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Today’s pick is a queer romance like nothing else I have ever read.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
This book is pretty high-intensity from start to finish and I could not put it down. Some content warnings up front for death of a spouse, suicidal ideation, violence against women, and death of a child. Some readers are hesitant to call this book a romance but I disagree. It’s gritty, real, and ugly sometimes but it also has some very important hallmarks of what makes a romance a romance.
Our heroine is Feyi Adekola. Five years prior to this story, there was an accident that killed her husband. She has been deep in grief and it shows in her art. Feyi and her best friend Joy live in New York and at the start of this story, Feyi decides that she is ready to have sex again, not for love, but she is ready to allow someone to give her physical pleasure. She has sex with a guy at a rooftop party and they date for a while but it doesn’t get very serious. They part amicably and Feyi meets someone else: one of this guy’s friends, Nasir. Nasir is perfect and he doesn’t rush her. He agrees to be friends, though he clearly wants more. He is patient and adoring and they grow a beautiful friendship.
Nasir is from Jamaica and he gets her a spot in a show at the National museum with a curator that Feyi has only dreamed about working with. He takes her to Jamaica and they stay with his father, Alim Blake, a celebrity chef with two Michelin stars. He had a gorgeous home built up on the mountain and Feyi is both star-struck and awestruck at the amount of luxury.
Feyi is putting everything in jeopardy because the minute she spotted Alim picking them up at the airport, she knew there would be trouble because he’s radiant in a way that makes everything and everyone want to orbit around him. She’s going to be in Jamaica for many weeks, in this beautiful, intriguing person’s home, trying desperately not to ruin everything she is trying to build with Nasir because she is absolutely smitten with his father.
Aside from consistent high-intensity lust, grief is always present in this book in some way and even in the chapters full of lust or love or beauty, grief is always right there. I think it’s brilliant to juxtapose these very high highs with the heart shattering lows and it makes the love even more beautiful, the sex sexier, and the sadness almost unbearable. By the end of this book I was rooting for so many of the characters to find love and healing and life in ways they had not been able to for a long time.
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That’s it for now, book-lovers!
Patricia
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