It’s so heartening to watch the romance genre become more and more diverse… and it’s even better when you have an entertaining author like Jasmine Guillory writing a thoroughly enjoyable contemporary romance series. Guillory is a Black woman author writing about Black women falling in love. Her characters are terrific and the love stories are sincere and, seriously, go find a Jasmine Guillory romance and read it right now. She’s even got a series of three books, so if you fall in love with the first one, there is much more pleasure in store for you!
The series takes place in various California cities, and the first book is called The Wedding Date, and I love the meet-cute scene. I’m not going to tell you what it is because a meet-cute has to be fresh, you know? Anyway, what happens is that Alexa agrees to go on a date with Drew, whom she has just met. And what’s the date? Drew’s ex-girlfriend’s wedding! What could go wrong? And what could go very, very right…??
The second book is called The Proposal, and in the opening of the story, which takes place in a crowded stadium, we meet Nik, who is rescued from a humiliating public scene by Angela and her brother Carlos, who is buddies with Drew from Book One. Nik is, naturally, honor-bound to get in touch with Carlos later to thank him and his sister. And things heat up from there. There’s a lot of female empowerment in this book, right alongside of the love story, yes, please, more of that!
The romance continues to blossom for this friend group in The Wedding Party, where Maddie and Theo are best friends with Alexa, who’s getting married to Drew (see the first book). The great thing is that they are both going to be in the wedding party; the not-so-great thing is that they loathe one another. If enemies-to-lovers is your trope, you will adore this love story. Odd detail: the characters eat a lot of pizza in this book. A lot of pizza. Like, you really notice it. Maybe that means it’s a perfect read to accompany your favorite local pizza pie!
And there’s another one that just came out, called Royal Holiday, which I haven’t read yet because I have to wait for my library copy to come. It’s so hard to be patient.
Bonus: if you want to read a terrific essay by Jasmine Guillory about why she loves to write about Black heroines, find that essay here.
All of Guillory’s books are fun, sexy, and mostly just joyful. If you love contemporary romance, you will be feeling all warm and fuzzy after reading these. Guaranteed!
