you made a fool out of death with your beauty

(Emezi explains in an interview: “It’s a fictional Caribbean island, and honestly, I just never got around to creating a name for it.”) She jumps at the chance, even if it means traveling with Nasir, who has agreed to let Feyi set the course for the pace of their relationship. He is interested in her, but Feyi feels in her gut that something is not sparking: “They were just friends, with faintly innocent benefits, true, but just friends.” However, he suggests her name to fill in for someone who has dropped out of an art show of “Black Diaspora artists” on his home island. Feyi and Joy’s friendship is a delight in the novel, and their connection sometimes feels more interesting than the connections that Feyi has with the men throughout the book.Īfter Milan comes Nasir, a man who at first offended Feyi but who later manages to endear himself to her through his attentiveness to her art and history. Her best friend, Joy, cheers for Feyi finally connecting with a man and scolds her for not using a condom. Though Feyi has since become an artist, using visceral media such as blood in her work, she has not been able to connect romantically with anyone for five years-until the opening of this novel, when she and the first of her partners of the novel, Milan, have sex.

The novel begins with Feyi Adekola recovering from the trauma of losing her husband, Jonah, in a car accident. WITH THEIR SEVENTH book, Akwaeke Emezi adds another genre to their catalog: romance novel.

You made a fool out of death with your beauty