Black Joy: Adult Fiction

The Matchmakers team salutes the Juneteenth holiday with a blog post featuring fiction for adults, written by Black authors. The characters in these novels do experience conflict (where would the plot be without it?), AND, just as importantly, the themes emphasize feelings of joy, friendship, belonging, and connection. The novels are rich, character-driven stories. Let’s dive in!

Jasmine Guillory’s contemporary romance, The Wedding Party, is the third book in the Wedding Date series and focuses on two characters, Maddie and Theo. These two adults in their mid-twenties are in the same friend group from the other two novels; specifically, they are both close with Alexa, who is engaged to be married to Drew. They started off their relationship with an extremely rocky first conversation and handled that by avoiding one another ever afterward. After a night out, Maddie drives Theo home, and he pushes her a little too far when he challenges her ability to dance as well as he can. Maddie can’t let this stand and insists upon a demo, with both of them alone in Theo’s apartment. When they are alone, the sparks fly… and the romantic tension comes from neither of them wanting to admit to their friends that they have something secret going on. Maddie and Theo are both passionate about their work and friendships. Watching them form a new relationship is tremendous fun.

The Secret Women, by Sheila Williams, centers on three middle-aged Black women who meet at a yoga class. When they connect over their failure to take yoga seriously enough, they go out together after class. They form an unexpected affinity when they learn that they each have a mother who recently passed away. Elise, DeeDee, and Carmen make a pact to help one another go through their mothers’ belongings, deciding what to keep and what to give away. All three of them learn things about their mothers they never suspected, and grow to see their mothers as strong women with lives of their own outside of motherhood. And of course going through their mothers’ things is not the only part of their lives they are navigating; they have children and spouses and other relationships that need their attention as well. I enjoyed the family scenes in this, and also the connection of a deepening friendship.

Black Cake, by Charlaine Wilkerson, is a debut novel and a multigenerational story that takes place in Jamaica, the UK, and the US, featuring a multifaceted Black family with roots in the Caribbean. The past is full of mysterious disappearances, suspicions of murder, and the ambitions of two young women who want a better future for themselves. The historical timeline describes Bunny and Covey, who are best friends and competitive swimmers, not only at school but free swimming in the ocean from the beaches on their island home. The present concerns two siblings who grew up in Southern California, Byron and Benny. They learn unsuspected secrets about their family history after both of their parents have passed on, and must come to terms with what they’ve learned and regain the close relationship they had as children. I really enjoyed the descriptions of setting, and the emotional beats when the narrator describes what it means to be a Black person in the UK and the US. The characters were engaging and I always wanted to find out what would happen next.