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Book Review: ‘The Idea of You’ by Robinne Lee

The Idea of You

The Idea of You by Robinne Lee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“The Idea of You” by Robinne Lee is an unexpected well-conceived story about an older woman falling for a boy band member. It sounds like a fantasy ripped out of the tabloids, but it captures the complexities of such a relationship and how the world reacts to it.

Solene Marchand is dealing with the emotions before a 40th birthday when she gets stuck with taking her daughter, Isabelle, and friends to an August Moon concert with backstage access in Las Vegas. As the teen girls stay enamored on the British boy band, Solene finds herself flirting with the bandleader himself, Hayes Campbell. While living her life as an LA art dealer, Solene meets up with Hayes when he’s in town as he flies her out to where he is until they have a full-blown love affair that surprisingly develops into an authentic relationship. Except Solene feels the relationship threatening her art gallery business with her partner Lulit, her relationship with Isabelle, her relationship with her ex-husband Daniel who’s of course having a baby with a 30-year-old model, and her reputation in general with fans sending threatening messages via social media and postal mail. But Solene and Hayes try to beat the odds amid the craziness.I’ve been disappointed with some of the recent women’s fiction/romance books because in many cases the issues and characters become stereotypical and the storyline is forced into a happily ever after. This book actually shows the progression of a modern-day fairy tale relationship and the rockiness that comes with it. The ending is refreshingly unexpected yet emotional. The writing is fantastic, which again in other recent works seemed to be either missing or the only upside to the book.

What’s great about this book is the reader travels with August Moon, a fictional mashup of One Direction/The Wanted/and all those other recent boy bands out of the U.K., since Solene gets a first class ticket and hotel suite with Hayes everywhere. It covers Aspen, Miami, Malibu, Paris, Tokyo, the Hamptons and so many other destination cities, so it feels like you’re there admiring the scene though Solene and Hayes spend a lot of time in their suites. Also, the stakes of the romance are high. Not only are Solene’s relationships feeling the heat, but so are Hayes’ with one of his bandmates vengeful of destroying the romance and past hookups continually making appearances around the world.

Overall, there are great elements throughout the story, and the book is a great piece of women’s fiction with serving up the steamy sex scenes and drama on every corner. And Lulit is the best because she’s Ethiopian, and we’re rarely in books, especially books like these, so the whole time I envisioned her as me, and that was fun.

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Book Review: ‘A Kind of Freedom’ by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

A Kind of Freedom: A Novel

A Kind of Freedom: A Novel by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“A Kind of Freedom” by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is a multigenerational novel that follows a family overcoming and adapting to obstacles specific to their eras. Though the stories of families may be seen as one-dimensional, it still emphasizes how wealth in the African-American community could disappear based on circumstances.

The story starts with Evelyn and her younger sister, Ruby, in 1940s New Orleans as the daughters of one of the only black doctors in the city. Evelyn has her as eye on Renard, who also likes her and has dreams of going to medical school. But her father doesn’t want Evelyn to marry Renard because he doesn’t believe he’ll become a doctor because he lived as an orphan with a friend’s family.

Then the story fast forwards to the early 1980s with Evelyn and Renard’s two daughters Jackie and Sybil. Jackie is unexpectedly raising her son on her own with her husband dealing with a crack cocaine habit working at her parents’ daycare center.

The third part focuses on a post-Katrina New Orleans with Jackie’s son, T.C., all grown up just getting out of jail before his son’s birth.

To most readers, it might seem like a dull tale around a family, but it makes you think about how this black family was on top decades ago only to lose that wealth and status when a white family would’ve more likely stayed on top generations later. It’s a thought-provoking novel.



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Book Review: ‘Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now’ by Dana L. Davis

Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now

Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now by Dana L. Davis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now” by Dana L. Davis is a wonderfully complex YA novel about a girl from Chicago dealing with her mother’s death who moves to California to be with her biological father when there’s another man claiming to be her father.

The story starts with Tiffany Sly, a 16-year-old from Chicago, arriving at LAX in Los Angeles to meet the father she never knew. Instead a driver is there to pick her up to whisk her away to Simi Valley where her wealthy doctor father and his family lives. During the ride, Tiffany’s anxiety revs up and has been up since her mother died from cancer. Once she arrives at the home, she meets her new stepmom and four other sisters she didn’t know about. After meeting her father, who’s fair-skinned with blue eyes, she’s doubtful about the genetic connection with her dark brown skin. Then she recalls how another man, whom she believes she looks like including the complexion, had showed up at her apartment in Chicago the day before claiming to be her father, too. He even threatens legal action in a week, so Tiffany has a week to see if her California life will work in that matter of time before coming clean to her new family.

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Book Review: ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ by James Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“If Beale Street Could Talk” by James Baldwin is a soft story about a woman and her family trying to get her wrongly accused fiance out of jail. Though I’ve only read one other Baldwin work — “Just Above My Head,” this one pales in comparison with less passion and pain and thought-provoking moments.

Tish and Fonny plan to get married and have already found a place to live after so many rejections due to racism in 1970s New York City. But Fonny is unexpectedly jailed for a rape he says he didn’t commit. His religious mother refuses to help him get out of jail while his alcoholic father can’t seem to get his life in order to help his son. So that leaves Tish and her family to stand up for Fonny, especially when Tish learns she’s pregnant.

The urgency of the time is missing. The story is told from Tish’s point of view, but what you expect to happen does happen. The racism is unsurprising when it comes to Tish and Fonny’s previous encounters with police to where they are with their legal troubles. But the story unfortunately has become timely. It’s similar to “American Marriage” by Tayari Jones, though that story too did not reach its full potential. With “Just Above My Head” — a totally different story, I still think of those characters and what they were enduring in that story. It was that powerful, so I expected an encore reaction with another well-known Baldwin work, but I didn’t get that. I won’t be thinking of Tish and Fonny like Roy and Celestial failed to make an impression.

Overall, it’s a love story of a young Black couple in a time of racism yet what they experience doesn’t deter their love nor do they advance from that experience.

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Book Review: ‘The Belles’ by Dhonielle Clayton

The Belles (The Belles #1)

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“The Belles” by Dhonielle Clayton revolves around a fantasy world built on beauty with a species of women responsible in making the entire kingdom beautiful as looks fade into greatness and they inject the color. Though a unique way to take on society’s obsession with what constitutes as beauty, this typical fantasy YA novel designed for a series has so much great descriptions that they may have slowed the story down.

Camellia is a Belle in the kingdom of Orleans, which means she has the power, her arcana, to bring color and vitality into people’s appearances since they lose both after some time. Like their hair dries out and their complexion drains out of color or even their heights can shrivel. Through beauty appointments mostly the rich can afford, Camellia works her magic to restore the look desired by the individual. For now, she and the other five Belles she calls her sisters, have this great duty as they are scattered to different posts on the main island. Camellia becomes the kingdom’s favorite where she works in the palace with Princess Sophia, the sole heir as her mother, the queen, ails and her sister is still in a yearslong coma. While Camellia hears disturbing news from previous Belles and her sisters about what’s happening in the kingdom and in the palace, she realizes the princess is evil and is trying to reproduce her own Belle power, which could destroy the kingdom.

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Book Review: ‘The Seas’ by Samantha Hunt

The Seas

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Jude is in love with something watery
My father told me I am a mermaid.
Therefore Jude must be in love with me.
But the above logic is faulty. Lots of things besides me are watery. Alcohol is watery. Water is watery.”



The unnamed narrator believes she’s a mermaid, and her fantasies increase as she tries to capture the love of an Iraq War veteran while finding signs within the wet footprints she believes belongs to her father who disappeared at sea years before. “The Seas” by Samantha Hunt paints a portrait of a 19-year-old woman who’s not quite the same after losing her father but lives in a town always in mourning mode due to its proximity to the ocean.

Her father would tell her she was a mermaid, so her reasoning strengthens as she falls for Jude, a veteran dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder in his 30s. Their connection is strong but faulty as in she feels like Jude should be in love with her though Jude is in his own world. The woman’s mother is also in a depression because of the yearslong disappearance of her husband coupled with miscarriages from the past. The woman’s grandfather focuses on breaking down words in the dictionary since he used to be in the printing industry with his long-lost wife. The heartbreaks while living in a sleepy seaside town affected by people being lost at sea enhances the story more.

The poetic rhythm reminds me of Francesca Lia Block’s style in a way. I first heard about this book in one of Block’s writing groups, where I started my own mermaid novel. The mermaid mythology can be taken to so many different levels, and I enjoyed this rendition that didn’t quite go into detail with the stereotypical features such as the siren voice and scaly fin but showed how the myth can affect a woman’s mind and change how she perceives her problems. The novel does the first-person voice well as in you get to know the character, sense the character’s personality without knowing her name.

Overall, it’s an engaging story with writing that matches its essence, but the melancholy doesn’t overpower.




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Book Review: ‘The Hate U Give’ by Angie Thomas

The Hate U GiveThe Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas looks into the Black Lives Matter movement from a personal viewpoint of a Black teen struggling in two different worlds, and it’s done perfectly.

Starr lives in Garden Heights, the predominantly Black side of the city riddled with crime, but attends Williamson Prep in the ritzy white suburb. While she balances her two personalities in these two different places, she gets caught up at a party where a shooting breaks out. She runs out with her childhood friend, Khalil, and they drive off. A police officer soon stops them for something trivial, and for showing attitude, Khalil gets shot and killed for reaching in his car for his hairbrush. The officer mistook it for a gun. And now Starr as the witness struggles with what comes after.

Starr deals with her nurse mother and ex-con father who owns a grocery store in the neighborhood; her old half-brother Seven who feels he has to take care of his other family under siege by a ganglord; her cop uncle; her white girlfriend Hailey who makes racist comments at school; insecurities around her white boyfriend Chris; and all her friends and neighbors in Garden Heights she feels she’s hurting somehow for not knowing how to approach the situation.

The novel explores a real young Black girl perspective unheard of in the young adult genre, so it was exciting to read that voice. Her voice is raw, so at first it’s wonky to get used to the slang and how she explains her world, but it comes through fast enough to the point where the reader can get devoured by what’s going on. There are a lot of elements, but it shows real-life situations for a teen girl living in two worlds and seeing her friend die at the hands of a cop. Definitely a must-read for being a genre standout and looking forward to how the book will play out on the silver screen.

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Book Review: ‘The Mothers’ by Brit Bennett

The MothersThe Mothers by Brit Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brit Bennett’s “The Mothers” takes on a controversial issue that is usually viewed as an issue between two people but can impact an entire community as the secret unravels with the passage of time.

Nadia loses her mother unexpectedly to suicide and begins to ditch school. She finds herself at a restaurant by the beach where Luke waits tables since they live in San Diego. He’s the pastor’s son at the church they grew up in, and Nadia always had a crush on him, so they begin to have a relationship though Nadia is underaged at 17 while Luke is past 18. During their steamy stint, Nadia becomes pregnant. But she has dreams to go to the University of Michigan and become a lawyer, so she decides to get an abortion. She asks Luke for the funds because he has a job, but he gets the money from an unexpected source.

They move on with their lives, but the impact of the lost child lingers in the background, especially for Luke, who lacks ambition due to football injuries and believes a child could’ve changed everything for him. Nadia acts relieved about the decision because she believes her mother’s future was destroyed by having her at a young age and that’s why her mother shot herself in the head without a suicide note. Years later, when Nadia returns home to visit her lonely father, she finds out her best friend is going to marry Luke. The secret haunts her then. How can she tell her best friend what happened? These dilemmas build up for both Nadia and Luke until they explode and ripples shake up them, their families, and the rest of the church community.

This debut novel is heartfelt with the characters dealing with the impacts of abortion, depression, suicide and other everyday issues but trying to move past them with making strives and missteps along the way. It also shows how home may not be a source of comfort because that’s where the bad things happened, and every time you return, the bad things resurface in a different way.

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Book Review: ‘The Underground Railroad’ by Colson Whitehead

The Underground RailroadThe Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I first started the novel, I couldn’t get into it. There was too much going deep into some characters and not others, and it wasn’t clear which characters would return in the story. This disjointed storytelling continued throughout, but the story picked up once Cora and Caesar began their journey toward the Underground Railroad. Then there was action with the tension building up until another character’s background interrupted the present. This is a good literary tactic to dangle what’s happening next over the reader, but I was conflicted on my investment in the characters.

Cora was the main character but Ridgeway’s background and presence sometimes made him appear as a stronger character. Caesar faded out of the story along with so many other characters I had to read the long backgrounds of. It’s about 75% background on multiple characters—some who won’t matter later—and 25% of the present. If the background on most of the characters were limited and weaved in better with the present instead of being placed in separate chapters, the story would’ve moved along smoother.

Seeing Cora’s journey to freedom with waiting in some places too long not in safer Canada because they seemed ideal until they weren’t, and her dealing with the impact of her choices enlivened the novel. The garden plot she had at the Randall plantation is a stronger symbol than the Underground Railroad, in which the idea of it actually being a train line seems unoriginal. Remember when Porsha from Real Housewives of Atlanta thought it was an underground railroad seasons ago? A lot of people think that.

Overall, the writing is well structured, but the way the story was structured annoyed me as a reader more than pulled me in.

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Book Review: ‘Everything, Everything’ by Nicola Yoon

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This young adult debut is simplistically entertaining. I’m working on a young adult novel, so I saw this one was going to become a film after being released just a year ago. It’s about a girl named Maddy who has that condition of being allergic to everything who’s kept in the house all day and starts to spy on her new cute neighbor, Olly.

They fall in love by sharing at first posters against their bedroom windows to instant messaging each other constantly. As they learn more about each other, they’re determined to actually meet in person. With Maddy like a modern-day Rapunzel stuck in her house all day, Olly tries to figure out how to be with her. Maddy’s home nurse, Carla, secretly allows them to meet in person in the house with extra disinfection without letting Maddy’s mother Pauline know. Carla can’t keep letting the secret meetings to happen because they’ll be too hard to hide from Pauline, her boss. This triggers more drastic measures for Maddy to take as she uses her credit card to purchase tickets to Hawaii for she and Olly. It shows how much Maddy is willing to sacrifice to not only have a friend but a connection to the real world she never experienced.

The storyline was simple yet I kept flipping to see what was next. It’s broken into short chapters with illustrations done by her husband David Yoon, which makes the entire book more digestible. Maddy’s curiosity and desperation to go outside is apparent on almost page as she draws figures, write book reviews, and occupy herself all day with home school and other brain-teasing activities.

The one thing that didn’t jive was the character is supposed to be half black and half Japanese since the author has an interracial family, but adding race and culture to the character fell flat. If the author wanted it to be a factor, then it really needed to be a factor, with incorporating more culture in the relationship between Maddie and her mother; or describing their physical features more; or having Maddie question Olly’s attraction to her because of her race and skin color—these are all real moments for a teenage girl that could’ve been added in lightly to the storyline. And even though Maddie hadn’t been in the real world, she was home-schooled and took history, so she knew race is an issue.

Overall, it was cute quick read, and I look forward to seeing the movie.

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