Can’t Get Enough

Can’t Get Enough. Kennedy Ryan. 2025. Forever. 448 pages. [Source: ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.] This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley for an unbiased review, and I was dancing a whole jig at the “invite” to read it after missing the “read now”. I’d only been stalking the author and site for months. Since the beginning of the Skyland series, I’ve been saying “Ken...

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The Soulmate Project

The Soulmate Project. Reese Ryan. 2024. Forever. 304 pages. [Source: Public library.] I’m a sucker for a friends to lovers story, so The Soulmate Project was right up my alley. The book starts with a New Year’s Eve love confession by “girl next door” Emerie to her best friend Nicholas. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go as planned and he doesn’t return her affections. Instead of ringing in the new year in a new relationship...

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Church Girl

Church Girl. Naima Simone. 2024. Afterglow Books. 264 pages. [Source: ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.] Admittedly, the cover of Church Girl drew me in, and the story held my interest. Aaliyah is a runaway bride who left her small Alabama hometown to get out from under the thumb of her bishop father. She convinces her cousin to take her back to Chicago, where she’s planning to reinvent herse...

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Stuck Wit’ Chu

Stuck Wit’ Chu. Olivia Shaw-Reel. 2020. 149 pages. [Source: Kindle Unlimited.] Stuck Wit’ Chu is essentially a story about a broken marriage and a couple at a crossroads. Keith and Marlow have been married over a decade, are parents to three young children, and have somehow lost their way. They’re navigating the Covid-19 pandemic while facing their own crisis at home, and the book follows their attempt to figure otu whether to s...

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Flamboyants

Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known. George M. Johnson. 2024. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 127 pages. [Source: Public library.] The Harlem Renaissance was a remarkable period in American history, but was pivotal within Black America. The “New Negro Movement” launched the careers of countless scholars, photographers, musicians, and dancers and ushered in a rebirth of racial pride and solidarity, in addition to le...

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The Dead Are Arising
African American Interest , Audiobook , Biography , History , Public Library Love / March 14, 2022

The Dead Are Arising. Les Payne & Tamara Payne. 2020. Liveright. 601 pages. [Source: Public Library.] But people are always speculating-why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X I first heard of The Dead Are Arising when it was awarde...

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Black Love Matters
African American Interest , Contemporary Black Romance , Contemporary Romance , Essays , Fiction , Historical Fiction , Historical Romance , Multicultural , New Releases , Non-fiction , Public Library Love / February 24, 2022

Black Love Matters. Jessica P. Pryde, ed. 2022. Berkley. 285 pages. [Source: Public Library.] As a proud lover of all things Black romance, I had to get my hands on this anthology which features essays from some of the most visible names in the field of Black romance publishing and scholarship. With this book, Pryde has brought together long-established names as well as those who are on their rise to consider the ways that Black Love Ma...

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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
African American Interest , Coming of Age , Fiction , Historical Fiction , History , Literary Fiction , Public Library Love , Women's Fiction / January 30, 2022

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.  Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. 2021. Harper. 801 pages. [Source: Public library.] The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is an early contender for my favorite read of 2022. It recounts the history of the Pinchard family through the juxtaposition of modern-day experiences of its protagonist, Ailey Garfield, and flashbacks to the lives of her ancestors as far back as Africa during the trans-Atlantic slave trade...

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Paperback Crush
Coming of Age , Fiction , Historical Fiction , Non-fiction , Oldies But Goodies , Public Library Love , Young Adult / January 28, 2022

Paperback Crush. Gabrielle Moss. 2021. Quirk Books. 257 pages. [Source: Public library.] Be still, my heart. As a child of the ’80s, I longed for few things more than the day the Scholastic book flyer was distributed at school or a Saturday spent at the mall with my friends, roaming through Sam Goody & Waldenbooks while figuring out when we’d get our Cinnabon and Orange Julius fix. My world has always been consumed by bo...

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Shuggie Bain
Audiobook , Coming of Age , Fiction , Public Library Love / January 13, 2022

Shuggie Bain. Douglas Stuart. 2020. Grove Press. 448 pages. [Source: Public library.] Shuggie Bain is a sensitive, unwaveringly loyal boy who has the misfortune of being born to an alcoholic mother and abusive father, with older siblings who are nearly tripping over themselves to get away from the family. Set in 1980s Glasgow, Shuggie Bain is a coming of age story about a boy everyone seems to know is “no right” and who ends...