Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

243 reviews

sophiesmallhands's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I’d heard great things about Akwaeke Emezi’s writing but mainly about their YA novels Pet and the companion novella Bitter. Since I downloaded Libby *angel choir noise* I was disappointed to not find the audiobook version of Pet on there but You Made a Fool came up instead. After briefly scanning the blurb, I decided to jump in. And oh, what a gloriously realised world Akwaeke has made.

The rub is that our artist MC, Feyi, is dipping her toes back into the dating scene after the death of her husband five years prior with the help of Joy, her chaotic, lesbian friend. After a brief but ends-as-friends- situationship with a man called Milan, Feyi begins a let’s-be-friends-first relationship with Nasir, one of Milan’s friends. Nasir, who comes from a VERY well-connected family, presents Feyi an opportunity to be a part of an exhibition of Black Diaspora artists. Fast-forward to Nasir taking Feyi to his gorgeous tropical family home (I’m not a visual reader, but I could SEE this house from Akwaeke’s descriptions!!) and to also meet Nasir’s equal parts rich and reclusive celebrity chef.

It sounds like the start to a very light-hearted tropical holiday romance, right? WRONG.

Nasir’s father, Alim, is like Feyi – a lonely widower – and Feyi experiences an immediate attraction to Alim that she tries to stifle and explain away as it existing because Alim is “unattainable” and, while she is technically not in a romantic relationship with Nasir, would be frowned upon.

I won’t spoil too much, but the story touches very deeply into the ways grief can change your soul and provide a bond between people – both romantic and platonic. The building relationship between Alim and Feyi (who are both bisexual!) is never presented as a titillating trope, but rather as two deeply injured humans navigating their trauma and grief and deciding to choose love as a way to move through life. There’s so much narrative freedom to Feyi – the story focuses so much Feyi allowing herself to be who she needs to be and without compromising her ideals or happiness.

The story gets quite intense around the time Alim’s children find out about this burgeoning romance (I had to turn my audio off at one point on the way home from work because it was stressful to listen to at that time), and the story could easily fall apart with various miscommunications but instead Akwaeke carries us safely to the story’s end. I could wax poetic about this book, but also! Joy being an incredible friend throughout this story? Feyi and Alim both being adults who actively go to therapy? All amazing to see in a contemporary romance novel.

Content Warnings

binevolentbookworm's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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lilawsahar's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Do not real this book as a palate cleanser. This book is heavy, messy, and beautiful.

I can’t believe Feyi fell in love with her “it’s complicated” friend’s dad. That’s wild. I can see how they were a perfect fit though. They both had experience with extreme grief and are comforted with not being alone in it. We knew that the relationship with Nasir was going no where. He was sleeping with other women. She wasn’t comfortable sleeping with him. She called off them being intimate when he took her to the islands. It seemed like their relationship was ending then he says he loves her!!! He was hella delulu. I’m not saying what she did was right. But love isn’t logical. You can’t help who you fall for. I’m glad that Alim and Feyi found each other. They handled the situation with as much grace as they could. Never once was I mad at their decisions and conversations (which some could argue made the book boring but I like when the characters are logical and sensitive to others). Also I love how the author uses food to enhance the sexual tension. Great read.

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sarahmcg's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful lighthearted tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

How did I read this book and end up cheering for the messy af FMC and the dad???

I guess for as much as I love a trope-filled rom-com, I can also really appreciate a complicated lit-fic love story, romance but also an exploration of grief, friendship, and art/creativity.

Read this if you love MESS, taboo/forbidden/age gap romance, finding love after loss, complicated FMC.

The writing was very beautiful; poetic, with gorgeous descriptions of the tropical island mountain home, art, music, and food. This was my first read by Emezi and it won’t be my last.

The only critique I have is I totally understood the emotional connection that Feyi and Alim formed, but for some reason I still had a little bit of difficulty with the believability of their chemistry (not sure if it was maybe the age gap or something else?) - but overall I’d give 4.5⭐️

I want a book about Joy!!!

CW/TW: discussions of loss of spouse (in past but discussed throughout - 1) car accident 2) drowning), sexual content, descriptions of blood, domestic incident.

Content Warnings

rubi_blue6's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I'm not a big romance novel kind of person; especially when it's explicitly the theme

I loved Feyi, and her grief journey; it seems like

art developed through pain

is a major theme of her work, as with 'Bitter' (a wonderful sequel to 'Pet') which resonates with me as an artist

I wish we'd been able to focus a bit more on her, and lean less into the romanticiation of her situation; I'd argue I'd like to have seen her take her own wisdom and work on how she can find love in so, so many places

That said, the sexual tension was golden - i can't fault that

As always, Emezi is a phenomenal author and I will endever to read anything they write, regardless of whether it's a genre I generally ride with

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tamaramo's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Content Warnings

thekrujue's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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dna53's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

iftheshoef1tz's review against another edition

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challenging emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I was excited to read this book because it was billed as “messy characters being messy” and I saw two reviews that said that every character in the book was awful. I do think they were messy, as promised, but I don’t think they were as awful as I was expecting. I don’t agree with Feyi and Alim’s choices, but I think I understand why they were made. Out of a different type of grief, I did some shady things when I was younger. Two people I know from university were in separate relationships (one of them was engaged) before they met each other, then they left their current partners for each other. It caused huge scandal, but they had apparently found what they were missing in their other relationships, and they’re still together, ten years and four kids later. I think this kind of thing can and does happen.

My biggest beef with this book is that the set-up felt like it took forever (although I just checked the book and it’s not that many pages) and then Feyi and Alim fall for each other super fast. I am always a fan of a slow(er) burn, so maybe that’s my issue here, but I would have thought that Alim, at least, as Nasir’s father, would have really hit the brakes on anything for longer than he did. So much of the end was also not what I was expecting? A lot of it felt very pat and trite (

Milan calling randomly? For the first time, like…ever?

) and I really didn’t care for the way

Nasir and Feyi build this rapprochement by the end

, but it had only been, like…a couple weeks or something.

There was a lot of beautiful writing in this book though, as well as thoughtful prose on grief and mourning. Just didn’t quite stick the landing for me.

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scannon38's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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