CBR Bingo – hot. This book is rather steamy, and you will be inundated with descriptions of the incredible hotness of nearly every character.
This book is about grief, and owning your own body and will and exercising those in a way that truly embraces life. But it is ALSO a book about incredibly beautiful, talented people with lots of money lusting after one another in locations so beautiful they belong on the cover of Architectural Digest magazine. It’s a romance novel with some taboo boundary pushing. It was not my favorite Emezi novel (Freshwater, by far) but as usual the writing was strong (even if I found some of it more clichéd than I would have preferred).
Feyi tragically lost her husband five years ago, and despite some close friendships she hasn’t really found her way back to dating (men, anyway – there’s a slight contradiction when she talks about her relationship with her best friend later in the novel). The novel opens with Feyi making a choice about her own pleasure, and that sets the tone for the novel. It’s very much about Feyi’s journey and exploration of her body, a celebration of her mind and her desires. I don’t read much in the romance genre typically, but my understanding is that this book aligns with the genre – it’s focused on its heroine, there’s a central romance, and a relatively happy ending (even if everything isn’t quite “happily ever after”).
Feyi is an artist living in New York, beginning to slowly date again. She is invited to the island paradise home of Nasir and his father. Nasir has been respectfully trying to get closer to Feyi, and she’s close to deciding that she actually does care for him AND feel desire for him – like everyone in the novel, he’s super attractive. However, from the moment they step off the plane, trouble arises when Feyi lays eyes on Nasir’s father Alim Blake, a famous chef, who finally reawakens Feyi’s latent desires. Alim is a widower, and a late-night visit in the garden allows the two of them to talk more openly than either can remember. Their instant chemistry is clearly problematic, and the central tension in the latter half of the book. Feyi must trust her own self, and the commentary of her best friend Joy, in deciding how to move forward with her best life.
I can appreciate this book, but I didn’t LOVE it. As mentioned above, this book is full of tropes, and it can get tiring reading about absolutely gorgeous people with endless talents and tons of money just lusting after one another. While I can appreciate the way in which falling for the father of a man who is clearly falling for you is an intriguing premise, and it was well written (rather believable, as far as those things go), it still didn’t quite work for me. I loved that Feyi was full of life, she was a fascinating character to read about – but I didn’t love her decisions, and something about that made the book not work for me. It’s also quite possible that my expectations of an Emezi novel were calibrated to something quite different – I wasn’t expecting to read a romance novel. I wanted more of her best friend, Joy, as more than just a voice on the phone. There was just something about this novel that felt a bit off for me – not enough of something, too much of others.