This is the first book I have ever read by Bolu Babalola and I was so excited. Her writing exceeded my expectations and as a black college student I instantly clicked with the plot. We love a fake-dating romance with such relatable main characters.

Thank You for this ARC

It took me a few beats to get into this book. I needed time to understand the Kikiola and that she had so many walks and defenses up. But as I got further in I. really enjoyed her journey and that of her. love interests. I'm quite a bit older than the characters and definitely didn't always follow the slang and cultural references, but that didn't prevent me from enjoying the story. It reminded me a bit of the movie/series Dear White People since it was set at college and involved a radio show and campus politics.

I had so many moments of wanting to say awww... Kiki and Mal were adorable when they hated each other and way more adorable when they were falling in love. This whole book gave me a modern different world vibe minus the black uni.

I enjoyed all the other characters and their backstories. There was drama, development and romance were on point.

Mal is the perfect book boyfriend, I loved him, m, his honestly, his swoony moments

I just loved the whole thing

Bolu Babalola is one of my favorite twitter follows and I was excited to pick up her debut novel. Honey and Spice was a joy to read - I love a fake dating plot and this was top tier. I loved Kiki and watching her journey from "outsider" to a confident woman surrounded by her community. I would love if Bolu made this into a series so we get stories focused on the other characters too!

What an absolutely perfect book! I cannot stress this enough. I love the cultural references (my Caribbean heart is so full), Beyonce mentions (as a proud member of the BeyHive), and might be in love with Malaki Korede (because how can you not be?!). Kiki Banjo is so relatable that it’s scary (so fierce and funny)!

Oh and do not get me started with all of the tension between Kiki and Kai. Hot. Aggressively hot. 5 stars.

I know this is gonna sound corny but I stand by this statement, this story is the perfect mix of honey and spice.

I would like a movie or television adaptation. I'm thinking of Winston Duke as Kai and Ryan Destiny as Kiki. You see it?! Bolu Babalola, sis, we need it.

Bolu is perfect. Having followed her online for years, I knew going in that I'm a big fan of her writing voice and would enjoy this. Her sense of humor is so good, she's so intelligent, and is a true scholar of romance. She gets it, and conveys it better than most (all?). A really lovely college-set romcom, I'll be pushing it into the hands of anyone who asks what I've enjoyed lately. Again, sp funny! And the chemistry between the leads was on point. A+

This was cute! The characters really felt fully formed and real to me and I bought into their chemistry. I also appreciated how much the main character grew throughout this and let herself be vulnerable not just romantically, but to friendship! I would recommend this to readers who enjoy fake dating tropes and who like new adult type stories set in the college experience.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really good read. Kiki and Malaki are Black British college students; she runs a popular college radio show about dating, relationships, and female empowerment, and he is an aspiring filmmaker. After a series of mishaps and misadventures, the two find themselves embroiled in a fake relationship to boost their statuses and improve their chances at winning academic competitions.

What I liked: Representation of diverse voices from within the African diaspora, feminist portrayals of young Black women's experiences in a college environment; amazing portrayals of female friendship, sisterhood, cultural appreciation and heritage.

What I didn't like: I could always use a bit more spice ;)

I would definitely recommend this to a customer and would read anything else Bolu Babalola publishes.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A big thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for this advanced copy! This has not affected my opinion in any way!

I will admit that this was my first real romance novel and I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about it, but I'm pretty certain that I fell in love with it! I would give this book 3.75 stars because it had great characters, a good plot line and really made me feel the love while reading it. Plus fake dating and enemies to lovers are always tropes that I will fall for every time. I also adored that this book was all about Black love and Black relationships and friendships. This book also has one of the best lines I've read, "I may be vegan but I eat bitches up for dinner."

One of my favorite things in this book were the characters. Kiki, Kai, Aminah, Chi, Kofi and Shanti were all so amazing throughout the book. Kiki and Kai were so adorable and I literally loved watching them fall in love throughout the story. They were just so adorable and the banter between them was just amazing. Aminah, Chi, Shanti and Kofi were all amazing side characters and really brought a great feel into the book and set up great friendships that you wish you had in real life. I will admit that I was skeptical about Aminah during the first few chapters, but she very easily grew on me by the end of the book.

I also loved the love in this story. Kiki and Kai are so adorable throughout the book and just seeing how they fit so well together was amazing. The banter between them both as they are falling in love is adorable and while they may be "fake dating" they give off real couple vibes and I just loved it. I just loved everything about them and their relationship, even though they did act stupid at times and had me wondering how they were able to miscommunicate so easily when they are literally giving advice to other couples. I also loved the friendships throughout the book and how they encouraged Kiki to be her true self and how they allowed her to grow so much throughout the book.

I will say the only reason I didn't give it 4 stars is because I felt the situation with Zack and the Whitewell Knights was a little far fetched to me. This part of the book gave me fanfiction vibes or teenage romcom vibes, where the villain reveals how evil they truly are, and I felt it was just unnecessary and could have been avoided or just left with the fact that he exposes their relationship and reveals that he is the true Wasteman of Whitewell.

Overall, I really did enjoy the book and I think it's really turned me on to romance novels if they're all as good as this one!

This was a fun book! I agree with others who pointed out similarities to the show and movie "Dear White People." This is both a good thing and a bad thing. I think that some of the musings on race feel a little dated. I think that if this book had come out in 2014, it would have felt like a revelation.

The book follows college radio personality, Kiki, as she fake dates, Malakai, the hot transfer whose serial dating has turned the campus upside down. There are a ton of pop culture reference and there is a lot of jargon. It took me a while to get used to the pithy tone of the book. But, during my reread, I found myself really enjoying the world. Some of the pop culture references took me out of the story. For example, would a current college student listen to Floetry? Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story.

This is addressed in the book. However, it is a bit strange that Kiki has so many opinions about Malachi before she even meets him. I wish we had gotten a bit more time to meet Malachi. The reader is expected to buy in to Malachi before we really get to know what he's about. I enjoyed the Malachi character though. I appreciated how even keeled he was. I also appreciated the journey that Kiki takes to open herself to friendship with other women. I find it refreshing that she strengthened her ties to other women rather than put them down.

In all, I enjoyed this book. It's a story that I'll probably go back to on a lazy summer day. I'd definitely be open to reading more from this author.

Thanks to Net Galley for the Advanced Reading Copy.

This book is so much fun! This romance follows Kiki, a British Nigerian university student who runs a radio show giving advice about relationships and f*ckboys to Black women at the university. She concocts a fake dating scheme with the new "wasteman" in town, Malekai. The banter (between the couple and between friends) is impeccable, the friendships are so well done, and the Blackwell (the university's African & Caribbean Society) world the author created is so vibrant. Every character was so well fleshed out and came to life off the page. I really hope the author follows up with sequels following some of the other women from Blackwell!

For people who don't like pop culture references in books, there are a LOT in this one, but I didn't mind them at all.

TWs: alcohol, sexual harassment, racism, cancer, parental neglect, cyberbullying

Disclaimer: I received a Netgalley eARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book made me feel so many emotions it’s wild. I loved it and can’t wait to rave about it. This is fake dating done RIGHT! I love seeing myself in main characters so it made this even more special for me.

I will forever read anything that Bolu Babalola writes. She's got a pulse on everything that her readers are looking for and constantly delivers. Top notch romance, slow builds, enemies to lovers, real and honest female friendships. She includes pop culture references that I love, relatable plot lines and more. Plus she's laugh out loud funny! 10/10!

Enemies who fake a relationship while in college then (obvious spoiler) fall for each other... What's not to love?

A very impressive debut by Bolu Babalola!

Kiki Banjo tells it as it is, especially on her very popular student radio show, Brown Sugar. So, she has no problem publicly and passionately condemning the new student, Malakai, as the "Wasteman of Whitewell" after she learns about the trail of broken hearts and drama he is leaving behind him. However, she faces a big problem when she (publicly and passionately) kisses him at the next party.

In order to save both of their reputations, the pair enter a fake relationship which leads to real feelings.

With characters that are fully themselves and totally lovable, Honey and Spice is a cute, fun, and spicy story that seamlessly weaves many important issues into the plot.

When this was heralded the rom com of the decade, I was so nervous. I think Bolu is incredible, one of my favorite follows on twitter when it comes to pop culture, and I knew when it came to romance that she would Get It. She just understands what makes a romance go. But those are huge expectations!!! I’m glad that this was such a good read and so much fun. The universe of this college was so immersive and real. I felt like this was a more adult To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. This isn’t totally a 5 star read for me because i was hoping we’d make it past a 11th hour breakup/huge public declaration because those aren’t my favorite, but despite that it was great and definitely in Bolu’s go big and go home style.

This book was literal perfection for me. 10/10, no notes. I read Babalola's Love in Colour (in fact, I couldn't wait, I ordered a copy from the UK before the pub date in the US) and fell in love with her writing, so I was really looking forward to a full novel to enjoy from her. But I've basically been low-key obsessed with her since learning she also has a big crush on Jake Johnson because yes. The girl has taste.

ANYWAY.

Kiki and Kai were couple goals. If you like fake dating, this one is for you. Kiki has a radio show on the campus of her university, giving relationship advice although she's mostly averse to relationships herself. When she calls out a new gent on campus, Malakai, for his alleged indiscretions, she's then faced with the possibility that she might have misjudged him. But she'll get a chance to find out up close and personal because she spur-of-the-moment kissed him in order to evade her most recent hookup, and then was called a hypocrite so decides to pretend she and Kai are actually dating.

One of my favourite things about this book was Kiki's friendship with Aminah, and later with Chioma and Shanti. Sometimes, friends in romcoms can feel like they only exist on the page to move the protagonist's journey along. But these women were fully fleshed, whole human beings. And what's more, the beauty of their connection really touched me. More of this platonic soulmate love, please.

The banter between Kiki and Kai was top tier, exactly sense of humour. Babalola is also excellent about writing about food. My mouth was watering throughout, and not just when it came to meals. "He was starvation coming home to a banquet." YES. And the thing that really clinched this as a true romcom for me was the grand gesture...times TWO!

Honey & Spice is full of vulnerability, earnestness, and heart. I can't wait to sell it in my little bookshop on wheels, and I can't wait to see what else we get from Babalola in the future.

CW: past sexual harassment (not from MC), revenge porn, sexual content, racism

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

Includes some spoilers plus discussion of parent with cancer (parent survives), and sexual assault/rape (hypothetical only).

Well, this book is a delight.

Something that’s bit complicated about the broad sub-genre of, shall we call it, “contemporary-set books with strong romantic elements and illustrated covers” (or CSBWSREAIC for short) is that it comfortably (and rightly) encompasses a variety of approaches, and yet all such books are usually interchangeably marketed as romcoms. And let me be very clear that I have no problems with not all CSBWSREAIC being romcoms. Moreover, I don’t believe that something isn’t a romcom just because it also contains serious themes. What I don’t love, however, is when I’m being promised by the publisher that something is an effervescent riotous lol-ride when it’s actually about, I don’t know, death and--more importantly--doesn’t contain any fucking jokes.

Anyway, while I am not trying to set myself up as the Romcom Adjudicator (by the power vested in me by me), for my money, Honey & Spice is a romcom in the sense of romcom, not in the sense of a CSBWSREAIC. Its story is inextricable from its themes—which are serious ones of race, identity, friendship, love, self-agency, and personal growth—but it’s also just joyous to read and funny as hell. Between the bants, which is sparkly, and the narrator’s swaggeringly cynical voice, I did indeed lol.

The heroine, Kiki, is a student at Whitewell College in southeast England. While she holds herself somewhat aloof from the cliques and power-games of the Afro-Caribbean Society (who are always, above all else, are united in their need to carve spaces for themselves within the overwhelmingly white-majority campus) she is nevertheless an established figure amongst the Black caucus of Blackwell (the name of the Whitewell ACS) because of her campus radio show, Brown Sugar. Here she plays her favourite R&B songs and offers romantic advice for the women of Blackwell, helping them maintain their self-respect as they navigate the complexities of dating in a world awash with toxic masculinity.

<blockquote>“Now see, many people think ‘player’ as a gender-exclusive term. It’s a guy smooth with his tongue … in a couple of different ways. Don’t act shy, you know what I mean. This is a safe space, girls. Let your savagery unleash. We are red-blooded women and we have needs, okay? […] But allow me to ask a question, my sisters. If he is a player, are we games? Or are we consoles to be used to help a guy navigate his way to being a man? Our buttons being pressed, being turned this way and that for his progression? […] Aren’t you tired of mandem using your heart for sport?”<blockquote>

The inevitable spanner in the works comes when Kiki is in the process of applying for a prestigious and competitive summer school placement, and her advisor tells her she needs to expand her listener base, suggesting she team up with a promising new film student called Malakai Korede. Given that Malakai has barely arrived and already has ties to women in several of the Blackwell cliques, plus he’s incredibly good-looking, confident and personable, Kiki immediately concludes he’s insincere and self-serving, dubbing him the “Wasteman of Whitewell” on her radio show. Despite these slightly self-created conflicts, however, and a few misunderstandings along the way, sparks fly between them and they eventually agree to fake date while they’re collaborating on a film about campus romantic relationships with directly ties into a new segment on Kiki’s radio show called Gotta Hear Both Sides.

This is all a teeny bit contrived, but it does mostly make sense in context. I mean, I don’t think anyone would have given a fuck who I was dating at university, but the text establishes that the Blackwell students are forced into a kind of intense insularity with each other because of the hostility/cluelessness of the broader campus (there’s even a debate at one point over whether Black lives matter or if all lives matter). In any case, it’s character driving this book, not plot. The supporting cast, who are diverse not only in terms of racial background but in terms of sexuality and gender identity, are all well-articulated, even the ones who are only fleetingly on page, but particularly Kiki’s best (and at the start of the book, only) friend, Aminah.

Kiki and Malakai, though, steal the show. Malakai is a wonderful hero: sexy, funny, a touch arrogant, not perfect yet willing to answer for his mistakes, but also deeply and nerdishly earnest in a lot of ways, which provides such a welcome contrast to Kiki’s brittle cynicism. Kiki herself is my favourite kind of romance heroine: damaged, flawed, strong, complicated. She’s also kind of a slowburn heroine because we meet her sleeping with a man she doesn’t like precisely because she doesn’t like him and it takes about half the book to really know who she is and understand the forces and experiences that have shaped her. It is, however, an incredibly satisfying journey, especially because it parallels Kiki’s own journey not just to a romantic relationship with Malaki but to a better relationship with herself and the world in general.

I think the other thing this book did superlatively was capture the experience of being in your early twenties at university: that feeling of believing you understand everything, when you understand fuck all, of being sure you know who you are when, in fact, you’ve barely started. I don’t know how to say this without it sounding like a sideswipe, when it’s not at all, because Kiki and Malaki hovered on the borderline of obnoxious for me sometimes, but it was an extremely human, relatable, early-20s obnoxious. They’re both so convinced that they’re “not like” everyone around them and are, at once, alienated and encouraged by that conviction. Over the course of the book Kiki, in particular, learns that .. kind of everyone is both “like” and “not like” everyone else, and it’s really satisfying to see her connecting with her fellow Blackwallians, even the ones she doesn’t necessarily always see eye-to-eye with. It's a subtle maturation arc, one that still allows Kiki to shine as her acerbic outspoken self, and allows for a variety of relationships between women to flourish, including those between ride or die besties, adversaries turned allies, and even potential redemption for someone who wronged Kiki in the past.

Speaking of subtlety, something else I found refreshing and well-judged about the book was its tendency to eschew the bluntest possible story beats, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict and hardship in the lives of its characters. For example, while Kiki was growing up, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, went through quite a harrowing series of treatments, and eventually recovered: I really appreciated this arc because I can’t remember the last time I read a book that grappled with the trauma of growing up with an ill parent. I understand cancer is terrifying, and I’m not diminishing that at all, but it tends to get portrayed in a rather binary way in fiction – i.e., you either don’t have it, or you die from it. Similarly, while at school (and dealing with her mother’s illness), Kiki’s best friend’s boyfriend makes a pass at her. It doesn’t escalate beyond kissing and groping before Kiki manages to make him stop but it still has a tremendous impact both on Kiki’s relationship with her friend and her sense of self-worth, shaping her into the distant, locked-down, self-protecting person she is when we meet her at the beginning of the book.

It’s kind of hard to talk about this, without sounding crass, but I think it’s easy, in fiction as in life, to treat only the most extreme outcomes of particular situations as significant (cancer leads to death, sexual assault/harassment leads to rape) which in turn leaves people who undergo deeply hurtful experiences feeling as if those experiences don’t “count” or weren’t real. Basically, I just found the way Honey & Spice approached its heroine (and indeed its hero’s) pain really refreshing. It makes real space for the nuances of damage without feeling a need to exploit tragedy or reach for extremism. With Kiki, especially, we have a heroine who has been undeniably affected by what she’s been through, but at the same time she is never less than a whole and complex person, who is growing every day. Something that is supported by her developing relationship with Malakai -- which grows into a genuinely lovely romantic arc, full of sharp words, with a soft centre (and y'see, the title of the book is Honey & Spice).

Also bring me more earnest romance heroes please. It is a winning and too rare quality.

POINT IS, I adored this book and it needs to be a movie or a TV series, like, yesterday. I honestly can’t remember the last time I read something that captured the feeling of being in your early-20s—from its dramas, to its vulnerabilities, to its excitements and its infinite potential—so successfully, and with an eye at once kind but unflinching.

I've been a fan of Bolu Babolola since her short story collection Love in Color and this did not dissapoint as well. This was funny. It gave me Dear White People meets a classic 90s black rom-com. I really enjoyed it as a new adult, debut novel.

I had a fun time reading this book! As you guys know, fake dating is one of my favourite tropes so I knew I had to read Honey and Spice. Kiki was definitely my favourite character. She is super hardworking, and determined to achieve her goals. She's also a bookworm which I loved. Her radio show was really interesting to learn about, I wish it was real so that I could actually listen to it! The writing style made for a quick and easy read, and kept the plot flowing smoothly. Speaking of the plot, I was directly invested in it the whole time. I just had to know what was going to happen next with Kiki and Malakai. I also enjoyed that romance was not the only focus in this book, but that we also got to see each of the characters grow on their own. The romance felt realistic and I appreciated that they both had to work on aspects of their relationship.
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Overall it was just so cute!

Honey & Spice was even better than I imagined it to be. The sisterhood between Kiki and her bestie Aminah shined just as much as her relationship with Kai. Kiki and Kai though??????? The banter! The chemistry? So natural. I laughed out loud several times throughout the book. Bolu is truly a romcom queen!

Everytime I see Yoruba so casual and untranslated in a novel I feel satisfied.