I was very excited to read this collection because of the focus on African mythology. While a solid debut with beautiful writing, I was a little disappointed with the story settings. I didn't realize that they would all be contemporary. I read this in two sittings so the stories were similar enough to be blurred in my memory.

This story collection was incredible. I kept waiting for a story to disappoint but that didn't happen throughout the entirety of the book! I loved how the author used myths and folktales from around the world, but with modern and more empowered retellings, especially for the women in the stories. Each story felt like the right length and with great endings! I can't wait to read more of her work!

Witty and clever writing showcase the vibrancy of these traditional stories, which I hope will become more popular with the release of this book. Funny dialogue, inventive but relatable situations, scenarios, and settings, create a compelling and enjoyable read. Reimaging these classic tales is a powerful addition to a diverse collection.

This book seemed to be a mixture of sweet love stories and tragic love stories. Some of the language was off putting for me. It seemed inappropriately placed as it didn't add to the stories. Although, some stories I wanted to speed past, there were others that I thought were very sweet and heart felt. My main recommendation is for readers to read this book and form your own opinion. The variety of stories is sure to offer something the reader will enjoy.
I just reviewed Love in Color by Bolu Babalola. #LoveinColor #NetGalley

For an honest review I was given this book from NetGalley. I was attracted by the cover, I adore it. The stories are written by one author and the tales of love coming from all over the world are not ones that I am familiar with. Three stories stood out for me and were pleasing and definitely displayed depths of emotion; Scheherazade, Attem and Yaa. The writing style is rich and active. I liked the Nefertiti story also, the tone and the contemporary cadence of bad azz thug/vigilante was amusing to me. I would love to read a full length book by the author as short stories aren’t long enough for me to submerge myself.

Babalola's goal was to "decolonize tropes of love" and showcase Black women loving without suffering. I like that Babalola turned many of these retellings in favor of women. When we hear anything based on Greek Myth or royalty, the men are always placed on a pedestal while women are constantly fighting for placement on the lower tier podium. Not in this book! I would boast women empowerment as the main subject throughout the novel, but I also think that a woman would know better about what a woman wants.

Her 13-chaptered book defines all types of love. We have a little bit of tragedy, embarrassment, spontaneity, and a lot of self-worth realization. But each woman found her version of a happy ending, and I think that's the most important about storytelling.

My favorite stories were "Nefertiti" (because I am a sucker for anything Egyptian), "Psyche" (also a sucker for), "Orin," "Attem," and "Tiara."

This book takes (mostly) African and Asian myths and reimagines them as contemporary love stories. Beautifully written and woman-centered, this book should appeal to fans of literary short stories.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Love in Colour was a sweet heartfelt read that gives the reader a range of emotions to feel throughout the book. I love a good romance book, and this was it for me. The introduction was sweet and made me excited to read the book. The very first story had me hooked and I wondered where else we could go from here. Each story is unique and very different from the next. I read Love in Colour in a day and I would like to go back and read each story again to savour it (yes, that's how much I enjoyed it). Babalola is a beautiful writer, sucking the reader into the story time and time again. I'm interested to see what else she can come up with next and I look forward to it.

Thank you to hearourownvoices book tours and William Morrow for the ARC

I adore fairy tale retellings and I was already familiar with the author from following her on Twitter, so of course I wanted to read this book. Add in the gorgeous cover art and I was completely sold. And this anthology is excellent, full of thoughtfully reimagined tales with strong women and varied settings, and how love unites us all.

“So, what was our beginning? When we first met? When we first fell in love? But falling in love is continuous and perpetual, an activity that abides under the aegis of capital letter Love.”


While I wasn’t familiar with the source material for many of the tales, I didn’t find it affected my enjoyment of them, though I’m sure I missed nuances. For the ones I was, I loved the way the retellings bent the tale, Scheherazade being my personal favorite. In this version, her storytelling is for the benefit of fixing politicians’ messes, and it takes 1001 nights for her to let herself fall in love, to accept the protection and possible heartache that comes with that. “Nefertiti,” the sole f/f story, was another gem, setting her as the widowed owner of a cabaret and all-women gang, dedicated to protecting women from the corrupt government and the men who would prey on them (often one and the same). “Psyche” sets Mt. Olympus as a Devil Wears Prada situation in a skyscraper and involves a sweet friends-to-lovers trope. “Yaa” explores the main character freeing herself from parental – and societal – expectations. To be completely honest, there weren’t any stories that I didn’t like.

“I’m pretty sure you’re the love of my life. I, uh, like your face and I like when words come out of your face. Sorry, that didn’t sound romantic at all.”


This collection’s biggest strength is also its weakness: so many of the stories are about powerful women being truly seen, about owning that power, about their partner respecting that power and seeing them. Gobbling up all thirteen stories in a row is probably not the best way to read this. I wish I’d had the willpower to put the book down between tales and reflect on each individually. The author has an amazing way with words, just the most gorgeously evocative prose, and a great ability to pack a book’s worth of feelings into a short story. I’d love to see what she could do with a full length novella or novel!

“We of all people can’t afford distraction.”
Maadi shifted closer. “With all due respect, Siya, I’m not distracted. I’m focused on what matters most.”


Overall, I very much enjoyed this anthology and will be looking forward to wherever the author goes next!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

All three of these stars are for Scherherazade. Such a well-realized story, I kept wanting more. I also can't help but enjoy any and all Psyche retellings, so that landed for me too.

I finished this book of romantic short stories and thought to myself "why on earth did I think this was going to be more about myths than romance?" And then I copied the full title for this review and realized that it was because Love In Color has been marketed as such. Which is a bit baffling to me since, barring one story in this collection of thirteen, every single one of these tales ends in a Happily Ever After or Happily For Now, often in a significantly different manner from the original story. The original tale of Attem, for example, ends with our heroine, her lover and her servant being made truly gruesome examples of: the version here is definitely an improvement that still hearkens back to the folktale without losing any of the source material's richness.

Arguably, that story, like the others in this book, is made richer by emphasizing female agency and the romantic aspects of each tale. Even the retelling of Scheherazade, with the only non-HEA/HFN ending here, is significantly less grimly patriarchal than the Thousand And One Nights original. Bolu Babalola determinedly reinterprets the stories, often setting them in modern milieus, and about half of the time it works. The stories of Yaa, Naleli and Zhinu are lovely subversions of their source material, with the questionable parts shorn off and female agency and love celebrated instead. More importantly, they feel like complete short stories, instead of ideas for longer works as almost all the rest of the folktale-based stories here do. Attem and Nefertiti's stories, in particular, felt like outlines for dynamic novels of adventure and intrigue that I am interested in reading. As shorts, however, they taste less like appetizers than amuse bouches. It's odd, too, how certain stories feel like just enough while others feel like too much. Psyche feels like an entire romance novel crammed into a short story sausage casing, while Orin -- one of the original stories here -- is perfect as is.

And yes, there are three stories collected at the end that are not founded in mythology. Tiara, the story of a woman reunited with the man who left her for his career, is the first and least successful in my opinion, though yours will likely vary based on what you think of long-distance romances. Orin and Alagomeji are both really terrific, and the fact that the latter is based on the lives of Ms Babalola's parents is incredibly touching, ending the book on a note that perfectly matches the author's heartfelt opening declaration as to her belief in romantic love.

Overall, the collection covers pretty much every trope of the romance genre, with even bisexual and wlw representation in Nefertiti. This completeness is both a positive and a negative. While romance buffs will find all their favorite tropes here, all the most cringey parts of the genre are on display as well. From Osun's selective jealousy when her boyfriend cheats, to Pyramus' player-because-I-haven't-found-the-right-girl nonsense, there were definitely bits where I sighed heavily and wondered why low-key misogyny like this is still tolerated even by forward-thinking authors.

I did really like that the default characters were people of color tho, and that the book highlighted stories that aren't necessarily well-known outside of their home countries/cultures. Mythology nerd that I am, I loved looking up Attem and Siya and Naleli and comparing what I found with what Ms Babalola wrote. I wonder if the book would have benefited from a short description of each original, tho I can see why the publishing team ultimately decided not to go that route.

While this is a rich display of folktales and myths reinterpreted for modern romance readers, with three modern stories thrown in for good measure, LiC leans heavily on the romance, sometimes to the detriment of the myth. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily -- some myths are straight trash and need dumping, or at least a vigorous reshaping -- but it's definitely more for the romance reader than the folklore fan.

Love In Color by Bolu Babalola was published today April 13 2021 by William Morrow and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9780063078499">Bookshop!</a> Want it now? For the Kindle version, <a href="https://amzn.to/3dVh86d">click here</a>.

i love this! my favorite story was the second one. Bolu Babalola has a great way of making you feel immersed in her stories. I absolutely recommend this book and am looking forward for her debut novel.

First, I must say going into this book I was immediately pulled in by the introduction. It was was beautifully written and gave me what I was to expect going into reading these stories.

“Love is tender, tentative, brutal, and bold. It’s messy and magic! It can be the most frightening thing in the world, purely because it feels like safety, and that safety is reliant on total trust in another, with whom we share our hearts, expose ourselves, and allow ourselves to be seen for exactly who we are.”

I haven’t read a lot of short story books, but I loved this one. I went into this one reading only a couple stories in different sittings which I think it worked. I was able to absorb and reflect after reading. I loved that. I loved the imagery used in some of the stories which made me interpret the stories into my own thoughts. It painted the picture of the types of love being described in this stories and what it meant to me.

Each story was unique in the way the characters approaches and fell in love. I enjoyed the mythical element of it and how the different approaches on love or falling in love took. Reading the stories you feel and see each character going into love whether they are for or against it.

My favorite stories out of the book were:
♡︎Osun
♡︎Scheherazade
♡︎Yaa
♡︎Siya

Love in Colour is, simply put, an anthology of love stories. I first heard of this book as I do many of my TBR choices – through twitter. I’ve been following the author, Bolu Babalola, for a couple of years now because her tweets of pop culture, specifically romcoms and the tv series New Girl, are what I would call perfection. From her tweets and the articles of hers that I’d read, once I saw she was releasing this anthology based on different myths and folklore from around the world I was immediately invested. I knew I would enjoy her writing and that the stories would have everything that makes a good love story, and boy was I right.

I’m not used to reading anthologies and short stories but getting through LOVE IN COLOUR was a breeze. The writing was accessible and consistent without feeling stagnant across its 300-odd pages. Each story felt like it had its own narrative voice, while still staying true to Babalola’s writing style. I must say, Babalola’s way of writing dialogue brought me a great sense of joy. It was never stilted or stiff, every conversation felt believable and real, and the dialogue really delivered a sense of care or distance between characters when it called for it.

The pacing of each story is also a big highlight for me as none of the stories felt unnecessarily long or unfortunately short. While I wish I had more time with certain characters it never felt as though the stories were done a disservice by the length of the chapters.

Through 12 stories, Babalola weaves tales that are modern, mythical and fantastical, soft and cozy, and even a little funny. Each story shone in its own way, and while I enjoyed some more than others, LOVE IN COLOUR excels in maintaining a level of enjoyment throughout. None of the stories bring down the group average in terms of narration, writing, and feeling. I enjoyed getting to know each of the character’s stories and loved the way Babalola managed to make this information feel like a smaller story within the story unfolding.

Short stories are difficult for me because I never feel like I can connect to the characters well enough to genuinely care about their happenings. This was not the case with LOVE IN COLOUR. Each story felt like a filler episode of your favourite show, in the best way. Think The Tales of Ba Sing Se (Book Two Chapter 15) or The Beach (Book Three Chapter 5) episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. We get to spend some extra time with our characters in a more intimate setting. We learn more about them in a way that is full of heart and feeling, and it’s simply a good time.
These stories are simply a good time.
Ranging between teenagers and adults, modern and traditional settings, contemporary and fantastical worlds, LOVE IN COLOUR tells 12 stories rooted in love that is never at the expense of our characters. While the tales are not without their complexities, love takes centre stage each time. Each of our protagonists finds a love that is full and considerate, a love that sees them, a love that allows them to find and return to a true sense of self. These are love stories in their element.

Babalola states in her introduction, “Love is the prism through which I view the world,” and it is evident in her writing. She just gets love and these tales feel like the best parts of my favourite romcoms and tender moments of pop culture. I am thrilled to see what other works we get from her in the future

I never know what to expect when heading into a collection of short stories, but I was absolutely blown away with the work Bolu Babalola executes in Love In Color. While this collection is based heavily on different mythologies of love throughout histories and different cultures, even if you don't immediately recognize which myth is being retold, you are still able to appreciate each story on its own. Love in Color centers women being autonomous and understood by their partners, while also being unapologetic in their right to exist and take up space. What is truly masterful is that this concept does not look the same for all the women, and I was immediately drawn in by the astounding variety of characters and love interests we meet throughout this collection. Built upon beautiful, metaphor writing, Babalola presents a masterful collection that explores what it means to truly be seen in a relationship, so much to the point where you are able to let your guard down and call your partner 'home.' I definitely see myself picking up another work by Bolu Babalola.

I’ve a soft spot for the fractured fairytale or myth. Something about spinning an old yarn into a new tapestry strikes me as wonderfully creative. As a tween, I satiated this love by devouring books by Shannon Hale, Gail Carson Levine, and Rick Riordan. Nowadays, I rarely seek this genre—until I heard about Love in Color.

In Love in Color, Bolu Babalola presents “mythical tales from around the world, retold.” Each chapter transports the reader to a different mythos, from Yoruba religion to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Most readers subjected to a Greco-Roman literary upbringing will recognize a few of Babalola’s sources. But, unlike the noted mythologists of my childhood, Babalola invokes traditions oft-sidelined or even maligned in westernized literary spaces. Her collection embraces love as a global phenomenon.

Too often, we see Hollywood and major publishing houses marketing one flavor of love: white, cisgendered, and heteronormative. The cultural landscape may at last be changing, thanks to movies like Always Be My Maybe and books like Felix Ever After (one of my top reads of 2020!). Love in Color further inducts readers into a more democratic vision of romance. Babalola takes historical folktales from around the world, deconstructs their patriarchal elements while highlighting their feminist ones. Her hypnotic retellings of these familiar stories create delectable meet-cutes to pluck your heartstrings.

Of all these wondrous love stories, my personal favorites are the Scheherazade, Nefertiti, Naleli, and Thisbe chapters. Scheherazade’s brazenness emanates from the page. Nefertiti’s chapter offers striking commentary on police brutality and vigilante justice. Naleli’s chapter, too, touches on social issues with its powerful celebration of body positivity. And Babalola’s refashioning of Thisbe and Pyramus’ romance strikes me as an updated School Daze.

Full review below!

*Thanks to William Morrow and Hear Our Voices Book Tours for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes included may change in final publication.*

"Time was constructed with love in mind. It is why the moments before a desired kiss stretch, why when your lips are finally introduced with another pair, it feels as if they have wanted to meet for some time, and why a day with your loved one can feel like an eternity on turbo-speed." ~ from Alagomeji

I've always been drawn to retellings. There's something about seeing how someone can breathe new life into something known or familiar, made more intriguing if I can place myself within pages of a place I couldn't imagine taking up space in previously, so I tend to pay extra attention anytime a retelling or alternate history crosses my radar. I'm more of a sci-fi and fantasy reader, but I knew I had to read this from the moment I saw the beautiful cover and read the premise for a few of the reworked tales. Short story collections also grant the opportunity to get more pieces of work in one place so I was even more excited to jump in.

One of the first things I noticed and loved immediately was the centering of the female characters. So many of these older tales, both in and outside of this collection, either have them playing a backseat role, completely dependent on others for a sense of worth, or not even deemed important enough for a name that it was really refreshing to see them take top billing and have their own agency. With powerful goddesses and warriors, business women, and even those still finding their footing in the world, there was such a wide variety of characters to get behind and I was happy to not only see myself in them, but that they also had sweet and hopeful endings.

Another aspect of this collection that grabbed my attention was the writing. Whether it was the description of a character, their surroundings or an inner or outer emotion, the detail that went into it was lyrically beautiful. I could picture everything right off of the page, which made it that much more engaging and easy to get lost in the stories themselves. This carried over well into the plots of the stories, each with its own set of rules in terms of formatting and the way they were reworked into something new. I loved the different twists on the old tales, especially seeing Nefertiti in such a powerful position and reimagining Psyche and Eros in a Devil Wears Prada environment. These elements are what draw me to the idea of retellings, and I was glad to see it done so well here.

All in all, this was a great collection and I had fun diving into each of the tales. The characters stuck with me well after I'd got to the last line of their stories, and I would gladly be in for extended versions as I loved following them in the short time I got to spend in their worlds.

HIGHLIGHTS: Ọṣun, Scheherazade, Nefertiti, Attem, Siya, Psyche, Naleli, Thisbe, Orin & Alagomeji

I read this book like a collection of bedtime stories, allowing myself one before bed whenever I felt the need.

That’s to say it took me a long time to get through this book but I do believe this was the best way for me to read it. The way Bolu writes draws me in every time and leaves me completely satisfied, lulled perfectly to sleep only to have the sweetest dreams. Dreams I was absolutely the main character of, sorry Scheherazade. Every story is the perfect length, none too drawn out. They characters felt familiar and grounded while maintaining their fantastical otherworldly qualities. I could gush about each story individually but what would be the point? Each one was beautiful, some I reread, some I highlighted so much past English educators of mine would cringe, I wrote so many notes I practically wrote a love letter to each character. I’m big on marking up books. I’ll definitely be gifting this one to my loved ones so they can feel as warm as I did. I’m sure I’ll revisit this many times in the future

This was really beautiful. The lawyer guage is gorgeous, and I loved these retellings of mythological stories. It's been a long time since I read a collection like this, and I loved it!

Beautiful and brilliant retellings of a collection of international myths, folktales, and legends. The author took care to put her own twist to it, and to subvert the usual tropes. As with a collection of short stories, some are better than others, but the beautiful language of the first story will hook you right from the start. This is a good book to have in any collection. Highly recommend.