Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Trigger warning: Assault.
“The Re-Write” follows Temi. Temi is heartbroken after her ex, Wale, broke-up with her to go on a reality dating show called “Love Villa.” The latest season is over and Wale was depicted as a villain and a player, but a huge favorite of the fans of the show. Temi though ends up feeling even more broken after her latest manuscript does not sell and her agent offers her a job to ghostwrite for a celebrity. When Temi attends the virtual meeting though, she’s shocked to find the celebrity is Wale and that he wants a memoir to show the fans of the “Love Villa” that he’s not a bad guy, just misunderstood. And Temi doesn’t know if she can do that especially after everything that went on with them. Temi agrees to the job, and then finds herself finding out more about Wale then she thought possible, and that maybe she has had him wrong this whole time.
This was so good. I loved the entire premise of this one, we lovers to enemies and back to lovers trope here and it really works. I thought that Damilola Blackburn really made this a contemporary novel that I think fans of Love Island and Love is Blind would really get into. She also provides an insight into the Nigerian culture living and working in the UK. She even touches about black male’s mental health. You would think that sounds like a lot and is it too busy, but it really isn’t. I thought the entire book flowed wonderfully from chapter to chapter.
The character of Temi is how the story is told to us, and I think that she was a vibrant and well developed character. Temi wants to make her parents proud, but is a struggling unpublished author. After her manuscript doesn’t sell she turns back into ghostwriting and ends up having her ex that dumped her as her client. We get some insight into Temi and Wale before they break up, but you also get their silliness and how much she loved him. You can’t go into the romance book hating the two leads and we get enough to realize that Wale had something else going on with him that accounts for the breakup with Temi.
The secondary characters were great too. Temi’s family, Wale’s chosen family, their respective best friends, etc. I felt like everyone was well rounded.
I mentioned providing insight into the Nigerian culture and it really did. Windrush was mentioned at one point and I knew about that, but still, seeing it brought up in the context of a romance book was new for me. FYI, I now want to eat everything described in this book.
The ending was great I thought and I was smiling from ear to ear on how everything was resolved into a HEA.
I read this for CBR17bingo, “Diaspora” since this book shows the main lead as Nigerian, but born and raised in the UK and is a British Nigerian.