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A review by divineauthor
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
“I feel like the world wanted to remind me that it loves me, and so it gave me him.” —Feyi Adekola
it’s interesting to me that this is marketed as a romance, rather than contemporary literary fiction. i know this is emezi’s fifth genre to write in and, in their own words, said that, ‘genre is a loose concept for me [. . .] it feels natural to write across them as well,’ because it doesn’t really feel like a romance. the love interest doesn’t appear until a quarter of the way through and it’s anything but conventional. not that romance has to be conventional, but this story—feyi’s story—feels more focused on her grief than anything. she gets into messy relationships because of it, she self-destructs because of it, etc. this would work so so so well as contemp litfic. the prose lends itself to that particular genre, the deep complexities of feyi’s grief and how it shapes her every relationship, and so on. yeah, i don’t know. this book really felt like something i should’ve enjoyed more fully but didn’t.
well, to be fair, i hate instalove. so. godspeed!
it’s interesting to me that this is marketed as a romance, rather than contemporary literary fiction. i know this is emezi’s fifth genre to write in and, in their own words, said that, ‘genre is a loose concept for me [. . .] it feels natural to write across them as well,’ because it doesn’t really feel like a romance. the love interest doesn’t appear until a quarter of the way through and it’s anything but conventional. not that romance has to be conventional, but this story—feyi’s story—feels more focused on her grief than anything. she gets into messy relationships because of it, she self-destructs because of it, etc. this would work so so so well as contemp litfic. the prose lends itself to that particular genre, the deep complexities of feyi’s grief and how it shapes her every relationship, and so on. yeah, i don’t know. this book really felt like something i should’ve enjoyed more fully but didn’t.
well, to be fair, i hate instalove. so. godspeed!