Pub Date: Today! 5/24
Feyi is a young widow crippled by grief after tragically losing her new husband and high school sweetheart in a car accident. Five years later she’s channeling her pain into art and, with the help of her best friend and roommate, Joy, ready to explore dating again.
Feyi gets involved with Nasir, and though they intend to take things very slow, he soon whisks her away to the tropical island where he was born to work on an art installation while staying at his celebrity chef father’s luxurious home. When Feyi meets Nasir’s widowed father, Alim, sparks fly in unexpected ways and Feyi is left to navigate complicated feelings and relationships and perhaps a second chance at love.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a lush and engaging romance. And while it is very much a romance, grief is central to the story adding a layer of complexity and, not unwelcome but perhaps somewhat unexpected, darkness.
Love in many forms as well as a range of sexual orientations are depicted as are so many amazing descriptions of food, I always appreciate that! Some readers may find Feyi unlikeable, but I was rooting for her, I love that author Akwaeke Emezi has crafted a complex heroine.
This book is poised to be a hit of the summer and film rights have already been sold! Highly recommend picking this up if you like a romance with heft.
Though You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty has a very different vibe it did make me think some of Seven Days in June, another romance where the characters are on a complex journey rooted in trauma.
Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for the ARC.
That Bookish Life 