You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty

Written By Linda Malek

You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

Reviewed by Linda
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Thank you to @faberbooks for sending this through - I finished this in one sitting!

To all the romance/contemporary fiction aficionados, this novel is for you - Emezi’s new book is as layered as it is messy whilst giving you ALL the summer vibes ✅

I think Emezi has done a great job in giving us the right level of drama needed without it becoming gimmicky and at the same time introducing the reader to a detailed depiction of people who live with grief whilst trying to love.

Our key character here is Feyi, a talented creative who, five long years after a tragic accident, is as ready as she will ever be to get frisky in NYC. By her side is her confidante, flatmate and best friend, Joy, whose character I actually loved so much and I appreciated the way Emezi conveyed their constant and unfaltering friendship in this novel.

As luck has it, Feyi meets Nasir who lets her into his world and gives her the opportunities to launch her career to another level, whilst smothering her with what he believes is sincere love and affection. Nasir is an island boy and most of this novel takes place in what I can only imagine to be the most beautiful tropical setting where palm trees, mountains and towering cliffs meet the bluest sea. Feyi accompanies Nasir on a trip of a lifetime and this is where the dynamic gets complicated as Feyi finds herself, but in doing so also finds someone else who is able to look past her outer beauty and finally understand her.

Despite some of her questionable choices in coming to this realisation, I was patient with Feyi and I hope you are too.

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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