Have You Met Nora? is the new book by the author Nicole Blades. Nora Mackenzie is the woman who has it all. Well versed in her career as a top fashion stylist, she is weeks away from getting married to one of the wealthiest bachelors in NYC. In a life-changing moment, she finds herself having to face the reality of becoming a part of one of the richest, most powerful families by becoming Mrs. Beaumont and letting go of the name she has created–Nora Mackenzie. However, Nora has been omitting a significant part of her identity. What her fiancé and friends don’t know is she not white but bi-racial!

In flashback moments from her past, we learn that Nora’s mother was an employee for Dr. Bourdain and his wife. Her mom passes away from cancer, the Bourdains adopt her, and Mrs. Bourdain sends Nora away to a prestigious boarding school after deceptively knowing that her husband has been abusing Nora over the years. Mrs. Bourdain grooms Nora as a young, white lady, dying her hair blonde and sending her off to boarding school where she begins a new life passing as a white girl to finally finding some acceptance.

As her wedding day gets closer, a blast from Nora’s past shows up by the name of “Ghetto Dawn”. Dawn is a former classmate from Nora’s high school who found out she was bi-racial. To save herself from her identity being revealed, she gets Dawn kicked out by framing her as the school thief. Dawn is back for revenge and wants to ruin Nora’s perfect life.

As Nora begins to unravel (her real support system being only herself), she slowly starts to fall apart as she accepts there is no control over this deception she is living. Fighting her way through the pool of emotions, she has to figure out a way to stop Dawn before she ruins the life she has worked so hard to achieve.



Blades does a good job at manipulating your emotions and feelings about Nora. When her mother asks her to help with the laundry during her childhood, she comes across as a spoiled young lady. There is the initial assumption that she felt her skin color made her better than her mother, and she wanted to disassociate with her mother’s position in life as a maid. However, later on in the novel, the relationship between Nora and her mother is quite touching, and the fond moments Nora recalls of her mother’s endearing Bajan ways and quotes make it difficult to believe that she would throw away her mother’s memory in the way that she does.

The issues of race, culture, and class in Have you Met Nora? felt trivialized, and I struggled with the tone of the book. Little trinkets put into place particularly about race and class fell empty with no real in-depth examination. For example, I felt Nora’s mother being from Barbados and not African-American was significant to the ideas about colorism and culture that were deeply rooted in Nora’s character. I felt her wanting to visit the bakery that reminded her of her mother and her decision to not have household help and clean her own home were integral to her never actually shedding who she was.

For me, Nora and her friends’ personalities read as Black characters; there was an attitude or sass that felt distinctively Black. Maybe it was intentional, but in my mind, I had carved out a preppy Manhatten-esque tone particularly for her best friend, Jenna. This was something lacking in the author’s writing style–creating an authentic tone for essentially all white characters. Additionally, there were no racial or class undertones from her fiancés family or her friends to suggest that her revelation of being bi-racial would be taken negatively.

For such a complex character, I felt the motivations for her actions were only tied to her childhood and not her present experience with the man she loved. When Nora attends the tea party hosted at Lady Beaumont’s and Dawn invites herself as “Nwad”, all the older white women are interested in getting to know her. Although predictable, this could have been a moment to encourage Nora not to hide the truth. There wasn’t enough in the novel to indicate that Nora would have been ostracized from the Fisher family had she told them the truth.

When her fiancé Fisher chooses to marry her even though he knew she had stolen some toxic chemicals from his lab, it showed that his love outweighed everything, even his family name. Without giving away a major spoiler, the injustice that Nora was able to get on with her life was incredulous to me. I felt frustrated with the ending as Nora became such a complex character only to be quite flat in the end.

DNF. Nora and her best friend Jenna are grown women but talk in annoying abbreviations like teenagers. No character in this story is likable. By 25% in, I had lost any interest in where the story was going.

Nora Mackenzie is a woman at the top of her game. She is young, successful, owns her own business, and is just weeks away from marrying New York City's it boy. But all is not as it seems. When a woman from Nora's past, a woman whom Nora wronged in a big way comes back for revenge Nora's carefully crafted perfect life is threatened.
The last half of this book had me devouring every word as quickly as I could. I HAD to know how it would end, and let me tell you it was not what I was expecting. This was a great read for a rainy Wednesday afternoon!

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

Have You Met Nora? by Nicole Blades
Source: Netgalley
My Rating: 2/5 stars

Talk about starting off the new year with a crazy, conflicted emotions read! Have You Met Nora? is likely going to go down as one of the year’s most confounding reads with me left wondering how in the world I made it from the beginning to the end of this read.

Here’s my best assessment:

To be clear, I couldn’t put this book down and read the entire thing in a single day. Generally, such a marathon read would translate into a very high, if not the highest of star ratings, but in this instance, I think it had more to do with the book’s train wreck quality. I just couldn’t stop watching, so to speak.

Nora Mackenzie has crafted a life for herself that is the envy of so, so many. She comes from wealth and privilege and has built a successful career out of sheer will, hard work, and single-minded determination and focus. Additionally, in just a month’s time, she is set to marry Fisher Beaumont, one of society’s wealthiest, most handsome men who comes with a name, riches, and a life beyond belief.

Unfortunately, much of the life Nora Mackenzie has crafted for herself is a complete and utter lie. Oh, the career success is real enough as is her love for Fisher, but all the rest is a finely crafted façade built over years and years. Until just recently, Nora’s façade has been so rock solid as to convince literally everyone in her world. Her best-friend, her fiancé, her co-workers have no idea of Nora’s past, the lies she has told, the people she has hurt to achieve a life among society’s elite. What’s more, none of the people closest to her have any idea of the lengths Nora is willing to go to in order to protect her secrets.

In the weeks leading up to her wedding, Nora’s world begins to crumble. Unless well and truly dead, the past doesn’t always stay buried, and it often comes back to haunt those who deserve it. In Nora’s case, the past comes a calling in the form of a former classmate, a now bitter and angry woman whom Nora utterly destroyed as a teenager in order to protect her secret and her world. Nora’s past isn’t just bitter and angry, she’s also technologically skilled and determined to see Nora exposed and destroyed. The revelation of Nora’s past would, to Nora’s mind ruin everything she has worked and lied for, which means her past must be well and truly buried. There can be no loose ends and as Nora begins to unravel, she also begins to form a plan that will see her safe and protected for the rest of her life.

The Bottom Line: Have You Met Nora? is one of those reads where you find yourself wanting to like the main character, but just can’t ever see your way to doing so. Nora’s horrifying past certainly lends itself to sympathy and understanding, but Nora’s actions because of her past are just so pitiful and pathetic that all sympathy is erased. The lies and deception are so much a part of Nora even she can’t tell the difference any longer and that makes her utterly unlikeable. Nora lies like she breathes, automatically and without a thought or care for others, only herself and her own survival. As if a thoroughly unlikeable lead character weren’t enough, there is also the outrageousness of the plot and ending. I simply don’t understand why Nora’s past has to be a secret. Are we really so shallow and pathetic a society that Nora’s situation is a has to and not a want to? Furthermore, given the time and place of the story, why did Nora never seek help for her issues? In this day and age, there is a plethora of help to be found, but Nora would rather continue to live a lie than deal with her past and her issues in order to live a freer, healthier life. Nora would, quite literally not be in her current predicament if, at any time she had drummed up even an ounce of courage to tell the truth and seek help. Finally, there is the ending. Between the big bad and Fisher’s reaction, I found myself wondering a great many negative things about how I and this story got to this point. In the end, Have You Met Nora? had the potential to be a very interesting and truly good read, but it somehow lost its was in a mixture of bad characters and bad plotting. 0

I think that Have You Met Nora started out good, but it just didn’t keep the momentum for me to fully enjoy the book. It was a cute story, but just not for me.

I’m always intrigued by conventions and assumptions that are different in the US to how they are over here in the UK, particularly when it comes to issues of race and class. I can’t see anyone over here going to the lengths Nora does to conceal their racial background under the same circumstances (although anything’s possible); however, the idea of someone being embarrassed by their parents giving away markers of a class other than the one they’ve claimed for themselves is a long-running mainstay of many forms of humour. It must be said that Nora’s childhood, particularly following her mother’s death, was especially horrific, but I’m not sure that justifies the levels of deception she employs to re-imagine her history upon becoming an adult.

Nora is the green-eyed, fair-complexioned daughter of an African American woman working in domestic service and a long absent white father. From the age of nine, Nora is sexually abused by her mother’s employer, while his wife turns a blind eye. Then, following the death of Nora’s mother, the couple adopt Nora and pass her off as their own child: bleaching and styling her hair, then sending her off to an exclusive, almost entirely white boarding school. Nora is one of the popular girls, but also mean: when a scholarship girl recognises that Nora is no more white than she herself is, Nora sets out to ensure the girl is expelled. However, a revelation from her adoptive mother soon after sends Nora running away from the school herself and making a new life for herself in New York.

Now a successful men’s fashion stylist, Nora is on the verge of marrying her white, over-privileged fiancé, who knows nothing of her background. Nora has surrounded herself with employees whose family histories are just as complex as the one she is concealing, while her best friends outside work seem to be mostly white. Nora lives in a state of constant fear that her secret will be uncovered, not helped by her fiancé talking about his mother’s prejudices, while reminding her of how popular she is with his family. Of course, Nora’s worst fears seem to be realised when her old rival from school shows up and begins blackmailing her and slowly unpicking everything Nora has worked to build. Nora eventually resorts to drastic measures to save herself and her secret, although we’re left somewhat in suspense as to how that plan works out.

I really couldn’t warm to this book. Very few of the characters were remotely likable, and while the author did a reasonable job of pointing out all kinds of unconscious assumptions white folks make about race, she also had Nora use a term, which I’ve only heard Americans use, and which at least some of my Irish friends living in the UK find just as offensive as I thought they might. Another author I’ll sadly be avoiding in future.

Nora is a New York socialite about to get married to a wealthy society man.....but she has a big secret and one that could ruin everything.......Nora is half Caribbean and not the classy white girl everyone thinks she is!

Nora has done everything she can to escape her younger life where she was sexually abused, but this has created a very closed in character not allowing people in and her life can only get worse when someone from her past appears and threatens to blow up her world

A good story although I found it hard to like Nora, even though you could understand why she was the way she was but I was still rooting for her to have a happy ending

I knew when I signed up for this book, that is was not romance so I definitely tried to read it without my romance glasses on. Basic premise is that Nora is a bi-racial woman, who is passing as white but no one knows. She is days away from marrying a wealthy man and someone is threatening to blackmail her. I really wanted to like this but it was so hard to get into. Nora was abused as a child and as a result, she is closed off and holds all her truths to herself. It was hard to read. She lies to everyone, although those lies seemed to be rooted in self preservation and not deceit. I still had a hard time connecting with her. It seemed like she had plenty of chances to open up to either her best friend or fiance.

There were some really little things that bothered me, like everyone had a nickname. And there was a ton of fancy name brands being dropped. These characters lived in a world that I am not interested in, high fashion in NYC. I made it to the 50% mark and the mystery/blackmail was just starting. My Kindle said I still had 3 hours left in the book and I just couldn’t do it. I never connected with Nora, I didn’t care what her motivation was for being scared, I just wanted it to stop.

DNF

I was drawn to reading this book by the synopsis and the cover and I kept reading because I wanted to see how Nora was going to deal with the big issues present in her life.

It's a story of great injustice, revenge, fear and lies. Nora has had many things happen to her that she wants to keep hidden. Does she risk telling the truth or does she hide the truth in case it ruins her? I felt for her, but really couldn't go along with her choices. If you have ever hesitated over telling someone something about yourself for fear of what they will think of you, then you will be able to empathise with Nora. Meet Nora - an extremely flawed character.

Personally I wanted more from her and for her. Certainly a thought provoking book that will have you talking if you read it.

Have You Met Nora left me on the edge of my seat through the entire book. I loved getting to know Nora and all of the twists and turns the pages held. So many fun surprises...I loved it.

Have You Met Nora? is a riveting and totally unpredictable story written by author Nicole Blades. Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the advance copy

Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the advance copy. This was a fun and unpredictable story that I recommend!

This was an enjoyable romance. I was able to read it in one day. The characters were so engaging & I found myself getting caught up in their stories.

This was a lighter read than I had anticipated so I was a little disappointed