Tag: Authors of Color

Review Books

TITLE: Play to Win by Jodie Slaughter

Ezi Chinny

Play to WinPlay to Win by Jodie Slaughter
Format: e-book (320 pages)
Published: July 11, 2023 by Griffin
Blurb:
Jodie Slaughter’s latest rom-com, Play to Win , is a sizzling romance where a winning lottery ticket is meant to be a new start but instead becomes a second chance at love.

Miriam Butler’s life is going nowhere in the slowest, most excruciating way possible. Stuck in the same barely-paying job she’s had since she was sixteen and spending every night sleeping in the spare twin bed in her mother’s house, her existence might be hilarious if it wasn’t so bleak. One trip to her favorite corner store upends everything when she finds herself the winner of a Mega Millions Lottery Jackpot. Unfortunately, not even life-altering roses come without their painful thorns. Hers just so happen to be in the form of an estranged husband who has the right to claim his share of her money.

It’s been eight years since Leo Vaughn has had a conversation with his wife. When she calls out of the blue, practically begging him to come back to Greenbelt, the last thing he expects her to tell him when he gets there is that she’s come into a whole heap of money. She offers him a life-changing proposition of his own. Take a lump sum, finally sign the divorce papers, and be done with her for good. Only, a forever without her is the last thing Leo wants. So he gives a proposition of his own. One that won’t cost her nearly as many millions, but will buy him the time to do the one thing he’s been hungry to do since he left — win her back.

RATING: 4 of 5 stars

This is a book for grown folks because I understood this relationship on a personal level.
Miriam and her mother have a relationship that remind me of my relationship with my mom. And the whole culture of buying lottery tickets religiously is something I’m way too familiar with.

I knew winning the lottery would change Miram’s life and she handled it all quite nicely. Miriam wasn’t divorced from her husband Leo, so that lottery winnings was community property. When Miriam approached Leo to get a divorce and offered him a payoff, the reader was taken on a journey of unfinished business.

I likes both Leo and Miriam, there was just so much emotion still there but because of the mistakes of youth, they lost sight of each other. I was rooting for them to deal with their personal insecurities and also communicate better with each other, so this book felt like following close friends navigating a very rough patch in their marriage.

I enjoyed the author’s story telling style and how she humanized all the characters so that the readers could relate to them. The story had a great pace and I never felt bored with these too. One thing that really stood out to me is how the marital discord affected all, not just the couple, but family and friends. Most specifically, Leo’s little nephew and niece.
What an engaging story despite the marital tension. I really enjoyed this story.

*Special Thanks to Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

View all my reviews

Review Books

Review: All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

Ezi Chinny

All the Sinners BleedAll the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was engrossing but a painful read for me. I’ve read Razorblade Tears so I was expecting a certain level of brutality but the crimes were more mentally jarring than violent. But don’t get it twisted, there was violence perpetrated against the vulnerable in this story.

I really appreciate SA Cosby’s willingness to tackle the uncomfortable social issues such as he black community’s distrust of law enforcement and the small town mentality pertaining to their history of racism.

Here, Sheriff Titus was elected the first black sheriff in Charon County, Virginia and it out him between the rock and the hard place. The badge created a chasm between the black community particularly the black church that supported him and the white community that already had some historical prejudices. When a former student (black young man) shots and murders a beloved school teacher (white man), racial tension boils over placing Sheriff Titus on an island with both sides suspecting him of protecting a murderer. Titus races to find a motive for the shooting before an all our race war erupts in Charon county.
The more he investigates, the more the sheriff discovers that there was more than meets the eye in the school shooting.

I couldn’t stop listening but I also wanted to stop listening. As a parent of students, accounts of school shootings make me so unbelievably uncomfortable. But clearly something triggered the young man and it was a doozy.

Really good writing, but I was glad when it was over.

View all my reviews

Audiobook, Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Review Books

Review: Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1) by Talia Hibbert

Ezi Chinny

Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1)Title: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Narrated By: Adjoa Andoh
Release Date: November 5th, 2019
Format: Audiobook (10 hrs and 17 mins)
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Chick Lit
Blurb: Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost – but not quite – dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?

Enjoy a drunken night out.

Ride a motorcycle.

Go camping.

Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.

Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.

And…do something bad.

But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

Redford “Red” Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than 10,000 Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.

But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior….

 

*Sighing* It is me, not the book. I just don’t seem to really connect the British Rom-Coms.The narrator did a great job, the plot of the story was a good one but the characters just didn’t engage me.

Chloe Brown is a website designer who was roughing it in life. Chloe has Fibromyalgia, a chronic and debilitating disease which kept her in constant pain. She needed pain killers daily life and the side effects were off putting to even her closest friends. Thanks to her health, her inner circle dwindled to just her two sisters and her grandma. After almost getting run over by a car, Chloe decides that she was done just barely surviving, she wants to really live!

Chloe moved out of her family’s home and into her own space, where she meets the super of her building, Redmond ‘Red’ Morgan. The two of them make quick but incorrect assessments of the other and so Chloe and Red think very lowly of the other.

In her bid to add some excitement to her life, Chloe makes a List of things she wants to and enlists Red’s help to achieve them. Then the reader got to learn more about both character’s journey thus far. Red was a lot more complex than he initially appeared and the reader was able to understand his reasons for mistrusting Chloe.

They seem to get on each other’s nerves but there was also a physical attraction that has been building and that chemistry allowed them to really bond with each other.

The author did a great job portraying a woman dealing with a chronic medical issue and a man escaping a painful past. What appeared like a cute romantic comedy actually dealt with some serious issues like mental abuse, body image and interracial romance. Talia Hibbert interwove these topics with humor so it didn’t feel so heavy or preachy.

The problem for me is that I knew things were supposed to be funny, but they didn’t tickle my funny bone. It’s like that for me with a lot of British authors. I just don’t connect with the humor and sometimes the writing even though I get the main point of their story. I did think this story was well done and I would recommend this book to all despite my indifference.

View all my reviews