this ‘romance’ was so disingenuous and hollow. the justification for their relationship being they both are grieving dead partners without any other commonality is not romantic but feels like clutching at straws for justification for their poor and really immoral decisions ( )

The central question at the heart of this romance novel is how to live when you are overcome with grief by the tragic death of the one you love. I fell in love with Akwaeke Emezi’s writing in their moving 2020 book, The Death of Vivek Oji, which is set in Emezi’s native Nigeria. That book was filled with gorgeous writing and vivid images, and I was expecting another book set in Nigeria. I had never even read the description of this book, but loved the title (I recognized it as a slight variation on a line from the Florence the Machine song, “Hunger”), so I dove in. I admit I was disappointed that the story took place mostly in Brooklyn and an unnamed Caribbean island because of my (unfounded) expectation that it was set in Nigeria. Starting from that stumble, purely my own, it took me a while for the story to pull me in. It begins with a sex scene that was dangerous on so many levels and completely turned me off; I nearly abandoned it. I persisted and it paid off. But had I not already been acquainted Emezi’s excellent writing, I might not have.

The main character, artist Feyi Adekola, is trying to learn how to live again after her husband of one year, Jonah—her childhood sweetheart—is killed in a fiery car accident that also left her riddled with “intermittend islands of hypertrophies tissue falling like stars down her left leg, a raised and jagged line across her palm, an everlasting bruise on her forearm from when they dragged her out of the car, scraping her across the road,” and although she had seen the paramedics take Jonah’s pulse and shake their heads, she begged them to go back for him but the car exploded into flame. Five years later, the action of the story begins while she is sharing a brownstone apartment with her BFF, Joy, a lesbian who keeps insisting that Feyi start dating again.

Feyi’s five years of celibacy ends when she meets a stranger, Milan, at a rooftop party in Brooklyn, and enters into a purely sexual relationship with him, and then ends up with his friend, Nasir, in a “friendship” that he clearly wants to be more. He hooks her with a famous curator in the Caribbean islands and they fly off to the island where Feyi’s art will be an exhibit at a curated show. When she steps off the plane and immediately goes weak in the knees when she meets Nasir’s father, Akim, a celebrity chef who owns a modern place of glass and wood on a secluded mountainside property. Akim, it turns out, is also no stranger to overwhelming sorrow, and despite the 19-year different in their ages, form a bond over their enduring griefs that becomes a slow-burn romance fraught with complications. The story is really about living with pain and mortality, the terror of trusting again, and how the many feelings become tangled. The cast of characters was diverse, not in terms of race, as all the characters are Black, but in terms of sexuality: there were a number of gay and bisexual characters, including Akim.

After getting over the disappointment of how much this book was a departure from the book that made me fall in love with Emezi’s writing, I finally settled into it. By the end, I was hooked, but it took a long while. 288 pages. Black fiction; romance; literary fiction. ( )

Emotional roller-coaster of a character-driven novel about finding love after profound grief. ( )

I don't know what to make of this. I'm only 10% into the audiobook and I'm not sure why I'm not falling in love with this exuberant romance or with this renowned author, whom I haven't read before.

Is it the contrast between the alluring Feyi and the surrounding characters - flatmate Joy doesn't appeal to me at all, and the boyfriends I've met so far - Milan, Nasir - are not allowed to shine.

Bahni Turpin is the narrator and although her reading is expert, it doesn't seem to match to me, but I think it might be too early for this comment to carry weight.

The author also puts a certain blunt, uncouth language in the mouths of the characters, that prevents me feeling any attachment to them. Obviously ..

....I can't quite describe why this didn't appeal to me, only to say that it didn't appeal to me.

I probably won't continue. ( )

This should not have worked for me, I hate the premise of falling for the boyfriend's dad, but Emezi made it work. Loving again after loss, grief, and complex family relationships are all treated carefully in the beautiful prose of this book. ( )