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You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Romance (2022)Fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss.
Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.
It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.
She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the dangerous thrill Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?
Akwaeke Emezi’s vivid and passionate writing takes us deep into a world of possibility and healing, and the constant bravery of choosing love against all odds.
Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.
It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.
She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the dangerous thrill Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?
Akwaeke Emezi’s vivid and passionate writing takes us deep into a world of possibility and healing, and the constant bravery of choosing love against all odds.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published May 24, 2022
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April 19, 2024
i can tolerate a lot of things in books, but i cannot tolerate NONSENSE.
people would never act like this! and if they do, don't tell me! ignorance really is bliss and i would rather live in what is apparently a fantasy world where people are normal and no one is this insane.
for example.
if the girl i was kind of dating screwed my dad and i found out from my dad's friend, and then i went to look for the gf so we could talk and she grabbed my head, dug her nails in, screamed into my face, and shoved me, i would not APOLOGIZE.
i would be arrested for the federal crime i'd immediately commit.
anyway this is a romance between a girl and her boyfriend's dad.
i loved the beginning of this book, and i'll keep trying this author because i love their style, but this romance...EW. not even just for the setup (which is a lot but not insurmountable), but these characters, and their weird bogus compliments, and their instalove, and...bleh.
the father picks a girl half his age he just met over his kids (one of whom was, again, in love with her at the time their relationship was consummated).
so i'm on team The Kids. which made this book not go very well.
also it's repetitive.
and you don't dice an onion to caramelize it.
bottom line: unhinged!
2.5
---------------------
tbr review
i wish every book had a title that was like a long compliment
(thanks to netgalley for the e-arc)
people would never act like this! and if they do, don't tell me! ignorance really is bliss and i would rather live in what is apparently a fantasy world where people are normal and no one is this insane.
for example.
if the girl i was kind of dating screwed my dad and i found out from my dad's friend, and then i went to look for the gf so we could talk and she grabbed my head, dug her nails in, screamed into my face, and shoved me, i would not APOLOGIZE.
i would be arrested for the federal crime i'd immediately commit.
anyway this is a romance between a girl and her boyfriend's dad.
i loved the beginning of this book, and i'll keep trying this author because i love their style, but this romance...EW. not even just for the setup (which is a lot but not insurmountable), but these characters, and their weird bogus compliments, and their instalove, and...bleh.
the father picks a girl half his age he just met over his kids (one of whom was, again, in love with her at the time their relationship was consummated).
so i'm on team The Kids. which made this book not go very well.
also it's repetitive.
and you don't dice an onion to caramelize it.
bottom line: unhinged!
2.5
---------------------
tbr review
i wish every book had a title that was like a long compliment
(thanks to netgalley for the e-arc)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Want to read
December 12, 2021i am happy to announce that this cover cured my prescription. i will now no longer need glasses.
Read
November 22, 2023Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
Before I get into this, can we just touch upon the whole being allowed to use a Florence + The Machine lyric as the title of your book thing? Hashtag author goals.
Also I understand, like, localisation is a thing and, ironically, I know less about the British market than the US market but, like, why do Americans get this gorgeous vivid cover with a person’s actual face on it? And we get something that looks like the fucking relic ring from Skyrim.
Like, did they think we wouldn’t buy a book with a picture of beautiful Black woman on the front? So she had to be represented by a severed hand instead? What even? Is this reflecting badly on the UK reading audience or the UK publisher? I can’t even tell.
Anyway, this book is gorgeous, and I am dizzy on how much I loved it. I understand it’s the author’s first foray into romance and, obviously, when mainstream publications speak of romance it’s hard to figure out whether they mean, a book that happens to have a relationship in it, never mind whatever else it’s about, a book that wants to tell the romance genre (from a position of ignorance) all the ways it’s wrong or unrealistic or fomulaeic, or a book that is a sincere engagement with the romance genre while bringing a slightly different perspective. For my money, and your mileage may vary, You Made A fool of Death With Your Beauty is the latter.
It's a deliberately literary take on the genre, of course, but—to mind—it also treats genre expectations respectfully and with awareness. Which is to say, this while, in genre-terms, this is definitely a heroine-focused romance (it is thoroughly Feyi’s journey), there’s a strong central romance, and a happy ending, that is either 'for now' or 'for ever' depending on your personal perspective. Not everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow—these are complicated people and the situation is complicated—but I’m not of the school of thought that believes a romantic happy ending requires not just personal happiness but complete social integration of that happiness. As I’ve said on my occasions, that’s always struck me as a profoundly normative and privileged point of view. Of course it’s fine to create a mini utopia if that’s what feels right for an individual text. But the idea that’s a requirement? Or the happy ending isn’t happy enough? Please.
I’m aware I’m kind of talking around this book a fair bit here and it’s not just that I love the sound of my own voice (my own voice typing). I’m kind of anticipating—fairly or unfairly—that this book might be polarising for some people, and that there’s always an understandable resistance towards someone coming into the genre from outside or being placed adjacent to the genre by the outside, so I’m concerned that my praise could come across as diminishing of the genre itself. But I do genuinely believe the way this book—with the way it centralises Blackness and queerness, with the freedom it permits its heroine to live her life as she needs to and never punishes her for it, with all its beauty and its pain—carefully challenges some of the invisible boundaries we set upon the genre from the inside is … honestly, I think it’s important. And, while it is not up to me to make this judgement, I read it as coming from a brave and loving and generous place.
Please don’t think I’m trying to claim this lit-ficcy romance is the magic answer to the genre, or the thing the genre has always needed, or, like, a fix for the way the genre can be problematic and limiting. The genre will someday have to figure that shit out for itself. But in the meantime, this book is *lovely*. It’s as bold and entrancing and complex as its heroine. And I hope it will be welcomed.
The basic deal here is that the heroine, Feyi, is an artist whose husband died five years ago in a terrible car crash. Needing to live a completely different life in the aftermath of such terrible grief, she’s moved from the claustrophobia of her small town [Edit: apparently this is completely wrong, she lives somewhere else that is not remotely small: please forgive me my British lack of insight into American geography] to New York to pursue her career and bond with her best friend, Joy—a self-destructive lesbian with a penchant for married women. Feyi has not exactly felt like dating since her husband died but while she’s out at a party she has a brief, physical encounter with a stranger called Milan. She and Milan continue to have a few mutually beneficial respectful but emotion-free hook-ups until one of Milan’s friends, Nasir, towards whom Feyi experiences something of a pull, approaches her. She’s still not ready for anything resembling a relationship but Nasir, who makes it very clear he is into Feyi, is willing to take things slow. To be friend with the hope of more in the future.
It’s at this point that Nasir brings an opportunity to Feyi. His father is on the board of directors for a museum about to open an exhibition of Black Diaspora artists and one of the artists has pulled out. Nasir had encouraged his father to put Feyi’s work before the curator and the curator had loved it. Nasir’s father, it turns out, is a big deal, being rich, influential and a celebrity chef (albeit a somewhat reclusive one). You can probably see where this might be going: Nasir invites Feyi to stay with him and his father in his father’s gorgeous tropical-island home while she prepares her installation for the art show. And from the moment Feyi meets the widowed, charismatic Alim Blake she’s conscious of her an emotional and physical attraction that feels realer than anything she’s experienced since Jonah died. An attraction she also knows she should in no way act upon.
Okay so. That’s a lot. I’m aware that it’s a lot. And I suspect if you told me the premise of this book in isolation, I’d be like “heh, no thank you.” I think the combination of the age-gap (there’s nineteen years between them), the fact Feyi is not-quite-dating Alim’s actual son, plus the inherent power dynamics in the relationship, given she’s a young woman trying to make it as an artist, and he’s a man who has already established himself in the world to the point of owning one of the most amazing houses I think I have ever read about fiction. But, you know what? Fuck it. This really worked for me, on pretty much every level.
Sometimes when I have to describe romance to romance sceptics which, admittedly, doesn’t come up very often because I don’t leave the house or have any friends but when I do, I often call it a genre of polemic. Because essentially a romance novel is … an argument, I mean in the classical rhetorical sense, not in the sense of a fight. A romance novel essentially presents an argument—makes a case—as to why two (or more) people would have their lives significantly improved by sharing them. And if you come out of the book agreeing then that’s a successful romance. If you come out of the book feeling meh or, worse, then it’s not. And obviously this is hugely subjective: what you read as protective alpha caring for his partner I might read as an abusive dick upholding the patriarchy, what I might read as two flawed human beings fitting their broken pieces together, you might read as two dumpster fires who need therapy not a relationship.
For me, You Made A fool of Death With Your Beauty makes its case beautifully and sufficiently convincingly that Feyi and Alim working through the various (very real) obstacles to their being together in order to be together felt genuinely romantic. Even triumphant. Because, what can I say? Sometimes you’re just going to fall for your boyfriend’s dad, y’know? I mean, I’ve just expressed that in a deliberately frivolous fashion but it’s something the book takes a lot of care with. For starters, Feyi and Nasir aren’t actually dating at the point she meets Alim—and she is already beginning to recognise she doesn’t feel about Nasir the way he feels about her—and the complications (I hesitate to say ‘taboo’ because it’s not really a taboo, just … socially discouraged) inherent to a relationship between Feyi and Alim are never presented as titillating. This isn’t a guilty fantasy of falling for a person you shouldn’t want. It’s a story of two people who truly belong together choosing each other because their love means more to them than convention and potential condemnation.
It's this—as much as Feyi and Alim both being bisexual—that You Made A fool of Death With Your Beauty so successful as a queer m/f romance. It’s a book that understands, on a fundamental level, that choosing love is sometimes one of the boldest, most defiant things you can do.
Even putting aside the potentially challenging nature of its central relationship, I think it’s pretty clear from the summary alone that there are several ways in which the narrative pushes against some of the invisible boundaries of romance that I mentioned earlier. And I don’t mean in terms of the HEA or anything like, I mean in terms of the unspoken no-nos governing characters and relationships that we pretend aren't dictated by the most heteronormative of expectations. For example, I can’t actually remember the last time I read a romance (outside of erotic romance) where the heroine is allowed to explore romantic-adjacent relationships with multiple men and this is presented as neutral-to-positive by the text itself. Feyi’s relationship with Nasir is, of course, difficult because he is accepting friendship as a substitute for what he really wants (although, let’s very clear, this is his choice, and Feyi is not responsible for him) but I really appreciated her interactions with Milan—the man she fucks in a bathroom in the opening chapter.
It’s undeniable, of course, that Feyi is behaving recklessly (she convinces him, for example, not to wear a condom) —and a little selfishly in the sense that she is having sex with Milan not for pleasure, exactly, but to reclaim her body from grief. But there’s never a moment when Feyi’s agency in the situation or her consent isn’t absolutely central and absolutely respected, both by Milan and by the text itself. There are no consequences for Feyi for her choices here, be they emotional, physical or social. And while both characters are mildly irresponsible, there is never a sense of danger for Feyi in what she is doing. The text takes it for granted that Milan—a cis man—will have sex with a woman he’s just met in a bathroom and not in any way view that as invitation to behave badly or judge her: this may, unfortunately, feel too much like romantic fantasy for some but I personally (and with no standing to judge) appreciated it. It felt like a deliberate attempt to push back against the dominant cultural narrative that casual sex is inherently or inevitably dangerous to women. And while that may, in fact, be true, it’s not a natural dynamic that we should replicate unthinkingly in the stories we tell. It’s an aberrant situation created by rape culture and the patriarchy. When the reality is and should be: women can have casual sex, even reckless selfish casual sex, without being punished for it.
Err, to bring this slightly closer to my lane because, obviously, I’m way out of it right now: I know depicting safe, responsible sex is sort of seen as ethically appropriate in fiction and I’m not knocking that, but I think it’s easy to inadvertently cross the line into reinforcing oppressive ideas about sex, and sex among people of marginalised identity in particular. I could talk about this more with reference to my own identity but I’d rather talk about this book.
Because, oh God, I’ve written so much without even touching on even half the things that are amazing about it. There’s Feyi, who I simply adored: she’s obviously still trying to figure out how to survive her loss, but she’s also just incredibly funny and full of life, allowed by the text to be confident, about her art, about her own beauty, as well as human and uncertain. She doesn’t always make the best choices but why should she? She’s a person, not a paragon. There’s also Feyi’s relationship with Joy: honestly, if the whole story had been them bantering and taking the piss (very lovingly) out of each other, I wouldn’t have minded. And then there’s the way the book both celebrates love (all kinds of love, not just the romantic relationships at it centre) and deals with the grief, particularly with how we live with grief and the way it changes us. But also the way that grief and love, at some point, are simply expressions of each other. Perhaps even reflections of each other. One of the things that moved me very much was the way, as the story unfolded itself, it presented a concept of grief not as something isolating, or something that separates you and your pain from the rest of the world, but as something universal and potentially uniting. There are many human experiences, after all, which are specific: but at some point we will all lose someone we love and have to live with that loss.
As for the relationship between Alim and Feyi, I’ve seen it described as insta-love which … doesn’t quite, for me, fit the bill. I think there’s insta-attraction, because they’re both incredibly hot, and insta-understanding, because they’re both people who have had their lives changed and shaped by intense personal loss. I think it’s this, at least initially, that draws them to each other—simply because it’s a significant part of who they are that’s impossible to share with someone who hasn’t experienced something similar (ask me how I know—no seriously, don’t, it’s personal). While there is a sense of connection between them from the beginning, and Feyi is, of course, hyper-aware of her attraction (alongside how inappropriate it is) the recognition that what they might feel for each other is love develops more slowly. They share conversation, understanding, jokes and most significantly their art (there’s a wonderful parallelism in Feyi’s response to Alim’s cooking and Alim’s response to Feyi’s installation: in their separate ways they communicate something that has profound meaning to the other person and alleviates a deep sense of loneliness they've both been carrying). Also do not get me started on Alim as a romantic hero: the man is beyond exquisite, with his cooking, and his beautiful house, and his juxtaposition of gentleness and strength. And, most importantly, the way he never wavers when it comes to Feyi.
Obviously the end of the book is quite intense as the truth of Alim and Feyi’s relationship comes out, and some of the scenes with Alim’s family are genuinely hard to read. As I said in the early part of this monster essay, I appreciated not everything was magically fixed by the book’s conclusion, but I also appreciated the way that the social context never became a point of conflict for Alim and Feyi. I was worried they would doubt each other or doubt themselves—and I wasn’t emotionally ready for that because the book had already taken me on such a vulnerable-making journey. But thankfully we didn’t go there and Feyi got an opportunity to defend her choices, even though she shouldn’t have had to defend them. As she tells Nasir:
Given how much scrutiny heroines, and indeed female characters in general, tend to receive in the genre (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had editorial feedback along the lines that my women aren’t nice enough or thinking about the men in their lives enough--and maybe that's a problem with me and the way I write people orrrrrr....) I relished Feyi’s narrative freedom: she is allowed to who she is, to navigate her pain in the way she chooses to navigate it, to be selfish when it is healthy and righteous for her to be selfish, and to do what she needs to do to secure her own happiness, and always without compromise or contrition. Even her desire, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, she owns:
Honestly, the only thing I was missing really, by the time the book wrapped up, was a touch more Joy (as in Joy the person, there was plenty of loving joy): there’s a hint or two that suggests her current relationship isn’t a disaster but, well, as much as I am against “resolve everything endings” I did need to know Joy was okay. Because Joy is the best.
Okay, I need to wrap this up because I could talk for hours, days, forever about this book. And, uh, it feels like I literally have? Also it just goes to show much there is to admire and think about that I’ve barely mentioned how perfect the writing is, whether it’s theback and forth between Joy and Feyi, or the tentative unfurlings of trust between Alim and Feyi, its incisive explorations of Feyi’s emotions and desires, or the lavish food and architecture porn that had me absolutely swooning.
I simply cannot recommend You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty highly enough: I’m sure there are people it's not going to work for but, for me, it’s one of the boldest, most powerful and … honestly … unabashedly romantic romances I’ve read since the last terrific romance I read.
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
Before I get into this, can we just touch upon the whole being allowed to use a Florence + The Machine lyric as the title of your book thing? Hashtag author goals.
Also I understand, like, localisation is a thing and, ironically, I know less about the British market than the US market but, like, why do Americans get this gorgeous vivid cover with a person’s actual face on it? And we get something that looks like the fucking relic ring from Skyrim.
Like, did they think we wouldn’t buy a book with a picture of beautiful Black woman on the front? So she had to be represented by a severed hand instead? What even? Is this reflecting badly on the UK reading audience or the UK publisher? I can’t even tell.
Anyway, this book is gorgeous, and I am dizzy on how much I loved it. I understand it’s the author’s first foray into romance and, obviously, when mainstream publications speak of romance it’s hard to figure out whether they mean, a book that happens to have a relationship in it, never mind whatever else it’s about, a book that wants to tell the romance genre (from a position of ignorance) all the ways it’s wrong or unrealistic or fomulaeic, or a book that is a sincere engagement with the romance genre while bringing a slightly different perspective. For my money, and your mileage may vary, You Made A fool of Death With Your Beauty is the latter.
It's a deliberately literary take on the genre, of course, but—to mind—it also treats genre expectations respectfully and with awareness. Which is to say, this while, in genre-terms, this is definitely a heroine-focused romance (it is thoroughly Feyi’s journey), there’s a strong central romance, and a happy ending, that is either 'for now' or 'for ever' depending on your personal perspective. Not everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow—these are complicated people and the situation is complicated—but I’m not of the school of thought that believes a romantic happy ending requires not just personal happiness but complete social integration of that happiness. As I’ve said on my occasions, that’s always struck me as a profoundly normative and privileged point of view. Of course it’s fine to create a mini utopia if that’s what feels right for an individual text. But the idea that’s a requirement? Or the happy ending isn’t happy enough? Please.
I’m aware I’m kind of talking around this book a fair bit here and it’s not just that I love the sound of my own voice (my own voice typing). I’m kind of anticipating—fairly or unfairly—that this book might be polarising for some people, and that there’s always an understandable resistance towards someone coming into the genre from outside or being placed adjacent to the genre by the outside, so I’m concerned that my praise could come across as diminishing of the genre itself. But I do genuinely believe the way this book—with the way it centralises Blackness and queerness, with the freedom it permits its heroine to live her life as she needs to and never punishes her for it, with all its beauty and its pain—carefully challenges some of the invisible boundaries we set upon the genre from the inside is … honestly, I think it’s important. And, while it is not up to me to make this judgement, I read it as coming from a brave and loving and generous place.
Please don’t think I’m trying to claim this lit-ficcy romance is the magic answer to the genre, or the thing the genre has always needed, or, like, a fix for the way the genre can be problematic and limiting. The genre will someday have to figure that shit out for itself. But in the meantime, this book is *lovely*. It’s as bold and entrancing and complex as its heroine. And I hope it will be welcomed.
The basic deal here is that the heroine, Feyi, is an artist whose husband died five years ago in a terrible car crash. Needing to live a completely different life in the aftermath of such terrible grief, she’s moved from the claustrophobia of her small town [Edit: apparently this is completely wrong, she lives somewhere else that is not remotely small: please forgive me my British lack of insight into American geography] to New York to pursue her career and bond with her best friend, Joy—a self-destructive lesbian with a penchant for married women. Feyi has not exactly felt like dating since her husband died but while she’s out at a party she has a brief, physical encounter with a stranger called Milan. She and Milan continue to have a few mutually beneficial respectful but emotion-free hook-ups until one of Milan’s friends, Nasir, towards whom Feyi experiences something of a pull, approaches her. She’s still not ready for anything resembling a relationship but Nasir, who makes it very clear he is into Feyi, is willing to take things slow. To be friend with the hope of more in the future.
It’s at this point that Nasir brings an opportunity to Feyi. His father is on the board of directors for a museum about to open an exhibition of Black Diaspora artists and one of the artists has pulled out. Nasir had encouraged his father to put Feyi’s work before the curator and the curator had loved it. Nasir’s father, it turns out, is a big deal, being rich, influential and a celebrity chef (albeit a somewhat reclusive one). You can probably see where this might be going: Nasir invites Feyi to stay with him and his father in his father’s gorgeous tropical-island home while she prepares her installation for the art show. And from the moment Feyi meets the widowed, charismatic Alim Blake she’s conscious of her an emotional and physical attraction that feels realer than anything she’s experienced since Jonah died. An attraction she also knows she should in no way act upon.
Okay so. That’s a lot. I’m aware that it’s a lot. And I suspect if you told me the premise of this book in isolation, I’d be like “heh, no thank you.” I think the combination of the age-gap (there’s nineteen years between them), the fact Feyi is not-quite-dating Alim’s actual son, plus the inherent power dynamics in the relationship, given she’s a young woman trying to make it as an artist, and he’s a man who has already established himself in the world to the point of owning one of the most amazing houses I think I have ever read about fiction. But, you know what? Fuck it. This really worked for me, on pretty much every level.
Sometimes when I have to describe romance to romance sceptics which, admittedly, doesn’t come up very often because I don’t leave the house or have any friends but when I do, I often call it a genre of polemic. Because essentially a romance novel is … an argument, I mean in the classical rhetorical sense, not in the sense of a fight. A romance novel essentially presents an argument—makes a case—as to why two (or more) people would have their lives significantly improved by sharing them. And if you come out of the book agreeing then that’s a successful romance. If you come out of the book feeling meh or, worse, then it’s not. And obviously this is hugely subjective: what you read as protective alpha caring for his partner I might read as an abusive dick upholding the patriarchy, what I might read as two flawed human beings fitting their broken pieces together, you might read as two dumpster fires who need therapy not a relationship.
For me, You Made A fool of Death With Your Beauty makes its case beautifully and sufficiently convincingly that Feyi and Alim working through the various (very real) obstacles to their being together in order to be together felt genuinely romantic. Even triumphant. Because, what can I say? Sometimes you’re just going to fall for your boyfriend’s dad, y’know? I mean, I’ve just expressed that in a deliberately frivolous fashion but it’s something the book takes a lot of care with. For starters, Feyi and Nasir aren’t actually dating at the point she meets Alim—and she is already beginning to recognise she doesn’t feel about Nasir the way he feels about her—and the complications (I hesitate to say ‘taboo’ because it’s not really a taboo, just … socially discouraged) inherent to a relationship between Feyi and Alim are never presented as titillating. This isn’t a guilty fantasy of falling for a person you shouldn’t want. It’s a story of two people who truly belong together choosing each other because their love means more to them than convention and potential condemnation.
It's this—as much as Feyi and Alim both being bisexual—that You Made A fool of Death With Your Beauty so successful as a queer m/f romance. It’s a book that understands, on a fundamental level, that choosing love is sometimes one of the boldest, most defiant things you can do.
Even putting aside the potentially challenging nature of its central relationship, I think it’s pretty clear from the summary alone that there are several ways in which the narrative pushes against some of the invisible boundaries of romance that I mentioned earlier. And I don’t mean in terms of the HEA or anything like, I mean in terms of the unspoken no-nos governing characters and relationships that we pretend aren't dictated by the most heteronormative of expectations. For example, I can’t actually remember the last time I read a romance (outside of erotic romance) where the heroine is allowed to explore romantic-adjacent relationships with multiple men and this is presented as neutral-to-positive by the text itself. Feyi’s relationship with Nasir is, of course, difficult because he is accepting friendship as a substitute for what he really wants (although, let’s very clear, this is his choice, and Feyi is not responsible for him) but I really appreciated her interactions with Milan—the man she fucks in a bathroom in the opening chapter.
It’s undeniable, of course, that Feyi is behaving recklessly (she convinces him, for example, not to wear a condom) —and a little selfishly in the sense that she is having sex with Milan not for pleasure, exactly, but to reclaim her body from grief. But there’s never a moment when Feyi’s agency in the situation or her consent isn’t absolutely central and absolutely respected, both by Milan and by the text itself. There are no consequences for Feyi for her choices here, be they emotional, physical or social. And while both characters are mildly irresponsible, there is never a sense of danger for Feyi in what she is doing. The text takes it for granted that Milan—a cis man—will have sex with a woman he’s just met in a bathroom and not in any way view that as invitation to behave badly or judge her: this may, unfortunately, feel too much like romantic fantasy for some but I personally (and with no standing to judge) appreciated it. It felt like a deliberate attempt to push back against the dominant cultural narrative that casual sex is inherently or inevitably dangerous to women. And while that may, in fact, be true, it’s not a natural dynamic that we should replicate unthinkingly in the stories we tell. It’s an aberrant situation created by rape culture and the patriarchy. When the reality is and should be: women can have casual sex, even reckless selfish casual sex, without being punished for it.
Err, to bring this slightly closer to my lane because, obviously, I’m way out of it right now: I know depicting safe, responsible sex is sort of seen as ethically appropriate in fiction and I’m not knocking that, but I think it’s easy to inadvertently cross the line into reinforcing oppressive ideas about sex, and sex among people of marginalised identity in particular. I could talk about this more with reference to my own identity but I’d rather talk about this book.
Because, oh God, I’ve written so much without even touching on even half the things that are amazing about it. There’s Feyi, who I simply adored: she’s obviously still trying to figure out how to survive her loss, but she’s also just incredibly funny and full of life, allowed by the text to be confident, about her art, about her own beauty, as well as human and uncertain. She doesn’t always make the best choices but why should she? She’s a person, not a paragon. There’s also Feyi’s relationship with Joy: honestly, if the whole story had been them bantering and taking the piss (very lovingly) out of each other, I wouldn’t have minded. And then there’s the way the book both celebrates love (all kinds of love, not just the romantic relationships at it centre) and deals with the grief, particularly with how we live with grief and the way it changes us. But also the way that grief and love, at some point, are simply expressions of each other. Perhaps even reflections of each other. One of the things that moved me very much was the way, as the story unfolded itself, it presented a concept of grief not as something isolating, or something that separates you and your pain from the rest of the world, but as something universal and potentially uniting. There are many human experiences, after all, which are specific: but at some point we will all lose someone we love and have to live with that loss.
As for the relationship between Alim and Feyi, I’ve seen it described as insta-love which … doesn’t quite, for me, fit the bill. I think there’s insta-attraction, because they’re both incredibly hot, and insta-understanding, because they’re both people who have had their lives changed and shaped by intense personal loss. I think it’s this, at least initially, that draws them to each other—simply because it’s a significant part of who they are that’s impossible to share with someone who hasn’t experienced something similar (ask me how I know—no seriously, don’t, it’s personal). While there is a sense of connection between them from the beginning, and Feyi is, of course, hyper-aware of her attraction (alongside how inappropriate it is) the recognition that what they might feel for each other is love develops more slowly. They share conversation, understanding, jokes and most significantly their art (there’s a wonderful parallelism in Feyi’s response to Alim’s cooking and Alim’s response to Feyi’s installation: in their separate ways they communicate something that has profound meaning to the other person and alleviates a deep sense of loneliness they've both been carrying). Also do not get me started on Alim as a romantic hero: the man is beyond exquisite, with his cooking, and his beautiful house, and his juxtaposition of gentleness and strength. And, most importantly, the way he never wavers when it comes to Feyi.
Obviously the end of the book is quite intense as the truth of Alim and Feyi’s relationship comes out, and some of the scenes with Alim’s family are genuinely hard to read. As I said in the early part of this monster essay, I appreciated not everything was magically fixed by the book’s conclusion, but I also appreciated the way that the social context never became a point of conflict for Alim and Feyi. I was worried they would doubt each other or doubt themselves—and I wasn’t emotionally ready for that because the book had already taken me on such a vulnerable-making journey. But thankfully we didn’t go there and Feyi got an opportunity to defend her choices, even though she shouldn’t have had to defend them. As she tells Nasir:
“You have no ‘right’ to me, we weren’t together, we weren’t even exclusive. You’re not entitled to fuck me just because you were a decent human being and went along when I wasn’t ready to be intimate with you, or be mad because I ended up fucking someone else. You don’t get points for waiting for me. I didn’t use you, I didn’t lead you on. I went as far as I felt comfortable, and I stopped there.”
Given how much scrutiny heroines, and indeed female characters in general, tend to receive in the genre (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had editorial feedback along the lines that my women aren’t nice enough or thinking about the men in their lives enough--and maybe that's a problem with me and the way I write people orrrrrr....) I relished Feyi’s narrative freedom: she is allowed to who she is, to navigate her pain in the way she chooses to navigate it, to be selfish when it is healthy and righteous for her to be selfish, and to do what she needs to do to secure her own happiness, and always without compromise or contrition. Even her desire, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, she owns:
Feyi pushed away the irrational feelings of rejection (He doesn’t have to want you, she scolded herself) and focused on what did belong to her— this desire. This desire that pooled like traitorous flame, that wasn’t in response to someone else, that was coming from her and just her. She belonged to it, and it belonged to her, and that’s as far as it needed to go.
Honestly, the only thing I was missing really, by the time the book wrapped up, was a touch more Joy (as in Joy the person, there was plenty of loving joy): there’s a hint or two that suggests her current relationship isn’t a disaster but, well, as much as I am against “resolve everything endings” I did need to know Joy was okay. Because Joy is the best.
Okay, I need to wrap this up because I could talk for hours, days, forever about this book. And, uh, it feels like I literally have? Also it just goes to show much there is to admire and think about that I’ve barely mentioned how perfect the writing is, whether it’s theback and forth between Joy and Feyi, or the tentative unfurlings of trust between Alim and Feyi, its incisive explorations of Feyi’s emotions and desires, or the lavish food and architecture porn that had me absolutely swooning.
I simply cannot recommend You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty highly enough: I’m sure there are people it's not going to work for but, for me, it’s one of the boldest, most powerful and … honestly … unabashedly romantic romances I’ve read since the last terrific romance I read.
July 30, 2022
This is my first book by Akwaeke Emezi. I recently read their essay on their surgeries, and I was struck by how beautifully it was written. So when I was offered this book by the publisher, I was all in.
Dear reader, I shouldn't have started with this one. It's pretty terrible. It's a book about extremely beautiful people telling eachother how beautiful they are. A book about Feyi, whose beauty must be extolled every page at least once, if not more. Similarly beautiful men throw themselves at her, and it's just so gosh darn hard to choose one when you're that beautiful.
Feyi used to be married to the saintly Jonah, who died in a horrible car accident they both were in. You don't get any sense who Jonah actually was, just that he was the love of her life.
Feyi now is defined by that trauma, she barely has a personality, just the trauma. She gets to make horrible life choices, hurt people around her - She Deserves To Be Happy, because: trauma.
She is the kind of person who constantly upgrades to a new fuckbuddy through her current fuckbuddy. That such a fuckbuddy might feel more for her, well, that's not her problem.
Feyi approaches any and all people through the prism of sex. Does she want to fuck the person, is the main question. I don't think I ever see her talking to one of her partners, she seems to have no interest in them beyond their bodies. Most of the men in this book feel like a walking template, a cypher with a dick. And that's a problem, because the book makes a point of Feyi not wanting any deeper relation because of her trauma - you haven't had someone die in a car accident, how could you know, etc. But she doesn't seem interested in other people in the first place, it's not like she'd like to know more, but just can't.
She's an artist, but she barely seems interested in actually being an artist. She's very interested in being a part of the art world, just not in the art itself. She makes art about, you guessed it, her trauma. She's painting self-portraits (because of course she is) in blood, but not using her own blood, or the blood of a loved one, she uses pig's blood - doesn't that sort of completely go against the symbolism of painting with blood in the first place? It's just another form of paint, it has no meaning beyond it.
The second half of the book is about what feels like a very problematic relationship (laaarge age gap, insta-love, wonky power dynamic), that Emezi wants to convince you is actually pretty great. And it feels manipulative, and icky.
I've seen some reviews presenting this as the literature equivalent of a romance novel, and it's not, it's just a pretty plain romance novel. The writing is full of romantic clichés, the dialogue is frequently cringeworthy, really quite cheesy.
I'll try to forget this book, and perhaps, so should you.
(Thanks to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC through Edelweiss)
Dear reader, I shouldn't have started with this one. It's pretty terrible. It's a book about extremely beautiful people telling eachother how beautiful they are. A book about Feyi, whose beauty must be extolled every page at least once, if not more. Similarly beautiful men throw themselves at her, and it's just so gosh darn hard to choose one when you're that beautiful.
Feyi used to be married to the saintly Jonah, who died in a horrible car accident they both were in. You don't get any sense who Jonah actually was, just that he was the love of her life.
Feyi now is defined by that trauma, she barely has a personality, just the trauma. She gets to make horrible life choices, hurt people around her - She Deserves To Be Happy, because: trauma.
She is the kind of person who constantly upgrades to a new fuckbuddy through her current fuckbuddy. That such a fuckbuddy might feel more for her, well, that's not her problem.
Feyi approaches any and all people through the prism of sex. Does she want to fuck the person, is the main question. I don't think I ever see her talking to one of her partners, she seems to have no interest in them beyond their bodies. Most of the men in this book feel like a walking template, a cypher with a dick. And that's a problem, because the book makes a point of Feyi not wanting any deeper relation because of her trauma - you haven't had someone die in a car accident, how could you know, etc. But she doesn't seem interested in other people in the first place, it's not like she'd like to know more, but just can't.
She's an artist, but she barely seems interested in actually being an artist. She's very interested in being a part of the art world, just not in the art itself. She makes art about, you guessed it, her trauma. She's painting self-portraits (because of course she is) in blood, but not using her own blood, or the blood of a loved one, she uses pig's blood - doesn't that sort of completely go against the symbolism of painting with blood in the first place? It's just another form of paint, it has no meaning beyond it.
The second half of the book is about what feels like a very problematic relationship (laaarge age gap, insta-love, wonky power dynamic), that Emezi wants to convince you is actually pretty great. And it feels manipulative, and icky.
I've seen some reviews presenting this as the literature equivalent of a romance novel, and it's not, it's just a pretty plain romance novel. The writing is full of romantic clichés, the dialogue is frequently cringeworthy, really quite cheesy.
I'll try to forget this book, and perhaps, so should you.
(Thanks to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC through Edelweiss)
June 12, 2022
Let's start this off with my review meme.
Here is yet another book that proves that Akwaeke Emezi and their oh-so-beautiful, oh-so-troubled autobiographical characters are morally bankrupt. (For more context on beauty and moral bankruptcy, please see this thread from one of my favorite Twitter users.) I'm constantly surprised by how many people review books based on how much they like the concept or how much they are attracted to the author, while ignoring the ACTUAL BOOK CONTENT. I have been confused about this for a while because while Akwaeke Emezi's clout continues to grow with every new publication, their craft continues to dwindle.
I want to start here: Justice for Pre-Chapter-17-Nasir. To be clear, I mean the version of Nasir who was a real human character, not the one-dimensional incel monster Akwaeke Emezi turns him into by the end. Because that person makes no sense…his transformation is nonsensical and literally only occurs so that Emezi can make it seem like Feyi and Alim are just sTaR cRoSsED lOvERs and not arch-villains. But seriously, the way Nasir and Lorraine and all the nameless "haters" of this alleged love story are painted as the villains in this book…it's ridiculous. This only happens because the author ignores the INITIAL VIOLENCE that begins with Feyi and Alim’s actions…and THAT only happens because the author is subconsciously trying to justify their own reprehensible romantic and sexual actions.
I literally don't even know how to review this ethical injury of a book. It was great and then I was literally groaning in frustration by the end. Usually when books make me feel a lot of emotions, that’s positive. But by the end of this book I literally feel like I did when I had my root canal. So how do I come up with a star rating for this terrible, visceral reading experience? I don’t know.
Because I'm churchy, I'm going to run this root canal metaphor into the ground for a minute. So go with me: There is so much sexual tension in this book that feels enjoyably overindulgent, like all all-you-can-eat Swedish Fish in a floss-free world. But the scene where the villainous couple moves from the kitchen to Alim's bedroom literally felt like developing a cavity, because that was the precise moment all the aesthetics and vibes of the sugar rush turned into rot. By the time Feyi and Alim are making unabashed googly eyes at each other, and they start talking about HOW HIS CHILD’S HAPPINESS AND SANITY PALES IN COMPARISON TO THEIR ROMANTIC DESIRES, there was nothing sweet or enjoyable in this book. From that point on, everything Akwaeke Emezi does to this story feels like dental surgery. The author literally sucked all of the enjoyment right out of this story and made us writhe in discomfort for 60-ish more pages (because of course, with a book this bad, you got to see it through.)
Okay so back to summarizing the story itself: Alim is a raggedy old man dating a girl the age of his kids. And Feyi…I don’t even know where to begin. This book is an Am I The Asshole post written in MFA format, and just like on Reddit, I can see right through the bullshit! I cannot BELIEVE Akwaeke Emezi sat down and tried to make us believe that Alim was wise and caring, or that Lorraine and Nasir were wrong!!!!! I need them, and anyone else who supports this book, to return to that AITA metapost about how our online ethics are moving towards a value system that frequently doesn't align with the rest of the world. And yes, before you say anything, these ethics extend to novels written by chronically online authors like Akwaeke Emezi. Because the people in and behind this book operate EXACTLY like the most egregious Reddit YTAs. Meaning, their minds have been so warped by 1) individualist notions of self-care and 2) elite capture of identity politics (read Olufemi Taiwo's stuff on this) that they fail to understand that while you can do whatever you want in your life, people WILL have feelings and terrible reactions to what you put them through. And people having terrible reactions isn't them being misogynist/whatever kind of bigot you want to throw out as a "gotcha" card. Their terrible reactions are because YOU STARTED THE TERRIBLE ACTIONS.
While I felt that Emezi's political analysis in Bitter was disappointingly basic, their politics in this book are just plain awful. Like the fact that THEY TURNED THE CLEARLY BLACK AND WHITE ISSUE OF NOT FUCKING YOUR SON’S CRUSH IN THE VERY HOUSE YOUR SON COULD RETURN TO ANYDAY into platitudes about resisting moral binaries?!?!?! This is precisely why we need to bring back shame, and stop confusing feminism (or things like relationship anarchy) with a carte-blanche excuse for piss poor sexual behavior. This is how I know people aren't reading the original texts!!! Cause this is nowhere near the politics they should've gathered from them. Instead, Emezi (and people like them!) have the half-baked politics of your average Reddit menace.
For Exhibit A of the Reddit-monster-morality, take the ridiculous “you don’t own me” lecture Feyi gives to Nasir. That is NOT the issue here, and I resent the bob and weave they tried to pull. The actual issue is the villainous couple literally stating that Nasir's feelings are TRIVIAL to their plans. They don’t care about their friend/son, if that care would require them to sacrifice even an inch of their impulsivity. For instance: they could’ve just waited a few months, given Nasir a chance to move on from his crush, and that would’ve helped SO MUCH. But they don't actually want to avoid hurting him, they only care about how his hurt inconveniences them. They only care because Nasir's feelings interrupt Feyi’s opulent, kinky summer vacation and Alim’s perception of himself as a good father. All that needed to happen was the villainous couple wait until THEY WEREN'T ON THE TRIP THE SON PLANNED to act on their lust. And that was only too much to ask because they are terrible, terrible people.
Exhibit B of the Reddit-monster-morality is the call from Milan…which made no sense except as a lazy justification of the author’s nonsensical idea that Alim and Feyi are morally sound characters. (It's the equivalent of when the AITA OP says "I talked about my terrible actions with my equally terrible friend and they said I'm right.") Milan and Feyi say that Nasir has had an easy life…are we not ignoring that his MOTHER died and that is the VERY SAME LOSS that allegedly makes it okay for Alim to do what he did?!?!?!? I know Akwaeke Emezi cannot truly be this dense, so it must be that they are just this selfish. It must be that their desire to justify a "fictional" situation that's very similar to something they did in real life is obscuring their common sense about good storytelling. Like, I really want to tell them to just BE selfish and immoral. Because this ridiculous bending over backwards to seem like a good person when they and their characters aren't is infuriating, and the book quality is suffering because of it.
In summary, I cannot believe how despicable these people in the villainous couple are and the fact that they are our POV characters!!!! I detest Akwaeke Emezi for putting me in their mindset and trying to make their bastardized ethics seem like something I should root for or agree with. I feel like my soul needs a shower after reading this, and I hate each and every one of you that are recommending it to people.
P.S. Stop putting this book on "queer fiction" lists!!!! When I'm trying to read queer romance novels, I want to read about two (or more!) queer people actually loving each other. This is another round of age-gap, power-dynamic, cishet chaos.
P.P.S. I want to also share Alexander's hilarious, yet thoughtful Fool of Death review. His original post and the following chat discussion has been a really helpful way for me to keep thinking about this, and I specifically appreciate his rebuttal to the Akwaeke Emezi Hive's common refrain of "y'all hate this book because you hate Black queer women being beautiful." I wrote a way-too-long comment on his review about some of the other important topics in Fool of Death: desirability, neocolonialism, gentrification, and the troubled intimacies between many heteroromantic women and their lesbian friends. If anyone is interested in my planning-related reviews, this is the place to find that perspective.
Here is yet another book that proves that Akwaeke Emezi and their oh-so-beautiful, oh-so-troubled autobiographical characters are morally bankrupt. (For more context on beauty and moral bankruptcy, please see this thread from one of my favorite Twitter users.) I'm constantly surprised by how many people review books based on how much they like the concept or how much they are attracted to the author, while ignoring the ACTUAL BOOK CONTENT. I have been confused about this for a while because while Akwaeke Emezi's clout continues to grow with every new publication, their craft continues to dwindle.
I want to start here: Justice for Pre-Chapter-17-Nasir. To be clear, I mean the version of Nasir who was a real human character, not the one-dimensional incel monster Akwaeke Emezi turns him into by the end. Because that person makes no sense…his transformation is nonsensical and literally only occurs so that Emezi can make it seem like Feyi and Alim are just sTaR cRoSsED lOvERs and not arch-villains. But seriously, the way Nasir and Lorraine and all the nameless "haters" of this alleged love story are painted as the villains in this book…it's ridiculous. This only happens because the author ignores the INITIAL VIOLENCE that begins with Feyi and Alim’s actions…and THAT only happens because the author is subconsciously trying to justify their own reprehensible romantic and sexual actions.
I literally don't even know how to review this ethical injury of a book. It was great and then I was literally groaning in frustration by the end. Usually when books make me feel a lot of emotions, that’s positive. But by the end of this book I literally feel like I did when I had my root canal. So how do I come up with a star rating for this terrible, visceral reading experience? I don’t know.
Because I'm churchy, I'm going to run this root canal metaphor into the ground for a minute. So go with me: There is so much sexual tension in this book that feels enjoyably overindulgent, like all all-you-can-eat Swedish Fish in a floss-free world. But the scene where the villainous couple moves from the kitchen to Alim's bedroom literally felt like developing a cavity, because that was the precise moment all the aesthetics and vibes of the sugar rush turned into rot. By the time Feyi and Alim are making unabashed googly eyes at each other, and they start talking about HOW HIS CHILD’S HAPPINESS AND SANITY PALES IN COMPARISON TO THEIR ROMANTIC DESIRES, there was nothing sweet or enjoyable in this book. From that point on, everything Akwaeke Emezi does to this story feels like dental surgery. The author literally sucked all of the enjoyment right out of this story and made us writhe in discomfort for 60-ish more pages (because of course, with a book this bad, you got to see it through.)
Okay so back to summarizing the story itself: Alim is a raggedy old man dating a girl the age of his kids. And Feyi…I don’t even know where to begin. This book is an Am I The Asshole post written in MFA format, and just like on Reddit, I can see right through the bullshit! I cannot BELIEVE Akwaeke Emezi sat down and tried to make us believe that Alim was wise and caring, or that Lorraine and Nasir were wrong!!!!! I need them, and anyone else who supports this book, to return to that AITA metapost about how our online ethics are moving towards a value system that frequently doesn't align with the rest of the world. And yes, before you say anything, these ethics extend to novels written by chronically online authors like Akwaeke Emezi. Because the people in and behind this book operate EXACTLY like the most egregious Reddit YTAs. Meaning, their minds have been so warped by 1) individualist notions of self-care and 2) elite capture of identity politics (read Olufemi Taiwo's stuff on this) that they fail to understand that while you can do whatever you want in your life, people WILL have feelings and terrible reactions to what you put them through. And people having terrible reactions isn't them being misogynist/whatever kind of bigot you want to throw out as a "gotcha" card. Their terrible reactions are because YOU STARTED THE TERRIBLE ACTIONS.
While I felt that Emezi's political analysis in Bitter was disappointingly basic, their politics in this book are just plain awful. Like the fact that THEY TURNED THE CLEARLY BLACK AND WHITE ISSUE OF NOT FUCKING YOUR SON’S CRUSH IN THE VERY HOUSE YOUR SON COULD RETURN TO ANYDAY into platitudes about resisting moral binaries?!?!?! This is precisely why we need to bring back shame, and stop confusing feminism (or things like relationship anarchy) with a carte-blanche excuse for piss poor sexual behavior. This is how I know people aren't reading the original texts!!! Cause this is nowhere near the politics they should've gathered from them. Instead, Emezi (and people like them!) have the half-baked politics of your average Reddit menace.
For Exhibit A of the Reddit-monster-morality, take the ridiculous “you don’t own me” lecture Feyi gives to Nasir. That is NOT the issue here, and I resent the bob and weave they tried to pull. The actual issue is the villainous couple literally stating that Nasir's feelings are TRIVIAL to their plans. They don’t care about their friend/son, if that care would require them to sacrifice even an inch of their impulsivity. For instance: they could’ve just waited a few months, given Nasir a chance to move on from his crush, and that would’ve helped SO MUCH. But they don't actually want to avoid hurting him, they only care about how his hurt inconveniences them. They only care because Nasir's feelings interrupt Feyi’s opulent, kinky summer vacation and Alim’s perception of himself as a good father. All that needed to happen was the villainous couple wait until THEY WEREN'T ON THE TRIP THE SON PLANNED to act on their lust. And that was only too much to ask because they are terrible, terrible people.
Exhibit B of the Reddit-monster-morality is the call from Milan…which made no sense except as a lazy justification of the author’s nonsensical idea that Alim and Feyi are morally sound characters. (It's the equivalent of when the AITA OP says "I talked about my terrible actions with my equally terrible friend and they said I'm right.") Milan and Feyi say that Nasir has had an easy life…are we not ignoring that his MOTHER died and that is the VERY SAME LOSS that allegedly makes it okay for Alim to do what he did?!?!?!? I know Akwaeke Emezi cannot truly be this dense, so it must be that they are just this selfish. It must be that their desire to justify a "fictional" situation that's very similar to something they did in real life is obscuring their common sense about good storytelling. Like, I really want to tell them to just BE selfish and immoral. Because this ridiculous bending over backwards to seem like a good person when they and their characters aren't is infuriating, and the book quality is suffering because of it.
In summary, I cannot believe how despicable these people in the villainous couple are and the fact that they are our POV characters!!!! I detest Akwaeke Emezi for putting me in their mindset and trying to make their bastardized ethics seem like something I should root for or agree with. I feel like my soul needs a shower after reading this, and I hate each and every one of you that are recommending it to people.
P.S. Stop putting this book on "queer fiction" lists!!!! When I'm trying to read queer romance novels, I want to read about two (or more!) queer people actually loving each other. This is another round of age-gap, power-dynamic, cishet chaos.
P.P.S. I want to also share Alexander's hilarious, yet thoughtful Fool of Death review. His original post and the following chat discussion has been a really helpful way for me to keep thinking about this, and I specifically appreciate his rebuttal to the Akwaeke Emezi Hive's common refrain of "y'all hate this book because you hate Black queer women being beautiful." I wrote a way-too-long comment on his review about some of the other important topics in Fool of Death: desirability, neocolonialism, gentrification, and the troubled intimacies between many heteroromantic women and their lesbian friends. If anyone is interested in my planning-related reviews, this is the place to find that perspective.
June 9, 2022
I deleted my original review after the author went on twitter to complain about it, taking one specific word out of context (i imagine the aim was to garner their followers sympathies). I used to be their fan and loved another book by them so I was massively disappointed when I learnt about this (i did not in fact read these tweets myself as i have made the blessed choice to steer clear of twitter).
The actual reason why I hated this book was the romance, the way said romance was presented to us, the romanticisation of trauma, the way the narrative paints a specific character as a villain in order to exonerate the actions of the leads, and the wattpad writing ('She let out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding').
Make of these criticisms what you will. Read this or don't, non me ne frega un cazzo.
NB please if you are going to leave a comment make sure you use the author’s correct pronouns (they/them)
The actual reason why I hated this book was the romance, the way said romance was presented to us, the romanticisation of trauma, the way the narrative paints a specific character as a villain in order to exonerate the actions of the leads, and the wattpad writing ('She let out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding').
Make of these criticisms what you will. Read this or don't, non me ne frega un cazzo.
NB please if you are going to leave a comment make sure you use the author’s correct pronouns (they/them)
December 14, 2022
go to hell.
this book sucks. why exactly are these two people together outside of lust.......cause they both have dead partners? well then, let everyone who has lost someone get married to each other. this is a forced "romance" that is just supported from you guys cause of the messiness of it all. She should not be dating her "friends" daddy and Feyi is a weirdo. The daddy is a weirdo as well, cause why would u date your son's friend/girlfriend. you weird. I hated it. which is saying a lot cause i LOVE mess. remind me not to take recommendations from yall. so happy I did NOT choose this for the lily reads bookclub cause i woulda got nasty. This book is trying to be deep and and sentimental but feels forced
this book sucks. why exactly are these two people together outside of lust.......cause they both have dead partners? well then, let everyone who has lost someone get married to each other. this is a forced "romance" that is just supported from you guys cause of the messiness of it all. She should not be dating her "friends" daddy and Feyi is a weirdo. The daddy is a weirdo as well, cause why would u date your son's friend/girlfriend. you weird. I hated it. which is saying a lot cause i LOVE mess. remind me not to take recommendations from yall. so happy I did NOT choose this for the lily reads bookclub cause i woulda got nasty. This book is trying to be deep and and sentimental but feels forced
July 24, 2022
I quite literally picked up this book for the very first time simply because of that intriguing title. Then I read the first sentence. After that hook, I couldn’t help but read the first couple of pages… the first chapter; despite the fact I was in the middle of a couple of other books. I set it back down and added it to my list knowing it wouldn’t be long. Then I read a friend’s review (Link Here) and couldn’t help myself. I also desperately needed to find out something about a bunch of damn carrots. It became an obsession of sorts and I found myself buying the book. I didn’t even bother borrowing the library copy I had in my hands in the first place. I needed to own this book!
This was sexy and a ton of fun to read! Not a schmaltzy romance but one that I could read without a single eye roll. The writing is highly competent, the characters lifelike, and the settings were a huge draw to this reader at least – both New York City and the tropical island retreat. Feyi was a strong lead who acted with agency after having suffered a tragic lost several years prior to the start of the novel. I love that art can work so many wonders on people – both the artist and the viewer. I love what candid conversations can do to build a friendship and a relationship. I love the fact that I won’t soon forget this book. I can’t wait to read some of Akwaeke Emezi’s other novels as well as their memoir.
“He loved people being messy as fuck – he said it was one of the best things about being human, how we could make such disasters and recover from them enough to make them into stories later.”
This was sexy and a ton of fun to read! Not a schmaltzy romance but one that I could read without a single eye roll. The writing is highly competent, the characters lifelike, and the settings were a huge draw to this reader at least – both New York City and the tropical island retreat. Feyi was a strong lead who acted with agency after having suffered a tragic lost several years prior to the start of the novel. I love that art can work so many wonders on people – both the artist and the viewer. I love what candid conversations can do to build a friendship and a relationship. I love the fact that I won’t soon forget this book. I can’t wait to read some of Akwaeke Emezi’s other novels as well as their memoir.
“He loved people being messy as fuck – he said it was one of the best things about being human, how we could make such disasters and recover from them enough to make them into stories later.”
December 14, 2022
this was certainly not what i was expecting
May 24, 2022
NOW AVAILABLE!!!
this is a romance novel. and i do not like romance novels.
however, emezi's writing is always fire, so even though the skeleton of this is a pretty formulaic "widow gets second chance at true love" romance plot, it's a great version of this kind of story, so despite the many times i cringed whenever romance-writing crept into it, bringing its overblown cliches:
"When I think about the ways I want to touch you, there's no space for anything else. I am consumed, utterly."
or when it leaned hard into one of my biggest pet peeves; unrealistic micro-evaluations of a character's fleeting facial expressions/vocal intonations (this example has BOTH!):
A thread of sadness snagged on his last few words, and Feyi watched the grief move in a slow wave through his eyes.
even with those things cluttering my path, there was more to it than those annoying bits and it is, at least, a very *complicated* love story.
feyi is a young widow whose high school sweetheart jonah, whom she married right after college, died in a car wreck five years before the novel begins. since then, she's been defined by her grief, consumed with survivor's guilt, living with her best friend joy and keeping busy making her art, with no interest in romance, sex, or relationships.
but after "years of numbness," her sexual desires begin stirring again, and she's ready to start easing back into life and its pleasures. "easing" may not be le mot juste, as the first chapter finds her barebacking a stranger in a bathroom during a party, which is the kind of reckless behavior we're not supposed to applaud (and joy certainly gives her some grief over it), but it was just what feyi needed to kickstart her back into the deep end of the dating pool.
feyi's hot girl summer/sexual reawakening involves three men whom she uses like stepping stones to return to life, beginning with milan, he of rawdog bathroom fame. she's gone through her five stages of grief, and now she's exploring the stages of love in all of its permutations:
what follows is a goldilocks romance plot where she test-drives a few different relationship models—with milan: great sex with no emotional intimacy, nasir: emotional connection with no passion, and alim: an older man who has also lost a partner and understands the core of her deepest pain.
but, of course, there are some obstacles and turbulence best left unsaid for now.
like most romance novels, it's more complex with emotions than with plot—everything moves very quickly except for the introspection, which is slow and sticky—and it embraces all the romance novel tropes: a beautiful protagonist, multiple attractive and appealing suitors who love talking about their feelings and their expectations and say shit like "I very much want to respect your heart in this, too, which is why I'm asking about which boundaries feel comfortable for you," and, through them, she is catapulted into a fairytale dreamworld—getting her work into a prestigious art show alongside all of her favorite artists, introducing her to the artworld elite, staying in a celebrity chef's mansion in a tropical island paradise with frolicking monkeys and oh my god the food.
it's a very sensual book—not just the sex, because reading about other people boning is whatever, but the food, the music, the vibrant foliage—feyi's is a full-scale multisensory reawakening, and that is the beauty of this book. not the jane austen parade of suitors or the "hard and velvet and dew-tipped" peens, but feyi's growing confidence as she emerges out of her trauma-coma and her willingness to engage with...everything again.
if you want a fun drinking game, take a shot every time the word "alive" is used. here's a sampling:
—It was the start of summer, she was alive and she was so fucking close to becoming what she wanted...
—a roiling sweaty mess of alive
—She was alive, like her therapist had taught her, and it was okay to live.
—She was hers; she was alive; there was so much to do.
—And, because Feyi was Feyi and she was alive, there was no way she could say no.
—...because Feyi was herself, and alive, she kept going
—It was a party, and she was drunk and alive.
—To hell with the trouble this would bring, she was alive.
—"...I think we're just figuring out how to survive a world on fire...that it's okay to be alive."
u drunk yet?
so, i still don't like romance novels, but i'm rounding this one up to a four because honestly—i'm just impressed with emezi's raw talent. this is my fourth of their books, and each one has been so markedly different—Freshwater was challenging and structurally wild, The Death of Vivek Oji was a masterpiece but also straightforward enough for wine-soaked book clubs to appreciate, and Pet—well, i didn't really like Pet, but i was still impressed with what they produced for younger readers, even if i wasn't a fan.
and even though i had to wade through a lot of blucky romance prose (every time alim called her "sweetness" (which is, for the record, TWENTY-TWO times), eyerolls ensued), when it's not being all romance-wincy, the dialogue is great, especially between feyi and joy, whose friendship is everything everything. i also appreciate that joy's character is a winky spin on the rom-com "gay best friend" trope, where the twist is that—unlike most rom coms, where the gbf is a boy—here the bisexual feyi has slept with her lesbian bestie. they hooked up for a while in the empty space before this book begins, but it never became a relationship, which is a shame because they complement each other so well and i'd rather see them together than feyi tits-deep in her messy-messy (but "messy and alive") situation.
feyi is a compelling and flawed character and i get that we're meant to root for her because of what she's been through (and the fact that she makes a "that's what she said" joke automatically endears her to me), but the whole "the heart wants what the heart wants" shrug doesn't really mitigate every selfish decision, and she leaves some pretty significant destruction in her wake. love is often messy, but this one—yeesh. i do not envy what comes next for her.
come to my blog!
this is a romance novel. and i do not like romance novels.
however, emezi's writing is always fire, so even though the skeleton of this is a pretty formulaic "widow gets second chance at true love" romance plot, it's a great version of this kind of story, so despite the many times i cringed whenever romance-writing crept into it, bringing its overblown cliches:
"When I think about the ways I want to touch you, there's no space for anything else. I am consumed, utterly."
or when it leaned hard into one of my biggest pet peeves; unrealistic micro-evaluations of a character's fleeting facial expressions/vocal intonations (this example has BOTH!):
A thread of sadness snagged on his last few words, and Feyi watched the grief move in a slow wave through his eyes.
even with those things cluttering my path, there was more to it than those annoying bits and it is, at least, a very *complicated* love story.
feyi is a young widow whose high school sweetheart jonah, whom she married right after college, died in a car wreck five years before the novel begins. since then, she's been defined by her grief, consumed with survivor's guilt, living with her best friend joy and keeping busy making her art, with no interest in romance, sex, or relationships.
...Feyi had moved down to New York, because if she was a monster, then so was the city, glorious and bright and everlasting, eating up time and hearts and lives as if they were nothing. She wanted to be consumed by the relentless volume of a place so much louder than she was, a place where her past and her pain could drown in the noise. Here, Feyi could keep her name and her unruined face, yet become someone else, someone starting over, someone who wasn't haunted. No one in New York cared about the vintage of sadness tucked behind her eyes and in the small corners of her smiles. She didn't have to drive, and she could cry on the train and no one would look, no one would care, because she didn't matter, and it was, honestly, such a relief to stop mattering.
but after "years of numbness," her sexual desires begin stirring again, and she's ready to start easing back into life and its pleasures. "easing" may not be le mot juste, as the first chapter finds her barebacking a stranger in a bathroom during a party, which is the kind of reckless behavior we're not supposed to applaud (and joy certainly gives her some grief over it), but it was just what feyi needed to kickstart her back into the deep end of the dating pool.
feyi's hot girl summer/sexual reawakening involves three men whom she uses like stepping stones to return to life, beginning with milan, he of rawdog bathroom fame. she's gone through her five stages of grief, and now she's exploring the stages of love in all of its permutations:
"...there are so many different types of love, so many ways someone can stay committed to you, stay in your life even if y'all aren't together, you know? And none of these ways are more important than the other."
what follows is a goldilocks romance plot where she test-drives a few different relationship models—with milan: great sex with no emotional intimacy, nasir: emotional connection with no passion, and alim: an older man who has also lost a partner and understands the core of her deepest pain.
but, of course, there are some obstacles and turbulence best left unsaid for now.
like most romance novels, it's more complex with emotions than with plot—everything moves very quickly except for the introspection, which is slow and sticky—and it embraces all the romance novel tropes: a beautiful protagonist, multiple attractive and appealing suitors who love talking about their feelings and their expectations and say shit like "I very much want to respect your heart in this, too, which is why I'm asking about which boundaries feel comfortable for you," and, through them, she is catapulted into a fairytale dreamworld—getting her work into a prestigious art show alongside all of her favorite artists, introducing her to the artworld elite, staying in a celebrity chef's mansion in a tropical island paradise with frolicking monkeys and oh my god the food.
it's a very sensual book—not just the sex, because reading about other people boning is whatever, but the food, the music, the vibrant foliage—feyi's is a full-scale multisensory reawakening, and that is the beauty of this book. not the jane austen parade of suitors or the "hard and velvet and dew-tipped" peens, but feyi's growing confidence as she emerges out of her trauma-coma and her willingness to engage with...everything again.
if you want a fun drinking game, take a shot every time the word "alive" is used. here's a sampling:
—It was the start of summer, she was alive and she was so fucking close to becoming what she wanted...
—a roiling sweaty mess of alive
—She was alive, like her therapist had taught her, and it was okay to live.
—She was hers; she was alive; there was so much to do.
—And, because Feyi was Feyi and she was alive, there was no way she could say no.
—...because Feyi was herself, and alive, she kept going
—It was a party, and she was drunk and alive.
—To hell with the trouble this would bring, she was alive.
—"...I think we're just figuring out how to survive a world on fire...that it's okay to be alive."
u drunk yet?
so, i still don't like romance novels, but i'm rounding this one up to a four because honestly—i'm just impressed with emezi's raw talent. this is my fourth of their books, and each one has been so markedly different—Freshwater was challenging and structurally wild, The Death of Vivek Oji was a masterpiece but also straightforward enough for wine-soaked book clubs to appreciate, and Pet—well, i didn't really like Pet, but i was still impressed with what they produced for younger readers, even if i wasn't a fan.
and even though i had to wade through a lot of blucky romance prose (every time alim called her "sweetness" (which is, for the record, TWENTY-TWO times), eyerolls ensued), when it's not being all romance-wincy, the dialogue is great, especially between feyi and joy, whose friendship is everything everything. i also appreciate that joy's character is a winky spin on the rom-com "gay best friend" trope, where the twist is that—unlike most rom coms, where the gbf is a boy—here the bisexual feyi has slept with her lesbian bestie. they hooked up for a while in the empty space before this book begins, but it never became a relationship, which is a shame because they complement each other so well and i'd rather see them together than feyi tits-deep in her messy-messy (but "messy and alive") situation.
feyi is a compelling and flawed character and i get that we're meant to root for her because of what she's been through (and the fact that she makes a "that's what she said" joke automatically endears her to me), but the whole "the heart wants what the heart wants" shrug doesn't really mitigate every selfish decision, and she leaves some pretty significant destruction in her wake. love is often messy, but this one—yeesh. i do not envy what comes next for her.
come to my blog!
July 16, 2022
I knew when the masses wanted me to read this book that things weren't going to go well. I could sense the disturbance in the force... and maybe because I was not a fan of Bitter that came out earlier this year I went into this with already negative thoughts and feelings...
I just... found this book lacked substance. It was almost laughable in the way that it tried to use grief as a means to pull these characters together. You're also gonna have to do some top tier writing to get me on board a book less than 300 pages where the characters want to end the book talking about marriage when they were together for maybe 25% and only knew each other for less than month. Again, I think if the discussions of grief and the fleeting nature of life had actually landed you could make some compelling arguments, but this was as rough drafts as rough drafts get. This was idea of a novel, not an actual novel.
Really the enjoyable character in the book was Joy. That's partially because I think on some level Feyi was meant to be presented as unlikeable, even though the book spends the last hour of the audiobook trying to present Feyi's actions equally as fucked up and unlikeable but also completely justified with random appearances from a character so tangential to the plot I was clueless as to why he was being brought back in. So yeah. you weren't supposed to like her all the time, love that for Feyi, but if you're gonna be unlikeable I'm still gonna need the logic to logic and the math to math and that didn't happen until the last two pages and by that point the ship had sailed, I was rooting to hear about Joy. At least Joy was interesting. Hell Joy was so interesting that Feyi does all the things she criticizes Joy for doing and ends the book talking about marrying this man she just met. Like... clearly Joy was onto something.
There's also something that rubs me the wrong way about how the love interest talks about a past male love interest they had, about how they were lowkey the one that got away and decides to now blow up his entire life to be with Feyi. Like much of the rest of the book, it wasn't giving.
Clearly I'm in the minority because the romance girlies and the girlies I don't normally associate with romance have eaten this up, but this was just a raggedy mess from start to finish and I would detour all but those who were already eagerly anticipating this from picking it up.
I just... found this book lacked substance. It was almost laughable in the way that it tried to use grief as a means to pull these characters together. You're also gonna have to do some top tier writing to get me on board a book less than 300 pages where the characters want to end the book talking about marriage when they were together for maybe 25% and only knew each other for less than month. Again, I think if the discussions of grief and the fleeting nature of life had actually landed you could make some compelling arguments, but this was as rough drafts as rough drafts get. This was idea of a novel, not an actual novel.
Really the enjoyable character in the book was Joy. That's partially because I think on some level Feyi was meant to be presented as unlikeable, even though the book spends the last hour of the audiobook trying to present Feyi's actions equally as fucked up and unlikeable but also completely justified with random appearances from a character so tangential to the plot I was clueless as to why he was being brought back in. So yeah. you weren't supposed to like her all the time, love that for Feyi, but if you're gonna be unlikeable I'm still gonna need the logic to logic and the math to math and that didn't happen until the last two pages and by that point the ship had sailed, I was rooting to hear about Joy. At least Joy was interesting. Hell Joy was so interesting that Feyi does all the things she criticizes Joy for doing and ends the book talking about marrying this man she just met. Like... clearly Joy was onto something.
There's also something that rubs me the wrong way about how the love interest talks about a past male love interest they had, about how they were lowkey the one that got away and decides to now blow up his entire life to be with Feyi. Like much of the rest of the book, it wasn't giving.
Clearly I'm in the minority because the romance girlies and the girlies I don't normally associate with romance have eaten this up, but this was just a raggedy mess from start to finish and I would detour all but those who were already eagerly anticipating this from picking it up.
June 17, 2022
Wowowowow. I read Akwaeke Emezi’s novel, Freshwater, which is a literary masterpiece. Since then, I’ve bought all of their books and “saved” them. Thank goodness I did not save this one and jumped right in. I’m not sure I’ve read another literary romance, and if I have, it definitely was not as original as this story.
About the book: “New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) reimagines the love story in this fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss.”
Feyi’s husband was killed in an accident five years earlier. She struggles with survivor’s guilt, especially because she walked away from the same accident. She is finally putting herself out there and dating again, but on her own terms. This is something I loved most about Feyi. She set standards for herself and she stuck to them. She keeps her guard up when she’s unsure, and she lets it down when she is ready. Feyi eventually lands on a tropical island and finds love in perhaps an unexpected way. Will she also find healing?
I loved Feyi’s complexity and her story arc. I also loved her best friend, Joy. We all need a loyal friend like her.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is perfect to read for Pride or any time. It’s less than three hundred pages, reads quickly like a fever dream, and has me in further awe of the writing chops of Akwaeke Emezi.
I received a gifted copy.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
About the book: “New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) reimagines the love story in this fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss.”
Feyi’s husband was killed in an accident five years earlier. She struggles with survivor’s guilt, especially because she walked away from the same accident. She is finally putting herself out there and dating again, but on her own terms. This is something I loved most about Feyi. She set standards for herself and she stuck to them. She keeps her guard up when she’s unsure, and she lets it down when she is ready. Feyi eventually lands on a tropical island and finds love in perhaps an unexpected way. Will she also find healing?
I loved Feyi’s complexity and her story arc. I also loved her best friend, Joy. We all need a loyal friend like her.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is perfect to read for Pride or any time. It’s less than three hundred pages, reads quickly like a fever dream, and has me in further awe of the writing chops of Akwaeke Emezi.
I received a gifted copy.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
April 16, 2023
Where do I even begin…. Like… a joke thing dis?!
On one hand, I am so happy I get to read a book by this author that I actually understand what is happening because while I did enjoy reading Freshwater I had ZERO idea what it was about. On the other hand, this book was entirely basic and lacking substance… but I guess this is the author’s way of flexing their creative muscles and they aren’t wrong, if you can publish it, why not.
In You’ve Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty we meet Feyi who is grieving the loss of her husband who died in a tragic car crash. After five years of grieving she figures its time to step out and maybe start dating, afterall she is still very young and with the encouragement of her friend Joy she decides to give it a go. Listen…. Nothing can prepare you for what Feyi calls dating after being celibate for five years.
Yall, I am not a romance reader maybe that is why I was reading this and thinking,
“wow… this is what we call romance…”
“Is hoe-ing around romance?”
“Big up you sis, a you seh date!”
Honestly, Sis seh she ago follow her heart and nothing will get in the way and while in theory I believe you should… mi just never expect her fi follow it guh deh suh!
Honestly, this book too chaotic… issa no for me.... I cannot Feyi went that far....I mean really?!!!
P.S. Love the Caribbean rep in this book!
On one hand, I am so happy I get to read a book by this author that I actually understand what is happening because while I did enjoy reading Freshwater I had ZERO idea what it was about. On the other hand, this book was entirely basic and lacking substance… but I guess this is the author’s way of flexing their creative muscles and they aren’t wrong, if you can publish it, why not.
In You’ve Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty we meet Feyi who is grieving the loss of her husband who died in a tragic car crash. After five years of grieving she figures its time to step out and maybe start dating, afterall she is still very young and with the encouragement of her friend Joy she decides to give it a go. Listen…. Nothing can prepare you for what Feyi calls dating after being celibate for five years.
Yall, I am not a romance reader maybe that is why I was reading this and thinking,
“wow… this is what we call romance…”
“Is hoe-ing around romance?”
“Big up you sis, a you seh date!”
Honestly, Sis seh she ago follow her heart and nothing will get in the way and while in theory I believe you should… mi just never expect her fi follow it guh deh suh!
Honestly, this book too chaotic… issa no for me.... I cannot Feyi went that far....I mean really?!!!
P.S. Love the Caribbean rep in this book!
February 25, 2024
I find it sad when authors get mad that people didn’t like their book. This author is an example. They claim that people don’t like seeing queer, black women being beautiful, or that anyone who didn’t like this is wrong.
Well I really don’t give a shit because I’m still slapping 1-star if that’s how I feel. You can tell me I’m wrong all you want because I can say the same.
No matter how anyone feels, in my opinion, Feyi isn’t empowering.
Feyi is the type of person who uses her trauma (her husband dying five years ago) as an excuse to treat people like shit, leading them on, lying to them, and making herself the victim. She uses tears as a manipulative tool to get what she wants. She also thinks she deserves the best treatment because, once again, she lost her husband five years ago, so there couldn’t be anyone in this world going through it worse than her. She’s super gorgeous, so beautiful, that it’s obvious why men would look at her. She’s so horny, so sensual, that she can’t decide whether she wants her random hook up from the bathroom who she has unprotected sex with and didn’t tell him she’s on the pill (not until after he came inside her), one of his best friends, or the dad of the best friend. She never wanted a relationship with anyone, not her hook up or his best friend, but after seeing the father of said best friend (who is actually kinda her boyfriend but kinda not), she feels this intense, this profound attraction, and suddenly she wants to try. She feels this bond because of grief. If you’re a woman, you’re probably supposed to find her very empowering because of her ‘messy, queer life,’ but in reality, she just disappointed me.
I think the fact that the author paints Nasir as the villain, especially at the end, when FEYI IS RIGHT THERE, makes me believe the author believes we need to accept her biases. #JUSTICEFORNASIR!
Like yeah, I know she and Nasir weren’t together, so she was able to be with whoever she wanted to be, but the way I saw it, she did lead him on. She also makes herself the victim when Nasir confronts her about fucking his dad, and uses her good old sad girl tears to bring emotion to herself. Then, it’s as if HE owes HER an apology when in reality, I believe it should’ve been the opposite. Nasir reacted right. She wants to act empowered and tough but in reality I found her to be pathetic.
No development, just a 49-year-old man going for the girl his son likes who is 19-years-younger than him formed through lust and attraction. That it. And no, my issue has nothing to do with the age gap and taboo relationship. I’ve literally read worse.
This would’ve worked out if the author didn’t use trauma as a leading point for the conflict AND the relationship.
For a romance novel, this was unnecessarily too dramatic.
So no, dear author, we don’t hate this book because we hate black, queer women healing. We don’t hate black women finding happiness, or black women going out of the norm. We hate anyone who has selfish desires, cares only about greed, and uses people for their own benefit. Their race and sexuality have nothing to do with it. You could’ve made Feyi a straight, white American and not a black Nigerian and it wouldn’t change how I feel. You can be whoever you are and I still won’t like you if you’re a piece of shit.
Do yourself a favor and take the average rating of this into consideration. I also recommend reading the 1-star reviews because I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Well I really don’t give a shit because I’m still slapping 1-star if that’s how I feel. You can tell me I’m wrong all you want because I can say the same.
No matter how anyone feels, in my opinion, Feyi isn’t empowering.
Feyi is the type of person who uses her trauma (her husband dying five years ago) as an excuse to treat people like shit, leading them on, lying to them, and making herself the victim. She uses tears as a manipulative tool to get what she wants. She also thinks she deserves the best treatment because, once again, she lost her husband five years ago, so there couldn’t be anyone in this world going through it worse than her. She’s super gorgeous, so beautiful, that it’s obvious why men would look at her. She’s so horny, so sensual, that she can’t decide whether she wants her random hook up from the bathroom who she has unprotected sex with and didn’t tell him she’s on the pill (not until after he came inside her), one of his best friends, or the dad of the best friend. She never wanted a relationship with anyone, not her hook up or his best friend, but after seeing the father of said best friend (who is actually kinda her boyfriend but kinda not), she feels this intense, this profound attraction, and suddenly she wants to try. She feels this bond because of grief. If you’re a woman, you’re probably supposed to find her very empowering because of her ‘messy, queer life,’ but in reality, she just disappointed me.
I think the fact that the author paints Nasir as the villain, especially at the end, when FEYI IS RIGHT THERE, makes me believe the author believes we need to accept her biases. #JUSTICEFORNASIR!
Like yeah, I know she and Nasir weren’t together, so she was able to be with whoever she wanted to be, but the way I saw it, she did lead him on. She also makes herself the victim when Nasir confronts her about fucking his dad, and uses her good old sad girl tears to bring emotion to herself. Then, it’s as if HE owes HER an apology when in reality, I believe it should’ve been the opposite. Nasir reacted right. She wants to act empowered and tough but in reality I found her to be pathetic.
No development, just a 49-year-old man going for the girl his son likes who is 19-years-younger than him formed through lust and attraction. That it. And no, my issue has nothing to do with the age gap and taboo relationship. I’ve literally read worse.
This would’ve worked out if the author didn’t use trauma as a leading point for the conflict AND the relationship.
For a romance novel, this was unnecessarily too dramatic.
So no, dear author, we don’t hate this book because we hate black, queer women healing. We don’t hate black women finding happiness, or black women going out of the norm. We hate anyone who has selfish desires, cares only about greed, and uses people for their own benefit. Their race and sexuality have nothing to do with it. You could’ve made Feyi a straight, white American and not a black Nigerian and it wouldn’t change how I feel. You can be whoever you are and I still won’t like you if you’re a piece of shit.
Do yourself a favor and take the average rating of this into consideration. I also recommend reading the 1-star reviews because I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Read
March 22, 2023Read during the #TransRightsReadathon.
Okay, first will someone please tell Faber and Faber this is a romance novel and could have had a human face cover like the US edition, you don't actually need to do this litfic thing.
A superbly written book (well obviously from this author), which takes some classic tropes (second time around/boyfriend's dad) and does absolute wonders with them. Feyi's grief for her husband, killed several years ago in a traumatic car crash, is real and powerful and shapes everything. We see how much she needs to start living fully, how hard it is to do so. There's a wonderful scene where she realises part of what attracts her to Alim is his grief for his own lost wife: they can be alone together, in a way that she can't be with someone who hasn't gone through a comparable experience. Their lost partners are palpable in the new relationship: not as ghosts or shadows to be shaken off, but as presences to be brought in and fully acknowledged. It's deeply moving and doesn't detract from the relationship at all.
Okay, with the wise stuff out of the way let us proceed to the Messy Shit. This is totally a 'rock up with your boyfriend and sleep with his dad' book. Feyi knows exactly how messy this is, and it is explored in depth, and the damage it does is real, palpable, and not handwaved away. Brilliantly, the author shows us a whole lot of things being simultaneously true while mutually incompatible. Alim has the right to pursue his happiness (his children have already destroyed a previous relationship of his, forcing him to end it). Feyi is not obliged to keep dating Nasir and he has no rights over her. Nasir and Feyi are not formally in a relationship and have never had sex. And *even so* Feyi dropping Nasir for his father is a phenomenally hurtful thing to do and of course it blows everything up, because it's not as simple as "we weren't formally dating and your father and I are both free consenting adults".
Nasir is a wonderfully drawn character: a man who is almost but not quite a decent, caring, sensitive guy, because he's all those things until he's thwarted. And that's what this is: he says 'we can just be friends' but it's not what he ever meant, and once he realises he won't get his way, the underlying misogyny boils out. He's not even a bad person: he's a man living in a world that has taught him to believe, probably at an unacknowledged level, that women owe men sex if men pay them sufficient attention, and that a woman who is sexually available to other men must be sexually available to him.
May I here add that the most satisfying moment in the entire book is when Nasir is going into Incel Rage mode and Feyi LOSES IT on him. Superb.
I also want to note that Nasir and his sister are both kind of biphobic at least as far as their father goes, and decidedly self-centred, and we can really see how they were shaped by their mother's sudden death. They aren't hateful so much as damaged and desperate to keep their remaining parent to themselves. Once again, hurt people hurt people.
This is all thinky stuff, which utterly underplays how much fun this book is. It is a terrific romance novel on its own terms, with a wonderfully sweary best friend, entertaining heroine, proper dilemmas and sacrifices for love, almost excessively cinnamon roll hero, and engulfing emotions splashed all over the pages. It's also as deeply thought and terrifically written as anything published as litfic [glares at Faber again], both in the emotions and in the lavish descriptions. Great stuff.
Okay, first will someone please tell Faber and Faber this is a romance novel and could have had a human face cover like the US edition, you don't actually need to do this litfic thing.
A superbly written book (well obviously from this author), which takes some classic tropes (second time around/boyfriend's dad) and does absolute wonders with them. Feyi's grief for her husband, killed several years ago in a traumatic car crash, is real and powerful and shapes everything. We see how much she needs to start living fully, how hard it is to do so. There's a wonderful scene where she realises part of what attracts her to Alim is his grief for his own lost wife: they can be alone together, in a way that she can't be with someone who hasn't gone through a comparable experience. Their lost partners are palpable in the new relationship: not as ghosts or shadows to be shaken off, but as presences to be brought in and fully acknowledged. It's deeply moving and doesn't detract from the relationship at all.
Okay, with the wise stuff out of the way let us proceed to the Messy Shit. This is totally a 'rock up with your boyfriend and sleep with his dad' book. Feyi knows exactly how messy this is, and it is explored in depth, and the damage it does is real, palpable, and not handwaved away. Brilliantly, the author shows us a whole lot of things being simultaneously true while mutually incompatible. Alim has the right to pursue his happiness (his children have already destroyed a previous relationship of his, forcing him to end it). Feyi is not obliged to keep dating Nasir and he has no rights over her. Nasir and Feyi are not formally in a relationship and have never had sex. And *even so* Feyi dropping Nasir for his father is a phenomenally hurtful thing to do and of course it blows everything up, because it's not as simple as "we weren't formally dating and your father and I are both free consenting adults".
Nasir is a wonderfully drawn character: a man who is almost but not quite a decent, caring, sensitive guy, because he's all those things until he's thwarted. And that's what this is: he says 'we can just be friends' but it's not what he ever meant, and once he realises he won't get his way, the underlying misogyny boils out. He's not even a bad person: he's a man living in a world that has taught him to believe, probably at an unacknowledged level, that women owe men sex if men pay them sufficient attention, and that a woman who is sexually available to other men must be sexually available to him.
May I here add that the most satisfying moment in the entire book is when Nasir is going into Incel Rage mode and Feyi LOSES IT on him. Superb.
I also want to note that Nasir and his sister are both kind of biphobic at least as far as their father goes, and decidedly self-centred, and we can really see how they were shaped by their mother's sudden death. They aren't hateful so much as damaged and desperate to keep their remaining parent to themselves. Once again, hurt people hurt people.
This is all thinky stuff, which utterly underplays how much fun this book is. It is a terrific romance novel on its own terms, with a wonderfully sweary best friend, entertaining heroine, proper dilemmas and sacrifices for love, almost excessively cinnamon roll hero, and engulfing emotions splashed all over the pages. It's also as deeply thought and terrifically written as anything published as litfic [glares at Faber again], both in the emotions and in the lavish descriptions. Great stuff.
July 23, 2022
You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty Made a Fool out of Me
I don’t even know where to start lol. Almost nothing about this novel worked for me.
Firstly, I do not find the premise romantic in the slightest. When I found out Emezi was delving into the genre I was excited–but this is not a romance, this is a fucking horror movie. Being stuck in a house with men lusting after you, relying entirely on them for food, transport, shelter, and career opportunities sounds like my own personal idea of hell. I found the balance of power extremely unnerving. No matter how enchanting Feyi is I could not shake the discomfort of her being completely reliant on these wealthy men she barely knows. Not to mention
This compulsion to turn characters to villainous caricatures, or erase their justified pain, was in incredibly poor taste. I found Feyi selfish and borderline manipulative at times. How are you going to act like Nasir is some pleb who doesn't understand art and grief like his father, when he experienced the same loss? why is his grief dismissable and Feyi's this deep and powerful force? Make it make sense.
Perhaps most detrimental (as this is a love story) is the fact I don’t believe the love presented. A love that is meant to be so epic, healing, and worth sacrificing everything. Infatuation, yeah, obsession, absolutely, but capital L, Love?? The perfection of it was boring. It was so sanitary, each character taking turns to say the exact right romantic thing to one another, to the point it almost felt like a joke.
Secondly, the writing. I am in awe of how some of these lines were okay’d. My major issue with Freshwater (which I still ardantly recommend) was the writing often felt like a display instead of an expression, with traces of writer’s workshops evident on every page. I had hoped their writing would have matured but, unfortunately, I can’t confidently say I noticed progress.
The author's tendency toward lavish phrasing is rarely effective, mostly it feels feel self-indulgent and flashy, not serving the story but rather a display of technique. Some, when pertaining to physical descriptors or sensations, work well–one of my only positives of his novel is the attention to aesthetic. I loved the descriptions of clothing, hair, makeup as well as the mouth watering food. But mostly the wording is straight-up awkward.
I am not being dramatic when I say I laughed out loud, some examples;
*quotes taken from ARC*
“his eyes were controlled murky ponds” this is the way the romantic lead’s eyes are described during a scene that is meant to be thick with romantic and sexual tension?? MURKY PONDS
Then regarding the same character ”his slurried eyes” WHY IS THE ROMANTIC LEADS EYES CONJURING IMAGES OG MUD AND SEWAGE
“Feyi wondered how they looked standing next to each other, deep blood and a long cloud, both adorned, both dark as two different nights” the description is in reference to their clothing but im sorry describing someone as a long cloud is so funny to me
”[character’s name] control slipped for just a second, strong feeling bolting through his face like lightning” the feeling what through his face now
”Her face was pinned to the blooming sky” ?? her gaze?? Or her whole face?? Like am I crazy or is that a bad turn of phrase
“Being so close to him felt like a thousand welcome insanities against her skin” As far as I can tell this is not a reference to anything? insanities or a thousand don’t really hold significance so why specifically write this?? Cos it sounds pretty?? Not enough it's giving wattpad tbh
Clearly this book is not for me. I must say however it started off very strong, the bathroom scene was steamy and Feyi and her best friend Joy’s New York life was really enjoyable. I honestly felt more connection between Joy and Feyi than Feyi and, well, anyone else. Why was this not a romance between them? the men were so boring in comparison to Joy how tf am I meant to root for them.
As previously mentioned I adored the time taken to appreciate aesthetics, especially as Feyi herself is an artist. The descriptions of her clothing, makeup and hair as glossy, sparkly, shiny, pearlescent, rainbow etc. was beautiful. Even if the descriptions of her art itself were lacklustre. I always think it is best to write about fictional art in terms of what it evokes from the character, to allow the reader their own interpretation and avoid tackiness. When described so literally Feyi’s art lost any magic or mystery, and kinda seems bad. SORRY.
Lacked the heart and intrigue of Freshwater, which allowed one to excuse certain faults. This novel is so hollow and empty, I felt like I was being pranked whilst reading it.
*REVIEW OF AN ARC*
I don’t even know where to start lol. Almost nothing about this novel worked for me.
Firstly, I do not find the premise romantic in the slightest. When I found out Emezi was delving into the genre I was excited–but this is not a romance, this is a fucking horror movie. Being stuck in a house with men lusting after you, relying entirely on them for food, transport, shelter, and career opportunities sounds like my own personal idea of hell. I found the balance of power extremely unnerving. No matter how enchanting Feyi is I could not shake the discomfort of her being completely reliant on these wealthy men she barely knows. Not to mention
This compulsion to turn characters to villainous caricatures, or erase their justified pain, was in incredibly poor taste. I found Feyi selfish and borderline manipulative at times. How are you going to act like Nasir is some pleb who doesn't understand art and grief like his father, when he experienced the same loss? why is his grief dismissable and Feyi's this deep and powerful force? Make it make sense.
Perhaps most detrimental (as this is a love story) is the fact I don’t believe the love presented. A love that is meant to be so epic, healing, and worth sacrificing everything. Infatuation, yeah, obsession, absolutely, but capital L, Love?? The perfection of it was boring. It was so sanitary, each character taking turns to say the exact right romantic thing to one another, to the point it almost felt like a joke.
Secondly, the writing. I am in awe of how some of these lines were okay’d. My major issue with Freshwater (which I still ardantly recommend) was the writing often felt like a display instead of an expression, with traces of writer’s workshops evident on every page. I had hoped their writing would have matured but, unfortunately, I can’t confidently say I noticed progress.
The author's tendency toward lavish phrasing is rarely effective, mostly it feels feel self-indulgent and flashy, not serving the story but rather a display of technique. Some, when pertaining to physical descriptors or sensations, work well–one of my only positives of his novel is the attention to aesthetic. I loved the descriptions of clothing, hair, makeup as well as the mouth watering food. But mostly the wording is straight-up awkward.
I am not being dramatic when I say I laughed out loud, some examples;
*quotes taken from ARC*
“his eyes were controlled murky ponds” this is the way the romantic lead’s eyes are described during a scene that is meant to be thick with romantic and sexual tension?? MURKY PONDS
Then regarding the same character ”his slurried eyes” WHY IS THE ROMANTIC LEADS EYES CONJURING IMAGES OG MUD AND SEWAGE
“Feyi wondered how they looked standing next to each other, deep blood and a long cloud, both adorned, both dark as two different nights” the description is in reference to their clothing but im sorry describing someone as a long cloud is so funny to me
”[character’s name] control slipped for just a second, strong feeling bolting through his face like lightning” the feeling what through his face now
”Her face was pinned to the blooming sky” ?? her gaze?? Or her whole face?? Like am I crazy or is that a bad turn of phrase
“Being so close to him felt like a thousand welcome insanities against her skin” As far as I can tell this is not a reference to anything? insanities or a thousand don’t really hold significance so why specifically write this?? Cos it sounds pretty?? Not enough it's giving wattpad tbh
Clearly this book is not for me. I must say however it started off very strong, the bathroom scene was steamy and Feyi and her best friend Joy’s New York life was really enjoyable. I honestly felt more connection between Joy and Feyi than Feyi and, well, anyone else. Why was this not a romance between them? the men were so boring in comparison to Joy how tf am I meant to root for them.
As previously mentioned I adored the time taken to appreciate aesthetics, especially as Feyi herself is an artist. The descriptions of her clothing, makeup and hair as glossy, sparkly, shiny, pearlescent, rainbow etc. was beautiful. Even if the descriptions of her art itself were lacklustre. I always think it is best to write about fictional art in terms of what it evokes from the character, to allow the reader their own interpretation and avoid tackiness. When described so literally Feyi’s art lost any magic or mystery, and kinda seems bad. SORRY.
Lacked the heart and intrigue of Freshwater, which allowed one to excuse certain faults. This novel is so hollow and empty, I felt like I was being pranked whilst reading it.
*REVIEW OF AN ARC*
May 25, 2022
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a contemporary romance with characters trying to process their trauma.
Five years after the death of her husband, Feyi Adekola wants to try dating again. Her roommate and best friend Joy is equally excited for Feyi to get back out there.
One day at a rooftop party, Feyi skips the dating part and leaps right into a steamy encounter with a handsome stranger. Over the summer, Feyi’s decision to start living again will shape her life in ways she never dreamed was possible for her again. From spicy sessions to finding new love. From her brownstone apartment and work as an artist to a tropical island with huge career opportunities. Although it’s not an easy switch for Feyi, she’ll have to work through her emotions, trauma, and grief.
This romance novel solely focuses on Feyi’s POV. The writing style flows smoothly, making this a fairly quick read. However, it does delve into some heavy topics.
It has themes of life, death, sexuality, art, pleasure, grief, and joy.
This is the kind of romance that I generally prefer: contemporary and character-driven. It’s very spicy, but there’s more to the story than just that.
The plot took an unexpected and immediate turn, romance-wise. I don’t have an opinion on the nature of the relationship, except that it happened fast, incredibly so.
This novel is the third that I’ve read by Akwaeke Emezi, and though they have all been in different genres (literary fiction, memoir, romance), I have enjoyed them all. At this point, Emezi is an auto-read author for me. They can write anything, and I will gobble it up.
I recommend this if you want a spicy beach read with emotional depth.
Thank you to Atria Books for providing me with an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://booksandwheels.com
Five years after the death of her husband, Feyi Adekola wants to try dating again. Her roommate and best friend Joy is equally excited for Feyi to get back out there.
One day at a rooftop party, Feyi skips the dating part and leaps right into a steamy encounter with a handsome stranger. Over the summer, Feyi’s decision to start living again will shape her life in ways she never dreamed was possible for her again. From spicy sessions to finding new love. From her brownstone apartment and work as an artist to a tropical island with huge career opportunities. Although it’s not an easy switch for Feyi, she’ll have to work through her emotions, trauma, and grief.
This romance novel solely focuses on Feyi’s POV. The writing style flows smoothly, making this a fairly quick read. However, it does delve into some heavy topics.
It has themes of life, death, sexuality, art, pleasure, grief, and joy.
This is the kind of romance that I generally prefer: contemporary and character-driven. It’s very spicy, but there’s more to the story than just that.
The plot took an unexpected and immediate turn, romance-wise. I don’t have an opinion on the nature of the relationship, except that it happened fast, incredibly so.
This novel is the third that I’ve read by Akwaeke Emezi, and though they have all been in different genres (literary fiction, memoir, romance), I have enjoyed them all. At this point, Emezi is an auto-read author for me. They can write anything, and I will gobble it up.
I recommend this if you want a spicy beach read with emotional depth.
Thank you to Atria Books for providing me with an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://booksandwheels.com
June 5, 2022
I'm sitting somewhere between a 4 and a 5 star rating for this one, but I'm rounding up because this was truly just *so* good. I've been meaning to read something from Akwaeke Emezi for a long time because I've heard nothing but the best things about their writing, but I've always been a little hesitant because I'm not usually the biggest fan of literary fiction. When I found out that they were writing a romance (yes, this is a true adult romance!!) I immediately knew that this was the perfect place to start, and y'all, I was not disappointed. This novel follows our main character Feyi, who has decided to try to start dating again after the death of her husband, and a series of events that lead to her falling for a man that has also lost his wife. Going into this I knew it was going to be a heavier read, but I truly feel like this book struck a damn near perfect balance of heavy, heartfelt scenes and steamy, sexy moments. My only real issue is that I do feel like the main romance between Feyi and Alim felt a little bit rushed, but the beautiful writing and the eventual chemistry we see between them really made up for that for me and I absolutely recommend checking this one out. I really hope that Emezi has plans to write more romances in the future because I absolutely ate this up and I cannot wait to dive into their backlist now. This was so, SO good.
CW: death of a loved one, car accidents
CW: death of a loved one, car accidents
February 16, 2023
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Before reading this book, I strongly urge you to check out this author's interview with Trevor Noah via The Daily Show. Regardless of how you feel about the book, it's a very valuable interview because it puts the author's intentions into perspective and talks about how they included some of their own thoughts about love, grief, and art into the book. I also appreciated their love of romance novels (including the old Mills & Boon) and how you can appreciate the oldies for laying the groundwork for the far more feminist- and diversity-friendly contemporary romance novels of today, which give happy endings to people from all walks of life.
***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD***
I liked the interview and I appreciated what this author sought to do with YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY. But my thoughts on the book ended up being kind of convoluted and not totally favorable. I feel like I always end up feeling this way with Emezi's work. They're a very-- I want to say transgressive author? In that, their works seem like they're supposed to challenge the way you think about society and how it works and make you uncomfortable on purpose. YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY is a romance, but it's not a straightforward one. The heroine, Feyi, is aching from the death of her husband, who she has immortalized and enshrined in art and memory. I'm reading another book right now that also explores these concepts, which is called SOMEDAY, MAYBE by Onyi Nwabineli. Both books show that there is no linear path to love or healing. In SOMEDAY's case, the heroine takes solace from her friends and family. In YOU MADE A FOOL, the heroine turns to sexual release. No one can really hold up, so she hooks up with people who are undemanding and easy, whether it's the pretty party boy, Milan, her own best friend, Joy, or Nasir, the nice guy who seems to think that he can save her from herself, like a charity case.
Nasir ends up trying to woo her by taking her to his family home on a Caribbean island, where it turns out that his father, Alim, is a famous Michelin-starred chef. He's also a bisexual silver fox hottie that Feyi kind of sort of has a crush on, and maybe it's the lipstick and the silver nail polish, or maybe it's the thought of the forbidden, but suddenly this book starts feeling a lot like Katee Robert's YOUR DAD WILL DO, social subterfuge edition. As soon as Nasir leaves the house for an extended period of tim, she's all over his dad like a pan on a stove, and yeah, they do have chemistry and I think he ends up being a stabilizing influence for her and also a safe space because of their shared grief and love of art, but it's way messier than what I bargained for (the sleeping around and unprotected sex and messy queer girl summer stuff, I could stand behind, but going on an all expenses paid trip with your friend you know wants to sleep with you and then doing it with his dad felt kind of... weird). The summary also doesn't really prepare you for the dad-fucking element. "Forbidden" romance could mean anything.
So, here are some things that I liked. The portrayl of queerness and Blackness and the unapologetic sexuality of the main character and her friend. Joy, and the way she tried to hold her friend accountable while also still being supportive of her choices. The message that women don't really "owe" men anything (even though Nasir paid for all Feyi's shit, she didn't owe him sex, or even the truth, really). The line when Alim is like "it's not your house, boy." (Owned.) The food porn and descriptions of the art. The blood thing was very Damien Hirst and the wedding ring thing reminded me of something Tabaimo might do. Neither artist is to my personal taste, but their work is both subversive and disturbing, which I think Feyi would appreciate. The writing is also gorgeous. There's a lot I highlighted while reading. Emezi has a great way with words, and everything is very sensory.
YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH did not really work for me as a romance, and I did not really like the story. I think it's more lit-fic than it is a romance, even though it straddles both genres, and sort of defies categorization. Framing it as an avant-garde work will probably help it find its target audience, as will knowing going in that it's an age gap romance that flies in the face of social convention, and has the heroine hooking up with her friendzoned boy "friend's" dad.
2 to 2.5 stars
March 17, 2023
⛔️Warning: this book is rated R for adult content and language. Not recommended for YA and/or wholesome folks…. ⛔️ Now that is out of the way…. This book… ❤️ first impressions are not always what they seem. I did not think I’d enjoy this as much as I did. 😬 The main character morphs from un-likable/careless/juvenile to sensitive/caring/mature as her full storyline unfolds. The romantic relationship might not hit right for everyone- but their connection caught me- hook, line and sinker. 🥰
May 18, 2022
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
is a deeply emotional love story about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss while discovering herself as a person.
It’s been five years since the accident that killed Feyi’s husband and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her best friend, Joy, trying to leave her past behind. She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?
What I expected was a light, fun, tropical romance but this was an intense and moving story of love and grief. Emezi’s writing is both intense and beautiful. The plot of this book, though with the well-established trope of forbidden love, was still unique in the way it was structured. Emezi does a great job capturing all the complicated emotions that make the story feel really like the depiction of trauma and loss or grief.
Still reeling from the death of her beloved, Jonah, Feyi is an emotional mess and prone to making mistakes after mistakes, but you can still relate to her character and her actions as her past becomes clearer.
My main issue was with the romance. Personally, the romance seemed more about attraction and another Insta-love and I just couldn't connect to it. Since romance is the core of the novel, not connecting to the romance definitely made it less enjoyable to me. The journey from attraction to love felt too rushed and just didn't quite work for me. The second half got repetitive after a point and the ending felt extremely rushed. Many questions were left unanswered, the book wrapped up without resolving any of them or giving any closure to the characters or the readers.
In the end, this was a beautifully written story. I'm not a big romance reader and still, I liked reading this book. Mainly because this wasn't a typical romance book with a set formula or cheesy dialogues. The book explores the themes of grief, friendship, and love in a unique manner which made it refreshing to read. This is a slow-burn, sometimes messy story and if you love romance, you will like this one.
Many thanks to the publishers Simon & Schuster and Edelweiss for the ARC.
It’s been five years since the accident that killed Feyi’s husband and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her best friend, Joy, trying to leave her past behind. She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?
What I expected was a light, fun, tropical romance but this was an intense and moving story of love and grief. Emezi’s writing is both intense and beautiful. The plot of this book, though with the well-established trope of forbidden love, was still unique in the way it was structured. Emezi does a great job capturing all the complicated emotions that make the story feel really like the depiction of trauma and loss or grief.
Still reeling from the death of her beloved, Jonah, Feyi is an emotional mess and prone to making mistakes after mistakes, but you can still relate to her character and her actions as her past becomes clearer.
My main issue was with the romance. Personally, the romance seemed more about attraction and another Insta-love and I just couldn't connect to it. Since romance is the core of the novel, not connecting to the romance definitely made it less enjoyable to me. The journey from attraction to love felt too rushed and just didn't quite work for me. The second half got repetitive after a point and the ending felt extremely rushed. Many questions were left unanswered, the book wrapped up without resolving any of them or giving any closure to the characters or the readers.
In the end, this was a beautifully written story. I'm not a big romance reader and still, I liked reading this book. Mainly because this wasn't a typical romance book with a set formula or cheesy dialogues. The book explores the themes of grief, friendship, and love in a unique manner which made it refreshing to read. This is a slow-burn, sometimes messy story and if you love romance, you will like this one.
Many thanks to the publishers Simon & Schuster and Edelweiss for the ARC.
March 19, 2022
2 stars
Oh boy. Big outlier here. This book was simply not written for me. I did not care for the protagonist (virtually always a nonstarter for me), I didn’t learn anything (bummer), and I didn’t feel anything (except the desire to finish it up). Also too much navel-gazing romance for me and too much gratuitous profanity. Lots of good reviews are in so please take a look at those before following my lead. Two stars for the author’s excellent writing skills.
I would like to thank Net Galley, Atria Books, and Ms. Emezi for the ARC invitation. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way.
Oh boy. Big outlier here. This book was simply not written for me. I did not care for the protagonist (virtually always a nonstarter for me), I didn’t learn anything (bummer), and I didn’t feel anything (except the desire to finish it up). Also too much navel-gazing romance for me and too much gratuitous profanity. Lots of good reviews are in so please take a look at those before following my lead. Two stars for the author’s excellent writing skills.
I would like to thank Net Galley, Atria Books, and Ms. Emezi for the ARC invitation. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way.
December 14, 2022
i found this book really funny and i enjoyed the writing but from the beginning feyi did not want nasir, a scene that stuck out was when they were going on their first date and she was just being hard on him for no reason. she did not want to be with that man. it was shown much more times throughout their time together. before she even met his dad. i get this was a bit out of her comfort zone and she was trying something new but she didn’t want him, simple as that.
i don’t mind the plot, i love mess, i read birthday girl by penelope douglas so i’m not new to this, im true to this! my issue lies in this book trying to be really deep and beautiful love story but it’s just not that… because of the circumstances (dating her man’s dad) it could never truly be that in my eyes. and this was not no damn romance book so why was it marketed as that? this book is “about grief” but you don’t really know why she’s grieving like obviously you know its because of jonah but you learn nothing about jonah except that he was the love of her life and that’s she’s now traumatized.
getting married after knowing each other less than a month is crazy.
i don’t mind the plot, i love mess, i read birthday girl by penelope douglas so i’m not new to this, im true to this! my issue lies in this book trying to be really deep and beautiful love story but it’s just not that… because of the circumstances (dating her man’s dad) it could never truly be that in my eyes. and this was not no damn romance book so why was it marketed as that? this book is “about grief” but you don’t really know why she’s grieving like obviously you know its because of jonah but you learn nothing about jonah except that he was the love of her life and that’s she’s now traumatized.
getting married after knowing each other less than a month is crazy.
September 24, 2023
i was expecting one of two different things: the title was giving "magical realism, think addie larue but she ends up with luc," or maybe it is your standard chicklit, or perhaps lit fic about death and beauty standards (what i most expected).
extraordinarily, what actually happened was something that started as a lit fic story about grief and physically moving on from a relationship, then was about a girl in her slut era who slept with a guy and his best friend and the best friend's dad, and then boom- there was a happily ever after.
in short, it was actually 3 very different stories.
2.5/5 stars.
i love merging genres as much as the next person, but it felt like this was three completely separate stories haphazardly sewn together, but done so with my sewing skills, and not that of someone who sews as their job.
some parts were objectively good- the characters were well written, very rounded and multidimensional.
the descriptions were atmospheric and interesting.
the dialogue was individualized to each character, something many authors miss out on and which really adds onto the feel of the characters.
and the rep was amazing, so it gets reluctant snaps for that.
it also tackled some very important and interesting themes: grief and how to move on, how not to move on, and how to just live with it.
but those beautiful ideas were completely overshadowed by the sheer ridiculousness of the character's actions and plot.
the insta-lust/insta-love didn't help the cause either.
(i'm also now secretly convinced akwaeke emezi is a cis man because there aren't too many people who can write women having sex, or really just women in general, that inaccurately)
spoiler zone!! run for your life!!
i think nasir had every right to be upset. he absolutely should not have been as vile or violent as he was, but if my girlfriend fucked my dad, i'd be quite upset too. i feel like there was some expectation for him to just be fine with it, which i don't agree with.
AND WHAT IN THE INSTA LUST?? how many times feyi wanted to climb alim could have been a drinking game. except then i'd be getting my stomach pumped and not writing this review.
and then for them to just apparently be destined and made for each other and to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after? no. ew.
extraordinarily, what actually happened was something that started as a lit fic story about grief and physically moving on from a relationship, then was about a girl in her slut era who slept with a guy and his best friend and the best friend's dad, and then boom- there was a happily ever after.
in short, it was actually 3 very different stories.
2.5/5 stars.
i love merging genres as much as the next person, but it felt like this was three completely separate stories haphazardly sewn together, but done so with my sewing skills, and not that of someone who sews as their job.
some parts were objectively good- the characters were well written, very rounded and multidimensional.
the descriptions were atmospheric and interesting.
the dialogue was individualized to each character, something many authors miss out on and which really adds onto the feel of the characters.
and the rep was amazing, so it gets reluctant snaps for that.
it also tackled some very important and interesting themes: grief and how to move on, how not to move on, and how to just live with it.
but those beautiful ideas were completely overshadowed by the sheer ridiculousness of the character's actions and plot.
the insta-lust/insta-love didn't help the cause either.
(i'm also now secretly convinced akwaeke emezi is a cis man because there aren't too many people who can write women having sex, or really just women in general, that inaccurately)
spoiler zone!! run for your life!!
i think nasir had every right to be upset. he absolutely should not have been as vile or violent as he was, but if my girlfriend fucked my dad, i'd be quite upset too. i feel like there was some expectation for him to just be fine with it, which i don't agree with.
AND WHAT IN THE INSTA LUST?? how many times feyi wanted to climb alim could have been a drinking game. except then i'd be getting my stomach pumped and not writing this review.
and then for them to just apparently be destined and made for each other and to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after? no. ew.
April 25, 2022
I'm not much for romance books so I thought this one wouldn't be for me but I was pulled in by the subject of grief and ended up really enjoying it. The characters were fascinating, infuriating and complicated.
June 1, 2022
Akwaeke Emezi did it again! So different from Vivek Oji and still … the beautiful writing, the tangible emotions, trying to make the impossible possible; all similarities to Vivek Oji.
This book is about grief, about love, about finding yourself again after losing a loved one, about sexuality, but most of all, it’s a tribute to each Black person in the world. When I started reading, I immediately thought of Seven Days in June; I felt the same (Black) unconditional love. While I loved that book, I loved this one even a bit more; Akwaeke’s writing qualities are simply extraordinary. Just like the cover of this story (take a look at the UK cover too, it’s breathtaking and fits the story so well!), their writing is incredibly vibrant and energetic, and it made me hunger for more.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty seems like a simple story, a woman trying to find love again after losing her first love, and yet, it’s so fascinating at the same time. It’s a book to dive in without much knowledge and to read breathlessly as the words penetrate each fiber of your body. I had to get used to the story at first, because it starts so differently than Vivek Oji, but after reading several chapters, I savored it until the very end. I highly recommend this amazing book to anyone who loves character-driven love stories and exquisite writing.
Actual rating 4.5 stars. I‘ve rounded it down for now but am still thinking about rounding it up because I loved it so much.
I received an ARC from Atria Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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This book is about grief, about love, about finding yourself again after losing a loved one, about sexuality, but most of all, it’s a tribute to each Black person in the world. When I started reading, I immediately thought of Seven Days in June; I felt the same (Black) unconditional love. While I loved that book, I loved this one even a bit more; Akwaeke’s writing qualities are simply extraordinary. Just like the cover of this story (take a look at the UK cover too, it’s breathtaking and fits the story so well!), their writing is incredibly vibrant and energetic, and it made me hunger for more.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty seems like a simple story, a woman trying to find love again after losing her first love, and yet, it’s so fascinating at the same time. It’s a book to dive in without much knowledge and to read breathlessly as the words penetrate each fiber of your body. I had to get used to the story at first, because it starts so differently than Vivek Oji, but after reading several chapters, I savored it until the very end. I highly recommend this amazing book to anyone who loves character-driven love stories and exquisite writing.
Actual rating 4.5 stars. I‘ve rounded it down for now but am still thinking about rounding it up because I loved it so much.
I received an ARC from Atria Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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August 31, 2023
this is the adult version of The Summer I Turned Pretty
sorry, not sorry
sorry, not sorry
March 30, 2024
Not me coming to write a review after reading this a year ago?🤷🏾♀️
*I’ve seen a lot of comments criticising Feyi and how she treated Nasir. All comments are valid but that’s my girl and I’m going to stick beside her 😭😂❤️ I’m a little upset people didn’t offer Feyi and Alim the grace we offer other taboo relationships. Especially since she was grieving (no excuse but definitely an explanation).
Also I don’t think Nasir was a good person lol. After hearing Alim tell the story of the love he lost because his children wouldn’t accept his queerness? I was like F*ck them kids sdkkxlxlsls. Your dad loses his wife (your mum). He finally finds love again….And you reject it cause he fell in love with a man? Oh you are lucky all he did was steal your girl. I would have changed the locks to the holiday mansion and said BYE.
Feyi and Alim’s story was complex and I think if we all feel so deeply about this then the author has done their job and deserves all the stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m gonna try to also go to bat for black stories and give extra grace. If we’re okay with dark romance genres where the MMC is a killer then we got to be okay with Feyi snatching up the man’s dad 😂😭 lmao.
*Sorry just to say this is not really a critique of others valid opinions on the relationship. Just my own little rant defending my choice to be a little chaotic sometimes 😂 it’s all love ❤️
*I’ve seen a lot of comments criticising Feyi and how she treated Nasir. All comments are valid but that’s my girl and I’m going to stick beside her 😭😂❤️ I’m a little upset people didn’t offer Feyi and Alim the grace we offer other taboo relationships. Especially since she was grieving (no excuse but definitely an explanation).
Also I don’t think Nasir was a good person lol. After hearing Alim tell the story of the love he lost because his children wouldn’t accept his queerness? I was like F*ck them kids sdkkxlxlsls. Your dad loses his wife (your mum). He finally finds love again….And you reject it cause he fell in love with a man? Oh you are lucky all he did was steal your girl. I would have changed the locks to the holiday mansion and said BYE.
Feyi and Alim’s story was complex and I think if we all feel so deeply about this then the author has done their job and deserves all the stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m gonna try to also go to bat for black stories and give extra grace. If we’re okay with dark romance genres where the MMC is a killer then we got to be okay with Feyi snatching up the man’s dad 😂😭 lmao.
*Sorry just to say this is not really a critique of others valid opinions on the relationship. Just my own little rant defending my choice to be a little chaotic sometimes 😂 it’s all love ❤️
June 5, 2022
It’s been 5 years since Feyi lost her husband in a tragic accident. She hasn’t felt the same way about anyone since. After a hookup at a summer party, Feyi meets another guy, Nasir. He’s into her but she’s cautious, not sure if she’s ready for something serious and not wanting to repeat what happened recently. They begin hanging out and agree to take it slow and become friends first.
Nasir offers Feyi the opportunity to show her art at an upcoming show in his home country, a tropical island. Despite some reservations about their status, Feyi can’t pass up this opportunity. Only when they arrive does Feyi learn who Nasir’s dad is, a well-known celebrity chef, Alim. Feyi quickly begins working to reel in her underlying attraction to Alim — Will she succeed? Will she ever feel alive again or did she lose that part of herself in the accident?
With a great mix of characters and an island setting, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty is a good summer read with plenty to think about — Grief and loss, love and living, friendship and more. I did not agree with all of Feyi’s decisions, but for the most part, still liked her as a main character. I enjoyed her friendship with her best friend Joy too.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Bahni Turpin, and she was fantastic!
Nasir offers Feyi the opportunity to show her art at an upcoming show in his home country, a tropical island. Despite some reservations about their status, Feyi can’t pass up this opportunity. Only when they arrive does Feyi learn who Nasir’s dad is, a well-known celebrity chef, Alim. Feyi quickly begins working to reel in her underlying attraction to Alim — Will she succeed? Will she ever feel alive again or did she lose that part of herself in the accident?
With a great mix of characters and an island setting, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty is a good summer read with plenty to think about — Grief and loss, love and living, friendship and more. I did not agree with all of Feyi’s decisions, but for the most part, still liked her as a main character. I enjoyed her friendship with her best friend Joy too.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Bahni Turpin, and she was fantastic!
May 28, 2022
How about that title? It's what grabbed my attention to be honest.
Feyi Adekola lost her husband five years ago in a tragic accident. She has been mourning but is now ready to being * dating* again with her best friend/roommate's encouragement. After she meets and hooks up (aka steamy encounter) with a stranger at a rooftop party, things change drastically for her. She is whisked away from her art studio and her home to a tropical island.
There she will have meals cooked by a celebrity chef and meet with an art curator who wants to launch her career. She's dating the perfect man, and is ready to embrace her new life and yet...
This book is a contemporary romance which I am still trying to decide how I feel about it. This book looks at grief, moving on from loss, loving again, and second chances. All things that I usually enjoy in a book, yet I just didn't feel a connection to any of the characters. I don't feel that they were entirely fleshed out. This one didn't' quite pack the punch that I was hoping that it would. I would put this one in the I enjoyed it but didn't love it camp.
Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
Feyi Adekola lost her husband five years ago in a tragic accident. She has been mourning but is now ready to being * dating* again with her best friend/roommate's encouragement. After she meets and hooks up (aka steamy encounter) with a stranger at a rooftop party, things change drastically for her. She is whisked away from her art studio and her home to a tropical island.
There she will have meals cooked by a celebrity chef and meet with an art curator who wants to launch her career. She's dating the perfect man, and is ready to embrace her new life and yet...
This book is a contemporary romance which I am still trying to decide how I feel about it. This book looks at grief, moving on from loss, loving again, and second chances. All things that I usually enjoy in a book, yet I just didn't feel a connection to any of the characters. I don't feel that they were entirely fleshed out. This one didn't' quite pack the punch that I was hoping that it would. I would put this one in the I enjoyed it but didn't love it camp.
Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
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