You Made A Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Awaeke Emezi. I read and loved The Death of Vivik Oji last year and read an interview with the author about how they loved reading romance novels as a teenager and how they wanted to write their own one. I love that. So I read this novel on the strength of that interview and the cover, oh the cover. I think it is one of the most eye catching, joyful covers I have seen in while. I am going to buy this book in paperback so I can admire the colours when I walk past it on the shelf.

Feyi is an artist , in her late 20s and living in NYC. Five years previously she lost her husband in an accident after only a year of marriage. Feyi is tentatively ready to let joy and love back into her life. When making these small steps back into the world of dating and relationships, Feyi is offered an opportunity to escape New York during the stifling summer and escape to a dream island holiday , leaving her old life behind and taking the chance at new one. Only Feyi falls for the one person she really cannot have.

I enjoyed this book. The vivid descriptions, the luscious landscapes of the setting, the food, the chemistry and dialogue between the characters and ultimately its a good story of second chances. I liked Feyi as a character and she kept me reading, I wanted to know how life would turn out for her.
If you enjoy romance fiction, I think you will love this and if it is not your go to genre, like me, give it a go. It surprised me. A steamy summer read with lots of heart and if the sex scenes don't do it for you, the descriptions of the house, island and food might.

3.5- 4 star.

This book blew me away. I have been a fan of Emezi since reading their first release but this book's direction took me by surprise and I loved every minute of it.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty follows Feyi as she is learning to live her life after the tragic death of her young husband. Feyi is offered the chance of a life time to visit a dreamy island and what happens when she gets there is not what she expected. Every moment of this book is so evocative and gorgeously sensual, I do not know how Emezi manages to capture everything so authentically but I tip my hat to them. I will be putting this in the hands of everyone I know, an absolute must read this year.

My first Akwaeki Emezi! I’ve been wanting to read a book by them for years, and I’m pleased this was my first. I don’t read much romance but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I really liked Feyi as protagonist, as well as her romance with Alim. Their chemistry felt real, and Emezi was able to show the reader why they fell for each other within just a few interactions. Their problems felt realistic and I liked how the conflict didn’t rely on miscommunication. I also loved Joy and reading about Feyi and Joy’s friendship, and would love to read a whole book about Joy. Emezi’s writing is so vivid and luscious, and it made me long for a holiday on an island (preferably with a hot chef providing me with Michelin star meals). The way grief is dealt with throughout and the way it’s a part of what bonds Feyi and Alim was really well done, I thought. Really successful read and looking forward to reading more of Emezi’s work soon!

My only thought about this book is wow… this novel was fantastic! I went into the book not knowing much, just that there was some kind of forbidden love, and I think that made me love the book even more! The writing was so good, it was more of a literary take on women’s fiction/ romance, which really elevated the novel. The way the book deals with grief was so unique and special; I don’t think any other novel has done it better. This novel has me sobbing as I read it.
I’m not going to spoil the relationship too much, but Feyi was such a strong main character and the writing really highlighted the connection she had with the love interest. The romance was one of the hottest but also sweetest romances I’ve ever read. At risk of repeating myself again, it was amazing. The tension in this novel!!I can only express it with aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh (happy scream).
I would recommend sticking it out to at least 25% of the way through the novel before making judgement, just because the main plot doesn’t start really until then.
To conclude, I loved this book! I would recommend it to literary and women’s fictions readers. This novel really is so special and powerful about loving after loss. The book was also so engaging, I could barely put it down. I now have a new favourite read!!

Wasn’t sure where it was going but then became hooked ; not a 5star read for me as towards the end too much angst and if I hadn’t been laid by the pool reading it I’d have shouted “Get on with it !”

I do not read romantic books usually but Death of Vivek Oji was a 5-star read for me so I was keen to read this novel. The author has a way of developing characters and getting the reader to invest in them. This is a book about grief, losing loved ones, and what holds you back when life gives you second chances. This is a story of guilt, parenthood, and love which is complicated. The writing is exquisite and I binged it in one seating. How does an author write different genres equally well? The story has more to it than the initial first few chapters. I recommend readers keep reading to discover the uniqueness of this story.

This is pretty much a case of »it’s not you, it’s me«.
I’m sure »You Made A Fool of Death With Your Beauty« is an amazing book when it finds the right audience but that was unfortunately not me.
This is marketed as a summer romance and that was what I was expecting and in my opinion it wasn’t really that. At least when you’re a romance reader this didn’t feel like your typical romance - which is great but also… not so great.
My main problem was the pacing I think and that I couldn’t really gather what the book is about from the synopsis. All I knew was that Feyi was struggling with some baggage from the past, that she spends the summer on an island and falls in love with a man she can’t have. So, we have a bit of a forbidden romance situation here. What I didn’t knew was that Feyi would first sleep with one guy, then more or less dates his friend, who invites her to the island - where she then meets his father and is instantly attracted to him and he to her.
So, we have an age gap romance as well as falling in love with your nearly boyfriends dad. Great. Not something I would have picked up, to be honest.
The thing is, that I didn’t really knew who the love interest was going to be in the beginning. At first I though it would be a forbidden romance because of the friendship between the first two guys, especially because Feyi seemed to really like the second guy but then his father appeared after half of the book. Which means that the pacing was a bit weird, to be honest. I know that this book wasn’t just about the romance but also about Feyi struggling with grief and finding new love and I liked how the topics were discussed. However, as I said, the romance/attraction to the father was a huge part of the story and it felt weird that the whole plot revolving around that only began when we were already ~40% or so into the book.
Another thing I struggled with was the writing style. There were scenes that were written beautifully and I nearly cried once or twice but I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the direct speech. It was very colloquial and it just wasn’t for me. That’s definitely a personal preference, I just don’t like that in general in books. Direct speech is always such a tough thing to get exactly right for me, its weird if its too formal but I also personally don’t like it if it’s too colloquial.
In conclusion: would recommend if you think the topics are something you like to read. Wouldn’t recommend if you think you’ll feel the same as me. But I’m also pretty sure the book will find it’s audience and people who do love Feyi’s story, I already read some reviews that were 5 stars and I get why people love this book, it just wasn’t my taste.

This is the third adult novel by the Nigerian born multidisciplinary artist and write, whose extraodinary debut novel “Freshwater” was told from an Igbo spirituality worldview with multiple self/split narrators, and whose second, equally literary novel “The Death of Vivek Oji” explored similar ideas of gender fluidity, otherness, identities and prejudice within Nigerian society, in perhaps a more conventional/accessible way.

This novel is of a very different genre – to quote the author from Twitter, it “is a romance novel. It is not ‘literary’ whatever that means – it was meant to be a romance novel, it was written as a romance novel, and I love that it’s a romance novel. If you’re going in expecting it to be like my literary fiction work, please know that it’s not literary fiction. It is romance. If you hate romance novels but want to give it a try because I wrote it, wonderful! It’s still going to be a romance novel when you read it."

She also sets out the high weight of profanity in the novel and the sexual openness of the “queer Black girls” in it and warns “if you’re a pick me who loves respectability, you might be offended by these characters”

Which is a pretty good overview of the book which tells the story of an American (of Nigerian descent) Feyi Adekola a conceptual/installation artist who five years before the book lost her husband in a car crash (a subject she circles in her work where she paints with animal blood and has a hanging installation of wedding rings with her partners still bloodied ring among them).

Now for the first time since the accident, and encouraged by her roomate and one-time lover now best-friend Joy (a lesbian with, in Fey’s view, a rather doomed penchant for previously straight married women) she re-enters the dating scene with something of a bang, having explicitly described unprotected hook-up sex with Milan who she meets at a houseparty.

After a fling with Milan she moves on to his friend Nasir, although with the relationship moving much more slowly and not consummated when Nasir arranges for her work to be displayed at a prestigious art exhibition on his home Caribbean Island and for her to stay with him at the luxury house of his father there.

Arriving on the Island she finds that Nasir’s father is the 2 Michelin Star chef Alim Blake, and although Alim is some twenty years her elder, the two form a secret but deep connection founded not just on mutual attraction but on their shared hurt and loss (the bisexual Alim having lost Nasir’s mother in a swimming accident some years before). Alim and Fey’s burgeoning relationship plays out in the luxury and paradisical setting of Alim’s house, against the background events of the art exhibition and after-party, and against the open hostility of Nasir and his sister Lorraine who, already embarrassed at a previous affair their father had with a man, now see her as a gold-digging groupie usurping their mother’s place).

The Island part of the novel in particular is set in a world of extreme and rather unbelievable indulgence, privilege and luxury – for example here is what happens when Feyi arrives at Alim’s home “They parked under a steel-beamed trellis dripping with bougainvillea, and Feyi stepped out of the car. There was entirely too much to look at—her eyes could only snag on the details a few at a time: the soaring birds of paradise along the pathway, the albino peacock watching them from the grass, the side door inlaid with mother-of-pearl.” – accompanied by heavy name dropping of real life celebrity artists who actuallly appear in the book as side characters.

And it is easy to react negatively to this.

But in the author’s defense this is very much part of the genre and crucially here the author reserves the world of decadence, richness and art for black characters – for example featuring a host of black artists (previously unknown to me) such as Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, Moses Dumney, Katherine Agyemaa Agard and Charmaine Bee.

Overall I try to judge a book against two criteria – did it work for me personally as literary fiction and did it succeed on its own terms. The first would be probably a 2-3 star (albeit there is some excellent writing on trauma and grief such as my opening and closing quotes) but the latter is 5 stars, so my overall rating is a compromise.

This book was not at all what I was thinking when I saw the 'romance' tag. What I expected was a light, fun, tropical romance. What I got was an important and moving story of love and its place alongside grief. While I thought the themes and messages in this book were strong and well established, I can't say the same for the characters. I found them predictable and a little flat. The writing was beautiful, but I thought the dialogue was a little choppy and unrealistic.

The plot of this book was somehow both original and unoriginal, as the story of a grief-stricken young black lady is tied in with the well-established trope of forbidden love. Emezi has a very special way of writing inner conflict, and while I did enjoy this book it did not amaze me. I would definitely recommend this read, although it's not a favourite.

I am a huge of Akwaeke Emezi's work, so I was delighted to receive a copy of their new book, their first adult romance novel.

The depiction of grief was exceptional, it was handled sensitively and realistically and it did not overwhelm the book. The use of art as a tool to manage grief was very interesting and very well handled and it made me think about the things we turn to in our most desperate times (for me always books).

Emezi, as usual creates fantastic characters, they are at times frustrating, but it is only because they are so expertly written that they are able to create the range of emotions in a reader that they created in me.

There is a very strong sense of place, the descriptions were lush and detailed and they nailed me to feel as if I was inhabiting the island alongside the various characters.

I am not a big romance reader, but I really enjoyed this, and I particularly enjoyed not knowing what decisions Feyi would make.

I loved this book, Akwaeke Emezi is fast becoming one of my favourite authors, not least because of their versatility and the ability to straddle various genres so effectively.

I would thoroughly recommend this book, I have already ordered the fantastic independent bookshop edition, which is almost a beautiful as the writing in the book..

Thank you to the author, Faber and Faber Ltd and NetGalley for a ARC in return for a honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this from start to finish, but more so the beginning of the book. I loved Feyi and Joy's energy and relationship, so once Feyi went to the Island, I missed them being a pair! I must admit, I was not expecting Feyi to end up with who she did at the end of the book and was rooting for Nasir! I'm glad she was finally happy though and put herself first.

I enjoyed the dialect used for Feyi, particularly being Nigerian American, and the dialect for many other characters throughout the novel.

A pretty good read!

I absolutely loved this book. It showed Feyi trying to find a romantic connection whilst still experience guilt from her husbands death five years ago. Whenever I thought I knew what was happening, I was wrong.
I loved her own journey and refinding herself since Jonah, her husband, had died
I thought her friendship with Joy was very realistic and a great example of female friendships.
The ending was a little uncertain I thought but I think some people will like that

After reading and enjoying Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji, I was eagerly anticipating this new title from Akwake Emezi. However I found this book to be a disappointment on many levels. Admittedly I am not a fan of romance titles but was attracted to this when I saw it on Netgalley because of the cover and the fact that I felt in need of a light and enjoyable read. It was not at all what i expected . Used to the beautifully written language of her other works I was not expecting the different tone and style which I found to be crude and overly rooted in US black vernacular and cultural references which a lot of readers will not be familiar with.

The book begins with an explicit sex scene which I (though no prude by any stretch of the imagination)found extremely offputting and extremely crude. There is inconsistency in the detailing - for example the main character in the opening scene has pink braids - and much is made of them -which become turquoise with no mention being made of her changing her hair or varying her style in any way..It distastefully intersperses sex scenes with allusion to the accident in which her husband dies and this combined with the constant sexual references and overspecific detail made it impossible to sustain any interest in the plot. I believe from researching other reviews that the book becomes a tale of grief and an romance with an unexpected love interest but admit as a reader I became that bored by the constant sex and the obnoxious main character and her equally unappealing friend that I just didn't care what happened to her and DNF this title.

I'm sorry to say this title was not for me and after discovering the authors history of targetting reviewers who give less than positive reviews mean that I will not be picking up her work again.However if you are looking for a straight talking explicit bisexual romance and you are in the mood for picking up a title that is not conventional in the genre then this might be for you.

I think my major problem with the romance genre is that you have to accept the idea that true love is the thing we should all be striving for. A character in a romance can be excused of terrible and selfish behaviour because they did so in the name of true love. The main character here is such a self-involved and selfish person but we're meant to accept it because she falls in love. I don't really get on with this idea. I'm not the kind of person who believes that a reader has to like a protagonist but I do believe that awful behaviour needs to be criticised. Here, Feyi never really thinks about anything but her own desire yet we are meant to celebrate her decision.

Now, I get that Feyi is clearly suffering from mental health issues due to the death of her husband and we're meant to feel sympathy for her. Yet, I still don't think that excuses a lot of her behaviour. I'm all for the "just do you" attitude but this narrative just didn't work for me. It doesn't help that the characters touch on the fact that her behaviour is wrong but dismiss it instantly. Love is the highest power so why worry about ethics? It's also the kind of love that allows you to fall in love at first sight. There's a distinct lack of chemistry within this book. At least, it doesn't build gradually enough for me. It's as if the book is too keen to get to the interesting stuff that it skips most of the development.

It's not as if there isn't anything to enjoy about the novel though. I think the writing is really lovely in places and it uses some interesting sensory language. I enjoyed the first part much more than the second. Once Feyi leaves New York, I started to switch off. I guess I was expecting a few ideas to be pushed further and given more attention. There are plenty of themes that are mentioned and then forgotten about. Like Feyi's random confession that she thought she was in love with her best female friend. That's just dropped in and instantly pushed aside in favour of a fairly standard romance plot.

If you like your romance novels to be direct and to the point then I can see this being appealing. It has the type of dialogue that walks the line between romantic and cringe depending on where you sit. For me, it was all a bit much and made the second half of the novel a little tedious. It also brought about an abrupt and slightly nonsensical character change to justify everything that had happened. I guess this isn't the way that I would have explored Feyi's story but that doesn't mean this is a terrible book. I enjoyed most of it and think the writing was mostly very good.

First of all this book felt unapologetically black. From the language used to Kehinde Wiley references and the Moses Sumney name drop, it was so refreshing and comforting.

It was slow to start but then at the 25% everything went left. And the story blossomed into something so tender and raw. The characters were messy and lived in that mess, owning their truths.

I don’t have enough words for how this made me feel.

But let’s be clear, this is NOT a typical romance so expect heavy topics and situations.

4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

An intriguing romance novel, which is so much more than 'just' a romance: the threads of grief, of uncertainty in your place in the world after loss, of Blackness, of female friendship, of queerness, of female sexuality as well as desire, of selfishness and selflessness - are so interwoven throughout the novel, that the messy tangle feels just like life on a page. For anyone who has experienced grief, or seen a loved one go through grief, you will know that while the pain is raw it's often easier to ignore behaviour that might otherwise have caused concern.... regardless, the actions of the main characters in the book may not be for everyone and the storyline may overshadow some finer parts of the novel, such as Emezi's writing - as with all of their books, this is an immersive read. Their use of language is absolutely stunning in places; the depictions of the island seem so real you could almost feel the sunlight on your face, standing alongside Feyi. I enjoyed the novel, and will recommend it - but it has raised many discussion points for me, and I look forward to dissecting it with others who have read it!

I really enjoyed The Death of Vivek Oji. It was such a profound story told in an incredible way, so I had high expectations for You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with this one. There are some important themes explored in this book, but they seem to take a back seat to the romance stories going on, which felt a bit like a TV soap opera.

While I enjoyed The Death of Vivek Oji and Freshwater, unfortunately You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (great Florence + the Machine lyric btw) was not for me.

Thank you for my advance copy of this book. I had seen it pop up on Instagram a few times and was intrigued.

I found this book a bit slow to start, and I almost contemplated giving up. I’m so happy I didn’t, and on reflection I may just not have been in the right mood to start reading this. Around 25% it really picked up for me, and I was treated to a complete feast for the senses.

The author just has a beautiful way with their writing. Close your eyes, and you can perfectly visualise the setting they have laid out for us. The descriptions of food are delectable and you can smell the coconut, the basil, the mango and all of the other exotic scents on offer.

There are themes of grief, intertwined with finding love again. You have some classic romance tropes and plenty of spice. But this isn’t like your classic romance novel. This is so real. It’s messy, it’s sexy and so real.

I would have loved more, and I felt the book wrapped up quickly- leaving us wanting. I would go out of my way to read this authors work again.

A gorgeous and sexy novel with astonishing writing. Really wonderful book, can't wait to read everything they've ever written