The Sweetest Charade by Jadesola James: A Book Review
Romance novels by Black authors are my proud pleasure; I hold ZERO guilt around reading these books. I love the manner in which authors weave these stories that illustrate the complex emotion of love, especially when the love is accidental. It just sneaks up on you.
The Sweetest Charade by Jadeola James is one of the books I picked up on my Half Price Books haul. This book explores an unlikely coupling of a professor and an influencer, bringing us into the modern day fun of social media. While their romance doesn't start off real, it grows into something, which is one of my favorite tropes to explore in Black literature.
In addition to romance, the book explores a bit of hardship,
"A few years ago the sight of that pile of envelopes made her sick to her stomach. Now she had the means to chip away at it, just a little at a time. When she was tired and didn't want to record it, or didn't feel like going to a party, or had no desire to open one of the cardboard boxes that arrived with items for her to review, she looked at how many envelopes there were still in the obligations pile, and it put things right back in perspective."
Our protagonist, Delysia Daniels, is a beautiful young lady who dropped out of medical school in order to foot the bill for her family expenses. Though this hadn't been her intention, she has found quite a bit of success in this lifestyle.
In entering her home, we see that the influencer lifestyle is only a piece of her; she has backdrops that hide the most authentic parts of her, a concept that is becoming far easier to identify with in this day and age. Neither she nor the professor truly identify with the lifestyle, however they benefit in more ways than one as the story flows onward.
The initial conflict of The Sweetest Charade is a suggestive photo that tags Professor Abbot-Hill and opens his world for everyone to gawk at. Having very little knowledge about social media, the poor professor is shocked that he is now the center of attention and connected to a woman he would never have known existed, if not for modern day technology, though some may argue that technology is one of the antagonists of this story.
I highly suggest you grab yourself a copy of this fun little story. Written in 2021, it has not gotten the attention that it deserves. Will you celebrate this book with me by grabbing a copy?
Have you read this book? Share your thoughts!
Looking to dive into some other romance novels by Black authors? I have more to share here and an entire curated list in the link below!
Happy reading!!