Wow, was this a wild ride from start to finish. One thing I like about Emezi’s books is that they’re not overly long. This one clocks in at 288 pages and it’s just right.

The blurb only hints at the forbidden-love aspect of the book, but oh boy is it scandalous. <spoiler> Feyi goes after her sort-of-boyfriend’s FATHER. No, they are not technically dating, but they make out a lot and she’s pretty much just leading him on, even if she doesn’t mean to be cruel.

The thing is, Feyi and Alim are a great couple. They understand each other on a deep level. And it’s very spicy when they get together. I dig it! I’m also a sucker for forbidden romance, and you can’t get MUCH more forbidden than your love interest’s father. It’s like you kind of want to look away, but you can’t, and it made me tear through this book in about 24 hours. </spoiler>

What I don’t like is that Feyi is not a very nice person at times. Undergoing trauma doesn’t give you an excuse to walk all over people. Yet I see some reviews slut-shaming her and I don’t think that’s fair, because she’s clear from the start that all she wants is sex and not a committed relationship, and that’s fine! Still, she is not always a super likable character and that’s one of the things that makes her interesting to read about. Her friend Joy, while super entertaining, also regularly has affairs with married women and it’s just…not questioned?…which makes me feel icky. Cheating isn’t cute, guys.

The art scene is cool, but Feyi is portrayed as so ~edgy~ because she paints with blood when it’s not even her blood. It’s pig blood. If you’re going to make a Statement about death, don’t kill an animal to illustrate that. Seriously. It’s not okay to take an animal’s life to talk about your own struggle with grief. How does that make sense?

A steamy, scandalous, infuriating at times yet gripping romance that tackles some tough emotional topics.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As others have stated this is a romance book and i honestly loved every bit while reading it. It's a fantastically written book and something that I will be thinking about for a lot of time to come. I had not previously read the author's last book but I am definitely going to go back and read it now. This will definitely be an author that I will read in the future and I cannot wait to see what they write next. Thank you so much for the chance to read and review this one early!

this is a romance novel. and i do not like romance novels.

however, emezi's writing is always fire, so even though the skeleton of this is a pretty formulaic "widow gets second chance at true love" romance plot, it's a great <i>version</i> of this kind of story, so despite the many times i cringed whenever romance-writing crept into it, bringing its overblown cliches:

<i>"When I think about the ways I want to touch you, there's no space for anything else. I am consumed, utterly."</i>

or when it leaned hard into one of my biggest pet peeves; unrealistic micro-evaluations of a character's fleeting facial expressions/vocal intonations (this example has BOTH!):

<i>A thread of sadness snagged on his last few words, and Feyi watched the grief move in a slow wave through his eyes.</i>

even with those things cluttering my path, there was more <i>to</i> it than those annoying bits and it is, at least, a very *complicated* love story.

feyi is a young widow whose high school sweetheart jonah, whom she married right after college, died in a car wreck five years before the novel begins. since then, she's been defined by her grief, consumed with survivor's guilt, living with her best friend joy and keeping busy making her art, with no interest in romance, sex, or relationships.

<blockquote>...Feyi had moved down to New York, because if she was a monster, then so was the city, glorious and bright and everlasting, eating up time and hearts and lives as if they were nothing. She wanted to be consumed by the relentless volume of a place so much louder than she was, a place where her past and her pain could drown in the noise. Here, Feyi could keep her name and her unruined face, yet become someone else, someone starting over, someone who wasn't haunted. No one in New York cared about the vintage of sadness tucked behind her eyes and in the small corners of her smiles. She didn't have to drive, and she could cry on the train and no one would look, no one would care, because she didn't matter, and it was, honestly, such a relief to stop mattering.</blockquote>

but after "years of numbness," her sexual desires begin stirring again, and she's ready to start easing back into life and its pleasures. "easing" may not be <i>le mot juste</i>, as the first chapter finds her barebacking a stranger in a bathroom during a party, which is the kind of reckless behavior we're not supposed to applaud (and joy certainly gives her some grief over it), but it was just what feyi needed to kickstart her back into the deep end of the dating pool.

feyi's hot girl summer/sexual reawakening involves three men whom she uses like stepping stones to return to life, beginning with milan, he of rawdog bathroom fame. she's gone through her five stages of grief, and now she's exploring the stages of love in all of its permutations:

<blockquote>"......there are so many different types of love, so many ways someone can stay committed to you, stay in your life even if y'all aren't together, you know? And none of these ways are more important than the other."</blockquote>

what follows is a goldilocks romance plot where she test-drives a few different relationship models—with milan: great sex with no emotional intimacy, nasir: emotional connection with no passion, and alim: an older man who has also lost a partner and understands the core of her deepest pain.

but, of course, there are some obstacles and turbulence best left unsaid for now.

like most romance novels, it's more complex with emotions than with plot—everything moves very quickly except for the introspection, which is slow and sticky—and it embraces all the romance novel tropes: a beautiful protagonist, multiple attractive and appealing suitors who love talking about their feelings and their expectations and say shit like <i>"I very much want to respect your heart in this, too, which is why I'm asking about which boundaries feel comfortable for you,"</i> and, through them, she is catapulted into a fairytale dreamworld—getting her work into a prestigious art show alongside all of her favorite artists, introducing her to the artworld elite, staying in a celebrity chef's mansion in a tropical island paradise with frolicking monkeys and oh my god the food.

it's a very sensual book—not just the sex, because reading about other people boning is whatever, but the food, the music, the vibrant foliage—feyi's is a full-scale multisensory reawakening, and <i>that</i> is the beauty of this book. not the jane austen parade of suitors or the "hard and velvet and dew-tipped" peens, but feyi's growing confidence as she emerges out of her trauma-coma and her willingness to engage with...everything again.

if you want a fun drinking game, take a shot every time the word "alive" is used. here's a sampling:

—It was the start of summer, she was alive and she was so fucking close to becoming what she wanted...

—a roiling sweaty mess of alive

—She was alive, like her therapist had taught her, and it was okay to live.

—She was hers; she was alive; there was so much to do.

—And, because Feyi was Feyi and she was alive, there was no way she could say no.

—...because Feyi was herself, and alive, she kept going

—It was a party, and she was drunk and alive.

—To hell with the trouble this would bring, she was alive.

—"...I think we're just figuring out how to survive a world on fire...that it's okay to be alive."

u drunk yet?

so, i still don't like romance novels, but i'm rounding this one up to a four because honestly—i'm just impressed with emezi's raw talent. this is my fourth of their books, and each one has been so markedly different—[book:Freshwater|35412372] was challenging and structurally wild, [book:The Death of Vivek Oji|48595550] was a masterpiece but also straightforward enough for wine-soaked book clubs to appreciate, and [book:Pet|43568395]—well, i didn't really like [book:Pet|43568395], but i was still impressed with what they produced for younger readers, even if i wasn't a fan.

and even though i had to wade through a lot of blucky romance prose (every time alim called her "sweetness" (which is, for the record, TWENTY-TWO times), eyerolls ensued), when it's not being all romance-wincy, the dialogue is great, especially between feyi and joy, whose friendship is everything everything. i also appreciate that joy's character is a winky spin on the rom-com "gay best friend" trope, where the twist is that—unlike most rom coms, where the gbf is a boy—here the bisexual feyi has slept with her lesbian bestie. they hooked up for a while in the empty space before this book begins, but it never became a relationship, which is a shame because they complement each other so well and i'd rather see them together than feyi tits-deep in her messy-messy (but "messy and <i>alive</i>") situation.

feyi is a compelling and flawed character and i get that we're meant to root for her because of what she's been through (and the fact that she makes a "that's what she said" joke automatically endears her to me), but the whole "the heart wants what the heart wants" shrug doesn't really mitigate every selfish decision, and she leaves some pretty significant destruction in her wake. love is often messy, but this one—yeesh. i do not envy what comes next for her.

I loved Emezi's previous novel, The Death of Vivek Oji, and their most recent work definitely did not disappoint. The writing, the romance, the exploration of grief - it was all lovely.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free e-copy.

There are romances that are easy and swoony and tie up everything in a nice little neat package, and then there are nail-biting, what’s-going-to-happen, the anxiety-is-killing-me romances. Akwaeke Emezi’s You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is the latter. This book is so good that I seriously contemplated how to write this review for a solid 2 months (spoiler: I still can’t do it justice). Emezi is onto something here with the re-writing of what a romance and a love story can be.

The first thing that is obvious in this book is that love is messy. Feyi is a young widow still suffering in her grief that for one night attempts to table that grief and open herself up to the possibility of “something more”. Through a series of events and encounters with friends Milan and Nasir, she finds herself being invited to a tropical island where Feyi can create her art and possibly showcase with other up and coming artists. On this island, Feyi lives with Nasir and his father Alim, a celebrity chef that is as mysterious and compelling as the island itself.

To tell more of the storyline would be to give away too much, but the romantic arc takes a big turn on the island. There are so many thoughtful and beautiful moments in this book, one being Feyi’s art installation. I actually gasped when I read the description because it so strikingly captures love and grief and loss—I would not be surprised to find that Emezi dabbles in the visual arts as well as literary arts themselves. I also loved every single character. Joy, with her big personality who has a problem of falling for unavailable women, Nasir with his open heart, Alim with his wisened soul and observant eyes. And Feyi. I adored golden braided Feyi and her complexity. She is beautifully black, and unapologetically true to herself. Also, did I mention this book is filled with queerness and black love? Full stop.

But back to the nail-biting aspect of the book, Emezi tackles the idea of forbidden or taboo love. And it’s good. So good that even as I was reading I still didn’t know what the choices or outcomes would be. And better yet, Emezi has you in the palm of their hand making you believe that what the characters want, you want too even if it can only end in destruction and broken hearts. I cannot say enough wonderful things about the storytelling and genre-bending journey of this book. I hope readers will step outside of their comfort zone and take a chance on it because You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a gorgeous bit of prose. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for my ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Death of Vivek Oji was one of my favorite books last year, so I was really excited to get an ARC of Akwaeke Emezi's next book but I gotta be honest, this didn't do it for me.
*
Synopsis: Five years after the death of her husband, Feyi Adekola starts dating again, but finds herself drawn to one person that is definitely off-limits to her.
*
Compared to Emezi's other books, this just felt so basic. It was a pretty typical story of a forbidden romance. There were some elements I enjoyed--surviving grief, and the gender and sexuality diversity--but overall the book overall felt pretty basic. It was also very dialogue-heavy, so it felt like the writing was more tell than show, and the second half ended up being pretty slow and repetitive.
*
I read some reviews that said they appreciated that this was a new twist on an unconventional relationship. Maybe I would have felt the same way if I hadn't JUST read a book that had a very similar setup (I didn't like that one either).
*
Personally, I'm not a big fan of romance, and I really dislike instalove as a trope, so ultimately this book was just not for me. If that's your thing, then you might enjoy this! It's just not my genre.

Truly a unique and interesting book. Akwaeke Emezi's writing is beautiful, and I found myself not being able to put it down. But, there were some issues with the book that made it far from the perfect novel.

The story follows Feyi, a 29-year-old woman whose husband died 5 years prior and who is just starting to get back into the dating world. When she meets Nasir, who is outwardly attracted to and interested in her, he invites her to spend some time working on her art at his family home in the Caribbean. This is where Feyi meets Alim's dad, a celebrity chef to who she grows more attracted.

This book was truly entertaining and interesting. The various sex scenes and intimacy between characters were sexy and steamy. The drama (being attracted to the dad of the guy you're dating) was... dramatic! It truly was scandalous!

I also loved the relationship between Feyi and her best friend, Joy. The descriptions of food was delicious, and the idea of summer vacation on a tropical island with a hot older man was definitely a vibe for me.

But when I think about the book deeper, I can definitely see a lot of issues. I wish we got to understand Feyi's late husband, Jonah, a bit more. We know that he was Feyi's best friend and love of her life, but when Feyi describes him she says they got married young and weren't even married a year before he died. Sometimes she has flashbacks to the car accident, but I would have loved to see flashbacks to their time together.

I also don't think the romance was all that believable. Like I said, the idea of crushing on your boyfriends hot dad is definitely my thing, but Feyi barely speaks to Alim for the entire trip, and all of a sudden, after one steamy moment, they are all over each other. Yes, they have both lost a loved one, but that's the only thing they talk about or have in common. And by the end of the trip they are so madly in love that they are willing to take this big risk? It just didn't seem believable.

Also, the book starts in New York City, but the story really kicks off when Feyi goes to the Caribbean on vacation, which isn't until about a third into the book. There was a really large disconnect between these two settings that it was almost jarring. Feyi also doesn't meet her main love interest until she gets on this island, and because the book is so short, everything happened really fast.

However, even though the romance wasn't believable, it was nice just to forget about how believable it was for a second and be sucked into the drama. It was good, but I can definitely see why people wouldn't recommend this Akwaeke Emezi book!

Thank you to the author, publisher and Net Galley for providing a free ebook of this title in exchange for my review.

Sadly, this was not the book for me. I dont' think I'm the target audience, and I just couldn't connect with any of the characters. After feeling like I had to force myself to read the first few chapters, I started skimming, hoping to engage with someone, and it didn't work for me.

I'm sure this is a great book for someone, but it's not me. This was my first book by this author, and I was hopeful when I saw so many glowing reviews. But it just didn't work out for me.

An urgent romance shot through with grief, art, and, surprisingly, food. Feyi, an artist and recent widow, is a character who will grab your heart and claw their way into mind. The story of their loss, their art, and their journey to something new will warm even the coldest, anti-romance reader out there. Truly, this book has the ability to reshape the romance genre and what it can do. Grab a copy as soon as you can!

This book was not for me. I went into expecting a literary fictional romance but was disappointed. Maybe it was my expectations that set the bar too high, but this book just seemed like a salacious romance novel.

I am all for unlikable main characters. Heck, I also do not get icked out by huge age gaps cos love is love, right? But somehow this book combined the two in a way that I just couldn’t get behind the storyline. Yes, this could be the perfect book for #sadgirlsummer, but it was not for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.

Did I pick this book for the plot, the cover, or the fact that it is a line from Florence +the Machine's Hunger? Yes, dear readers it's because of the third choice! This is my first experience with the writing of author Akwaeke Emezi and I must say they are a fantastic writer that held me in place as I read this passionate novel.

Now, main protagonist Feyi Adekola may not win every reader over but I like my characters messed up emotionally. Still reeling from the death of her beloved, Jonah, Feyi knows that it's time to make an attempt to move forward. But goodness, only for the physical, let's not start peeling back the layers of emotional trauma and bare thy soul. Thank goodness, Feyi, has a loyal and trustworthy friend named Joy to help navigate the drama that occurs over the course of the plot! Because our Feyi manages to make quite a few messed mistakes and things do get worse before they get better. However, I went along for the ride and eventually like the protagonist felt myself swept away by the overwhelming romance that begins.

Overall, it was a fairly quick read that made a memorable impression on me.



Expected publication 24/05/22
Goodreads review published 08/05/22

NetGalley Advanced Copy: After the Death of Vivek Oji, we knew that Emezi's newest would most likely be one of our top books of 2022.

What a stunning novel about finding love again – in yourself, friends, life, creations, and partner.

Characters are sure to live on in your heart long after you close this novel, and honestly, any book that follows will probably lack such vibrance, passion, and emotion.

Read our full review on The Uncorked Librarian here: https://www.theuncorkedlibrarian.com/upcoming-new-book-releases-2022/

Thank you to NetGalley & Atria Books for a free advanced copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I received an ARC from the publisher and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Akwaeke Emezi is one of those authors I’ve always wanted to try, but found a lot of their work a bit too literary for my taste. So, I greeted the announcement that she was venturing into romance with measured excitement. It sounded cool (messy queer black girls, yes!) and while there are obvious concerns with someone from the “literary” space writing a romance, given the amount of snide comments people from that community have hurled at romance as a genre in the past, Emezi’s enthusiasm to distinguish this book from their prior work reassured me.
However, it is very much in the vein of the type of “romance” seen in the last few years, with heavy influence from the marketing crossover with women’s fiction. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I do think that, while Emezi is cautioning their literary readers about the genre change, they may catch a subset of seasoned readers of romance off guard who have expressed such sentiments in the past about the personal journey of the heroine being more prominent than the growth of two individuals as a couple. His issues are touched on, but more as a complement to hers.
Another issue is that, while some of the current reviews aren’t particularly fair to Emezi’s expression of Black queer identity (or their defense of it in the book), I can see that the blurb did no favors in cluing people into the “most definitely off-limits” guy that Feyi falls for. While I’m not a massive fan of age-gap relationships or storylines involving a woman leaving a man for his father, having been warned about it, I was mentally prepared to give it a chance, and found myself rewarded for it. And given the readership I know similar books in the indie romance space have that more publicly declare the type of pairing it is, I’d imagine it could be a selling point for them, while more casual readers new to romantic stories may not be as inclined toward something that borders on taboo.
With all those semantics about my issues with the marketing out of the way, I’ll say that I really enjoyed this. It’s a charming, hedonistic story, exploring wild youth and sexuality, tempered with an undercurrent of grief and its impact on a person. While not intentionally meant to be literary, there’s a depth to it that Emezi imbues that resonates, even underneath a glossy exterior of superficiality.
Feyi is a compelling character in that she is a young widow. The narrative follows her as she attempts to recapture joy (fittingly, accompanied by a friend named Joy) and get out and start dating again. She is soon swept up in a whirlwind of glamour and romance, seemingly thanks to this pretty cool guy she just started seeing.
It was pretty easy to sell me on the romance with Alim. While there is an age gap, on top of the wealth gap, and Feyi gets accused (by Alim’s own kids) of being a gold digger, I love the respect he treats Feyi with in the face of it all. And the fact that he also lost his wife means there’s a bond there that she doesn’t have with Nasir, or most men her own age. While some of the messiness on her end was a bit questionable, and Nasir’s initial response was somewhat understandable, given how awkward it must have been, I also felt he and his sister were a bit over the top in their behavior. But ultimately, the way it’s resolved and contributes to the happy ending is rewarding, as there is reckoning with what went down and making peace for the sake of the future.
I really enjoyed this book, and in spite of the issues that have cropped up prepub, I hope Emezi will continue to explore the romance genre. If you love stories about queer Black girls exploring their sexuality and navigating grief, and finding love unexpected places, you should give this book a chance.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

This was my first book by Emezi, and it definitely won't be my last. Their prose is beautiful, and I felt like I could step into the setting and story along with the characters.

This story follows Feyi, who is easing herself back into the dating scene after losing her husband at a young age. She meets what she thinks to be the perfect man, who brings her to visit his dad after helping Feyi secure a place at an exhibition on the island. Feyi realizes that the man she thought was perfect can't hold a candle to his father.

There were several points of the story where I felt uncomfortable with the actions Feyi, Nasir, and Alim all make, though I suppose that was the author's point. These are all deeply flawed characters, but there is a humanity to each of them that makes this story special. This is a story of grief and healing and learning to love again. I would classify this as a romance, but it is a literary fiction at its core.

It took me a while to read this, and I found myself needing to be in the right mood to read it.

3.5 stars

Love and life are messy endeavors. In You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi portrays the story of Feyi's journey to love again after the tragic death of her husband 5 years ago.

The book is a fairly quick read, with flashbacks that tell Feyi's backstory, and steamy sections mixed in to keep things fun. I found a few relationships in the novel difficult to witness, though probably a realistic portrayal of some self-destructive individuals. The forbidden, age-gap romance between Feyi and Alim was believable, though, since despite the age difference they had a lot in common. I thought the descriptions of Feyi's art were oddly beautiful, obviously a therapeutic aspect to her creations, and I found myself wanting to see the fictional exhibit. For foodies, the descriptions of Alim's cooking will make your stomach growl!

Overall, the book was quite enjoyable, a bit different from a typical romance novel, with deeper themes of grief and recovery. Thank you to Netgalley, Atria Books and Akwaeke Emezi for the opportunity to read an ARC of this novel. The opinions in this review are my own.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty had the potential for me, but in the end, I don't think I am the target audience. While I can understand the actions that the lead character took and how she tried to heal herself, I just couldn't get behind them and I found her to be off-putting and unrelatable, to me. While the writing was good, I just did not enjoy the main character and the story.

“So was this what the world was made up of? Millions of boxes filed with people and feelings?”

I am not sure how I feel about this one. It was so beautifully written but the love story is messy. Perhaps because of the way Feyi and Alim came together makes me feel a bit weird.

I did like meeting Feyi as a character. Seeing her development throughout the story and also her reflections on how she’s grown since the death of her husband.

My favorite relationship in this book has to be the one between Feyi and Joy. I just loved their support of one another and how they tell each other hard truths.

This book also touches heavily on grief. I enjoyed how they wrote about the complexities of grief and being comfortable with another person and finding the way back to a new normal.

Overall a lovely, heartbreaking story.

[cw - death, drinking, drug use, scenes of domestic violence]

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a romance novel following Feyi, a woman in her late 20s, who is being pushed into the back into the dating world a by her roommate and best friend, Joy, five years after the death of her husband in a tragic car accident. At a rooftop party, Feyi meets a man and quickly finds herself on an unnamed Caribbean island, with her sights set on the one person who is truly off-limits.

Emezi’s writing is beautiful, the way food is described in this book is truly to die for, and I found this book compulsively readable. This was also a really interesting and refreshing take on a romance book that completely deviates from the “rules” or typical formula used in the genre.

However, this was a conflicting book for me. I had a hard time reconciling this pretty taboo plot (I can’t really go into this further without spoilers), and I am left feeling like some of Feyi’s actions are inexcusable. I’m not entirely convinced by the justification of those actions offered in the book. Despite these qualms, I was convinced by and invested in the romance, which is rarely the case for me in romance books.

Ultimately, I cared about Feyi and the other characters in this book, and I think I will find myself thinking about them in the future.

**Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me with a free e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review**

Note: I will be reviewing this book on my channel in my May wrap up video, which will go public the first Sunday in June.

I knew Emezi’s writing from the other genres they’ve written in, so I should have known that they would write something that defied categorization. This novel is a brilliant commentary on grief and loss but also love, consent, and navigating relationships.

I’ve never read anything like this. There’s something so incredibly inviting about Feyi and her world. She may be closed off to her lovers but not to us as readers. I loved and recognized parts of her immediately. But of course, there is also so much I learned from her as the story progresses.

There’s more than romance, sex, and grieving, here, but I have a hard time describing exactly why and how Emezi works. I’m so glad to have read this.

<b>In this extremely dramatic, spicy, and PHENOMENAL novel, Akwaeke Emezi's debut romance is something to go down in history. </b>

Slightly copying a Florence + Machine lyric, Akwaeke Emezi presents us with their debut novel surprising us with this poetic and beautiful title "You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty." Along with other things that are beautiful about this, THE COVER. Atria really hit a score with this cover. Shout out to the designer (I tried looking online for their name. But if you are reading this, though you are probably not, I praise you).

Our main character, Feyi, has been out in the world living her life as an artist. Her former partner was brutally killed five years ago and it's time for Feyi to go back into the dating world. Her roommate Joy says she must go out and move on from the past. Feyi isn't ready for anything too serious, however new sexual encounters are something she IS ready for. This new sexual encounter leads to a new relationship that expands into the beautiful and dramatic story that is in this book.

This book is filled with drama, love, sex, partying, music, and everything in between. This book was great. I have not read any of the author's previous works but have been dying to read "The Death of Vivek Oji." However, I am very glad that I was able to read this first! This book was everything you want in romance—romance! And believe me when I tell you, it delivered, with so much more too. I'm not an avid romance reader, but I am an avid drama reader. This book had both, and that is a full packaged deal. Anything romance and drama probably has me hooked. This also had elements of literary fiction in it as well, which is I believe the genre of two of their other books.

Anyways, this book includes so much plot and romance and love and absolutely everything you are expecting from Akwaeke Emezi's writing. As I said, I haven't read their other works but have heard nothing but great things. This book is absolutely everything and more! I was a bit hesitant to read this only because I have heard such good things about Emezi's work and their writing, but I in no shape or form was disappointed!

THIS IS A MUST-READ FOR ROMANCE BOOKS IN 2022!!!

all in all: yes, just yes.


update: MY SINCEREST APOLOGIES FOR MISUSING THE AUTHORS PRONOUNS. I HAVE NOW FIXED MY REVIEW TO FIT THE AUTHORS THEY/THEM PRONOUNS.