’s well executed and there are some unique details. Nadim and Reena fit for many reasons, not the least of which is their shared tensions and passions, the need to balance familial loyalty and rebellion, and their passionate love of food.

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Review: Better Than People

Better Than People by Roan Parrish
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When animal loving Jack breaks his leg and can no longer take his pets for the exercise they need, Simon, a man who craves four legged companionship, comes to the rescue. Soon they discover they have more in common than their love of pets. Simon and Jack are just the sweetest, softest and most heart warming pair you could spend an evening with, but both have real issues to work out. Simon has debilitating social anxiety, and Jack is an artist who no longer creates art and is having trouble sleeping in the wake of a work partner’s betrayal. But these two get along like a house on fire almost from the start. Together they work through some of their heaviest baggage, though the narrative makes clear that it's not a matter of trying to "fix" anyone. They love each other completely not in spite of any perceived faults, and they mourn each others' pain without trying to change who they are. There’s angst in the story, but overall there was fairly little stress for me in reading it, because these people are very good to each other, and they have loved ones who are good to them as well. The writing is emotional and evocative and beautifully done. This was exactly the steamy and emotional comfort read I craved.

One of my favorite scenes comes near the end. IT'S A SPOILER:
“Are you crying?” Simon said, instantly attentive. “What’s wrong?”
Jack shook his head.
“I’m so fucking in love with you.” He wiped his cheeks. “So when do you think you might wanna—”
“Now. I live here now.” He turned around the room, addressing the animals. “Pack! I live here now!”

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