Akwaeke Emezi is a superb writer. Everything in the book—from the atmosphere to the feelings to the food—was intricately described, and their keen eye for detail really allowed me to identify with how Feyi felt from beginning to end. I was able to read this book in one day because of the fluidity and polished quality of Emezi’s writing.

The nuance of the characters, particularly our protagonist, Feyi, made this novel even more gripping. I was eager to follow her journey in managing and overcoming her grief, and her experiences with the various relationships in which she engages. That said, I do wish there was more development in terms of the romance she shared with her main love interest. I feel that it would be more reasonable if the romance began a bit earlier in the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for this e-ARC!

lush and sumptuous and queer – and gloriously messy. i enjoyed each of these things about this novel, and still, at the same time, some other things just weren't my cup of tea.

akwaeke emezi's prose is resplendent in you made a fool of death with your beauty. i don't think we can speak of their writing without mentioning their range - from heartbreaking literary fiction to speculative middle-grade to memoir to, now, lush and complex romance - and the immaculate lyricism with which they pull off each of these diverse genres.

this novel was no exception. when feyi adekola, a woman grieving the death of her husband and childhood sweetheart, steps onto the tropical island that is to be her home for a few glorious weeks in the summer, she is swept up into its verdant, riotous beauty - a vibrant profusion of life that mirrors feyi's own coming-back-to-herself. in her own words: "She was hers, she was alive, there was so much to do."

i was swept up right alongside feyi, as she moves through the tangled layers of her grief and the tender intimacy of a new and messy love. i loved reading about her art, and i discovered many new Black and diasporic artists through their name-dropping in this novel, including ruby onyinyechi amanze, allison janae hamilton, katherine agyemaa agard, charmaine bee, and yagazie emery, and wangechi mutu.

i also appreciated, so much, that this story is queer to its CORE. the author themself is queer, feyi and her main love interest are both bisexual, and feyi's best friend joy - whom i desperately wish we'd gotten to see more of, besides mostly facetime calls! - is lesbian. queer love, Black love, and one woman's reconnection to her profound love for herself and her art and her life (hot girl summer, if you will) - these are the bones of this layered story.

that being said, there were two key reasons i didn't enjoy this book as much as i'd hoped i would, and both are a matter of personal preference. first, i LIVE for angst and messy entanglements - but i really can't stand instalove (or instalust or insta-you're-the-one). i personally just don't connect with romances where the leads know they're meant for each other from the moment they lay eyes on one another, or people who fall deeply irrevocably uniquely in love within a few weeks of meeting each other. i know these sorts of things happen and that other folks enjoy reading swift-paced falling-for-each-other, but i'm personally not one of them! second, i found some of the writing around the romance aspects a bit tired (particularly descriptions of eyes, e.g., “A deep sorrow filled his gray eyes and spilled into the murky whites.”) both of these things - instalove and the occasional romantic cliché, but mainly the first - made it hard for me to connect with the love story at the crux of this novel.

bottom line? read this novel. it is an ode to the messiness of living, and grieving, and finding a way to exist and make art and make love in between the two.


many thanks to netgalley and simon & schuster canada for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you S&S Canada for the e-arc of this book… and what a book it is — an unputdownable trip!!!!

The first 2 chapters had me peeping through my fingers like so 🫣… I knew I was going to be in for a wild ride.

Let’s just say that the main character does not make the best decisions in this story. She is grieving the loss of her husband and I think the aim of the book is to get readers to appreciate the grief process. I think the author did an amazing job in that regard. The conversations that our main character had with the *people* she encounters and the way that the story progresses really allowed for meaningful moments throughout the story.

Apart from navigating her grief, I will say that I didn’t really connect with the main character. While her actions were justified, they had me shaking my head. Really hard. The romance in this book also made me uncomfortable 😂 I mean to each their own, but for me it was a “no thank you!”

Anyone who picks this book up will be in for a ride. If work didn’t get in the way I would have probably finished it in one sitting. I would recommend this one to the folks who love their romance having deeper themes.

I had a lot of hopes for this book. It started off pretty strong. I'm not one to read the rom-com genre usually, but You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty seemed like it was going to be different. I felt as though Emezi was going to really develop the characters, which never came to fruition. Every character fell flat for me, lacking substance and depth, especially the main character's best friend and lovers. Emezi is a good writer, it definitely seemed to be written a lot better than most rom-coms, which is why I expected it to go somewhere. The plot wasn't exciting, the characters fell flat, and it ended up getting really cheesy and predictable. I'd like to thank Simon & Schuster Canada for this advance copy.

*Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and Atria Books for the eARC and audiobook ARC

I didn't expect anything less from Akwaeke Emezi. This is marketed as a romance, but I'd classify this as a slightly more literary take on the classic love after loss trope (+ a age gap). The story follows Feyi, a Nigerian artist, as she starts dating again 5 years after the tragic loss of her husband.

With gorgeous prose, Emezi focuses on grief and letting yourself love after loss. I loved the friendship between Joy and Feyi. It's rare that a romance novel also centers a sex positive and supportive best friend relationship. Although this novel does have sex on page, the focus is on Feyi and how she allows herself to accept love. Feyi is nowhere near perfect, she makes mistakes and things get messy, but that's what makes this book so great. Everyone is flawed, and Emezi focuses on how to have the right conversations when things escalate.

If you liked Seven Days in June you will LOVE this!

I was also very generously sent the audiobook from Simon & Schuster Audio and absolutely loved listening to this in audio form. If you are an audiobook lover, I highly recommend picking this one up.

TW: death of a partner, death of a parent, grief, loss, car crash, blood, ableism, homophobia/biphobia, sexual content, profanity

Romance isn’t really my thing, but I just had to read this one since it’s Emezi. I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed it! Emezi’s writing is as good as ever, the characters were complex and well fleshed out. Most of all, though, I loved seeing Feyi and Joy’s friendship—possibly more than the romance?

I saw reviewers saying they didn’t like this book because Feyi fell in love with Nasir’s father. Really? I say, stop asking of fictional characters that they make decisions that match your own vision of what’s moral/good.

Now, regardless of the relationship between Alim and Nasir, I do have to say: why did Nasir have to be so nice? Eventually we learn that it might just be a façade, but for most the book, he’s adorable and caring and patient, and that made it impossible to root for Feyi and Alim! Until Nasir’s big freak-out, I couldn’t get on board. Emezi truly convinced me that Feyi should try to make it work with Nasir. I wasn’t sold on the romance until the very last moments.

All in all, it was a wild, gripping ride, albeit a little confusing.

tragically, beautifully & deliciously messy!

This was pretty good - I loved the Blackness; it was super relatable! I liked the focus / discussions on grief and how hard it can be to navigate, deal and even allow yourself to move on from it.

I liked the bit of messiness and drama but the main romance itself just wasn't speaking to me - it felt like the couple only had their grief in common but I'm glad they felt safe enough with one another to talk about their grief, past relationships and share aspects of themselves they weren't privy to sharing with others.

3.5 ⭐️

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

Wow I can definitely say that I've never read a romance book quite like this! I think that Emezi took a lot of the good things from the genre and combined that with elements often left out and they told a story that was incredibly engaging and well done. I really enjoyed how grief was explored through the story and how it is present in different forms and changes, but becomes part of life once it is experienced. I also really loved the way that the story showed different types of intimacy through friendship, even though it was centring romantic love in the story.

I would definitely recommend picking this up. It's a more literary take on the romance genre, but it never feels difficult to read or understand. There is a lot packed in to the relatively short novel, and it make the book very readable!

This book follows Feyi five years after her husband’s death as she tries to start to truly live again after years of grieving. Though she starts off just looking for a purely sexual relationship to escape her loneliness, through a series of encounters, she strikes up a friendship with a guy, Nasir, with the the hope that it could be more one day, when she’s ready for a real relationship. This friendship brings an incredible opportunity for Feyi, who is an artist, in which she has the chance to be part of an exhibit with a prolific curator that is friends with Nasir’s father. As the exhibit is in Nasir’s hometown, he invites her to stay with him and things get … messy when she meets someone else on the trip.

I did not know what to expect going into this book beyond knowing it wouldn’t be a straight-forward romance based on the blurb and what I knew about Akwaeke Emezi’s other work. I certainly didn’t expect the person Feyi would be attracted to would be who it ended up being, and maybe I should have, but it just didn’t cross my mind. Either way, I expect that the situation Feyi finds herself will be very polarizing and I look forward to seeing how other readers react to it. I will say, as much as it is a romance, for me, the romance mostly existed to facilitate an exploration of grief, identity, and the value of life. I’m not saying the book can’t be read completely as a romance novel, it just wasn’t the main thing I took from it.

I am refraining from delving too deep into the the details of this story because if someone had described the chain of events that occurred in this book to me before I read it, I probably would have said “Yeah… no thanks. Absolutely not.” So I hope people go into this with as little knowledge of the book as possible because, despite being very much out of my comfort zone (and being one of the messiest books I have ever read 😂), I’m not only really happy I read this book, I had a lot of fun reading it, and I think that’s really a testament to Emezi’s talent as a writer.

Emezi’s writing is incredible immersive. The level of detail they bring to their descriptions makes everything feel so tangible. From the vivid locations to the depth of Feyi’s emotions (whether it’s her chemistry with another character or the sorrow she feels over the loss of her husband), all of it so honest and fun.

Like I said, people’s reactions to this book will likely differ significantly, particularly depending on their own experience with the subject, and I think that’s what’s so great about the book. Emezi does an excellent job of showing us why Feyi is who she is and why does what she does, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong. I certainly didn’t always agree with her actions, or even fully understand them, but my experiences are completely different from Feyi’s. (I think Nassir and Milan were great representations of this even within the novel.)

All that being said, the romantic aspect of the book really worked for me. The chemistry between our main love interests is palpable and their relationship, though unconventional, is believable and I find myself wishing them the best. I also want to celebrate this book’s inherent Blackness and queerness. Every facet of the characters' identities just are, no explanation required. Even the description of the islands clearly came with an understanding and love for the culture, and I appreciate it.

Finally, I want to end this review by giving a shout out to Joy for being THAT GIRL. She was a delight every time she showed up on the page and was the best friend girl could ask for. A QUEEN.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.

What an amazing novel. Akwaeke Emezi is a brilliant author and can work their magic in any genre. This book touched on such big topics of grief, love and how to move on in life while carrying that grief. It was so well paced and while the topics were heavy, there were some lighter and funny moments within to help alleviate that tension. And the chemistry in the book was off the charts.

after i finished reading this book earlier this month, I'm conflicted about how i feel; and yet, i can't stop thinking about it. this book will definitely be a book people will either love or hate but will also create a lot of interesting dialogue. it is messy, complicated, and packed with a lot of emotional trauma. there is no right answer in this novel, and i think that's the beauty of it. the process of grieving isn't black and white for everyone nor is it easy and straightforward. emezi did a wonderful job in capturing the complexity of human emotions through their prose.

what i loved most about this was the friendship between feyi and joy. i loved joy's character. she was a ride-or-die to feyi but also unafraid to call feyi out when she needed to. i would love to read a book about joy because i wanted more of her in this novel. i also loved the queer representation and all the mentions of food. no doubt, reading this will make you hungry.

there were some things that didn't quite sit well with me (love plot, "sweetness") but i appreciated how realistic the conversations and decisions surrounding these were. emezi sure knows how to take their readers on an emotional roller coaster and i love that while this is emezi's first romance novel; it definitely isn't your typical love story.

thank you so much to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book was an incredibly interesting and poignant read. This was my first book of Akwarke Emezi’s that I’ve read, and I easily fell in love with their flowy style of writing. I also loved how deeply each character’s motivations and emotions were portrayed in this book. The exploration of what it means to explore love, and one’s own sexuality and identity, especially after losing a loved one was executed excellently.
Despite this, I felt that this book was not for me.
The biggest issue I had with this book was the central romance. Although I l always love to see bisexual representation when it comes to relationships, I felt that I could not be sold on the relationship. With their attraction for one another feeling more like infatuation/insta love than a true, deep connection, and the age-gap trope(which I am not the biggest fan of for my own personal reasons), I simply couldn’t enjoy the romance aspect of this book.
Despite that, I still overall liked this book, but I have a feeling that the author’s other works will be more aligned with my personal tastes.

I seriously considered putting this book down after the first couple chapters. I didn’t love the characters or how they spoke to and about each other—just not my style. But I’m so glad I kept reading! The author takes us deep into a journey of grief and living after loss. Feyi is still struggling to come to terms with the loss of her husband in a car accident five years earlier, while Alim lost his wife more than twenty years ago. Their choosing to love again is complicated and moving. It’s messy, but so is real life and loss. So glad I kept going to the end of this book!

I have been sitting with this book since finishing it a week ago, thinking about how to review it. I think this book will be one that people either love or hate, but I feel very conflicted about this book. I could not put it down, but at the same time, I was very frustrated with all of the main characters, was not rooting for the romance to work out, and was annoyed by a lot of the repetition and romanticizing of trauma. I loved the style of writing, the descriptive settings, and a lot of the dialogue, but then the characters would speak in a way that felt so awkward and out of character, that it would take me out of the story completely.

I think the romance in this story is complicated in a way I’ve never read before, making it intriguing but also uncomfortable. It almost felt voyeuristic to be so immersed in the romance and the consequences of it.

I really need more people to read this so I can discuss, because I think it is a book that is going to create a lot of interesting dialogue. Even though I’m conflicted on my thoughts on this book, I’m thinking maybe that’s the author’s intention, it’s beautiful, messy, tragic, romantic and ugly. Like the art and food so thoroughly described in the book, the story is complex, challenging and confusing.

This is going to be a divisive book, and I think that's what makes it brilliant. I had such conflicted feelings but it made me feel something, so I think I loved it. Akwaeke Emezi knows what they are doing!

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty is a hard book to talk about because it's messy, it's complicated, it's romantic, it's everything. I've never read a romance quite like this! And to be clear, this is a romance.

Also, the friendship between Feyi and Joy makes this book worth reading. I also loved the food descriptions and reading about the power of Feyi's art in terms of her expressing herself and moving through her grief.

There is a lot to unpack here and I am looking forward to reading what others have to say!

I've sat here, the minutes ticking by since I closed my kindle, waffling on how I feel about this book. Not just rating wise but overall feeling wise. This is going to be a polarizing book, I think.

After having fallen in love with THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI last year, I've been on a mission to slowly devour everything this author has written. The fact that they flit between genres, and themes, and styles, is so interesting and at the announcement of a romance novel -- a romance novel with a <i>Florence + The Machine</i> lyric for a title -- had my attention. I mean, obviously I was sold. I wanted to see what they would do in this particular genre.

And for so much of it.. I was pretty into it. I enjoyed the voice (I make this distinction for a reason, I'll expand more in a bit) and I enjoyed the friendship between Feyi and Joy. Their conversations were mostly limited to their romantic endeavours with the occasional hype moment from Joy on Feyi's behalf but.. still, I felt the friendship, I felt the connection. But the romance? The various ones we follow? Welll..

I absolutely appreciate that Feyi, having survived what she did, and feeling like she's maybe in a place to dip her toe in romance again, would be hesitant for more than something physical. And I do feel like we saw some stepping stones out of her grief in the form of people but.. I don't know. This is where I get mixed. Because I can see it what the author did (or, rather, I think I see what they were doing), and understand it, but I can also not love it? I guess? In some ways it's brave and also real but..

Maybe it was the writing that hindered some of this. Because I'll tell you right now I didn't enjoy this writing the same way I've enjoyed the author's previous writing. I can't put my finger on what about it bothered me but something did.

Even without the romance drama, this book is messy. Grief is messy. Processing that, dealing with the concept of moving on, it's all a mess. Emotional and fraught. And then when combined with romance? Messier. Add in some.. complicated results with how things shake out with said romance? Chaos. There's a lot going on here. And there are times that Emezi has these beautiful notes, these little pauses of reflection, and they are just lovely. There are moments to be heard but also moments where the characters are listened to, and understood. But it's still also dramatic and a lot. Which is fine! If that's what you want.

I definitely see people loving this or.. maybe not hating it but being on the fence of it all. So while I'm taking the easy way out and not rating this.. it's probably a 3. So just imagine that instead of the nothing and let me remain in a state where I don't have to commit.

I will definitely continue to pick up titles by this author, as well as catch up on their backlist, but this wasn't quite the breakthrough hit I thought it would be. At least not for me.

That cover is absolutely stunning though isn't it? Gorgeous.

You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty by @azemezi

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

* Thank you to @netgalley and @simonandschuster for providing a digital copy of You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty in exchange of a honest review.

Absolutely gorgeous cover that perfectly match the tropical island settings in the book. The friendship between Joy and Feyi is what I enjoyed the most. This is not an easy read, death and grief are central themes throughout the book, but they are handle with such care and respect that they don't feel too depressing.
Beautiful story from start to finish. 🧡