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The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published February 12, 2025
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published February 12, 2025
ISSN: 1930-0018
Contents
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Literary Fiction
Historical Fiction
Short Stories
Essays
Thrillers
Romance
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Biography/Memoir
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Science, Health and the Environment
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Thrillers
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
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In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Days in June, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art, and magic of Harlem.
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.
Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn't one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she's the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they're long-stemmed roses, she's a dandelion: an adorable bloom that's actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.
When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.
One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.
Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.
Excerpt from A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
When Wilde Things held its grand opening on the first, it was an instant hit. Sure, some of it was due to the festive season. But at a time when flower trends were minimalist, Ricki's shop was an over-the-top winter wonderland! Think Christmas cactus and candy-cane-striped amaryllis; Kwanzaa bouquets with tropical red, black, and green blooms; and Hanukkah wreaths mixing blue poppies with white orchids.
By New Year's Day, she'd earned double her projection. And by the end of January, she'd lost every cent.
People just ... stopped coming. Ricki couldn't figure it out. In December, she could barely keep blooms in stock, the orders were so fast and furious. What did she do wrong?
"I know what you did wrong," offered Tuesday one evening after closing. Foot traffic had been brutally slow that day. Now she and Ricki were stirring bowls of recycled, plantable paper infused with wildflower seeds. Ricki wanted to package the home-made paper into chic note card sets, offering them as a last-minute purchase at the register. If she ever had any more sales.
"Those weekly January promotions," continued Tuesday. "They were too esoteric to resonate with consumers."
Ali, who was crouched in a corner, repairing an exposed nail, stopped working long enough to look up "esoteric" and "resonate" on his phone. No one was more surprised than Ricki that they were still dating. It was a thrice-weekly hookup thing, but his sweet, uncomplicated presence was calming.
"But the themes were so punny!" exclaimed Ricki, fighting back tears. "Seize the Daisy? Hibiscus and Gravy? No one even tried my homemade gift-with-purchase biscuits."
"I love your biscuits." Ali made grabby hands at Ricki, grin-ning at his euphemism. And then he added, "But in keeping with my radical honesty practice, I should say your actual biscuits were mad dry. Did you use Crisco?"
Ricki stopped stirring the paper, her shoulders slumped in misery. "I offended you!" Ali hopped up and slipped an arm around
Ricki's waist. "I can't believe I said something so dumb."
"No?" Tuesday cocked a brow. "Ten minutes ago, you asked me if I paid Illuminati fees in blood."
"And you didn't answer."
"Please stop watching hoax YouTube, Ali. I beg of you. Read a book."
"Only sheep value books. A book is just a collection of some random individual's thoughts ..."
"But you are some random individual."
"And I vibe off my own thoughts. My own interior work. My
own journey towards living with energetic intention."
Tuesday groaned. "Ricki, your man's Jada Pinkett Smith-ing again."
Ricki was too lost in rising worry over Wilde Things to even register this exchange. She needed to get outside, touch some grass. Back at home, when life got too hectic, escaping to the for-est behind her parents' house gave her instant serenity. That was what she needed.
"Hey, is there a garden nearby? Something small, maybe? I need some nature."
Born in Harlem, Tuesday knew its contours by heart. "There's a cute community garden over on 145th."
"But it's dark out," protested Ali. "I'll go with you for protection."
Ricki smiled. "In this 'hood? Protection from who, ad execs and finance bros?"
Handing her spoon to Ricki, Tuesday said, "They're the scariest thugs of all."
* * *
It was chilly, but in a fresh, invigorating way. And Ricki was weatherproofed in her earmuffs and teddy coat. She walked ten blocks. At the entrance was an ornate wooden sign painted in childlike rainbow-colored letters: 145th street community garden.
Beyond the ornamental gate, there were perennial flowers, herbs, berries, fruit trees, and a small goldfish pond. Ricki fol-lowed a brick walking path through the foliage, to the center of the garden. She knelt down, taking a few deep, restorative breaths. Closing her eyes, she dug her fingers into the earth, the heart of everything. And it worked the way it always did.
You got this, she thought, feeling calmer. Get gritty. Get scrappy. But don't give up.
As she perched on the ground, something on a ...
Adapted Excerpt from A LOVE SONG FOR RICKI WILDE by Tia Williams. Copyright © 2024 by Tia Williams. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Grand Central Publishing. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
Ricki Wilde, heiress to a national funeral home chain, has never fit in with her picture perfect family. Her parents and three sisters are high achievers who blend effortlessly into the social scene of Atlanta's posh Buckhead neighborhood, while Ricki is a thrift store-loving aspiring florist with a popular plant-themed Instagram account and a history of public gaffes. So when a wealthy widow Ricki meets at work offers her the chance to start her own flower shop in the ground floor space of a Harlem brownstone, she leaps at the offer. But a new career isn't the only thing Ricki finds in Harlem. She also meets a mysterious, devastatingly handsome stranger with a secret that will change her life.
This is a dual timeline book that tells Ricki's story alongside flashbacks to the Harlem Renaissance (see Beyond the Book) a century ago, where a musician is trying to make a name for himself. Though the storylines at first feel incongruous, we discover that they are more closely linked than it seemed. The scenes set in the 1920s are lushly described, with vivid details of luxurious outfits and raucous bars. This time of growing Black wealth and a buzzing cultural scene is juxtaposed with the rapidly gentrifying Harlem Ricki lives in, where the historic brownstones are owned by white executives, and iconic cultural hubs are long gone. But Ricki wants to make sure Harlem's golden era is not forgotten. She lays beautiful floral arrangements at the former sites of renowned '20s bars and music venues, then posts photos to social media to remind her neighbors of the area's history. Her romanticism and love for her adoptive home prove to be infectious.
But, of course, the neighborhood isn't all Ricki falls in love with. She finds her eventual love interest, Ezra, to be rude and off-putting at first. Meanwhile, he's desperately pushing her away because of a secret that he fears will harm her. And yet they keep crossing paths even when they're trying to avoid one another, as if magnetically drawn together. The book suggests that they were fated to find each other, and, in fact, light supernatural elements are at play. The magic is based on voodoo, and this form of spirituality is depicted in a richly nuanced way. We see characters use voodoo practices for good as well as evil, and are given information about the religion's roots and the ways racism has perhaps cast it in a negative light.
Readers of Tia Williams' earlier Seven Days in June will be delighted by a cameo from that novel's protagonist, who gives a lecture on voodoo that Ricki attends. Williams' fans can only hope that this might mark the beginning of an overlapping literary universe in the style of Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Family expectations are a big theme throughout this book. Ricki fails to meet her parents' expectations from birth. They were anticipating a boy, hence her full first name is Richard, after her father. She doesn't fit in with her three perfectly poised sisters, all of whom work in the family business alongside their cookie-cutter husbands. We get hints that their constant put-downs may signal envy of Ricki's bravery in charting her own path. In a tragically humorous scene, we learn that one sister gets her veneers refreshed every five years because she's fascinated by teeth and once dreamed of becoming a dentist.
Though distant from her biological family, Ricki embraces a found family in Harlem. One of its most delightful members is Della, her eccentric nonagenarian landlord, who is childless after experiencing several miscarriages in her younger years, and bonds with Ricki to the point that she begins introducing her as her granddaughter. Della is on her own journey of self-discovery. Widowed after decades of marriage to the love of her life, she makes a bucket list with zeal, including items like dyeing her hair pink, dating a woman (preferably a younger one), and taking a helicopter ride. Yet despite Della's passion for life, she does not fear death. She speaks to her dead husband each night in a sort of prayer, and she feels comforted by dreams of loved ones who've passed on. She acts as a voice of wisdom and perspective for Ricki.
While this book is profoundly emotionally moving, it's also laugh-out-loud funny, with quippy banter straight out of Gilmore Girls. It's rom-com perfection, and it might just have you planning a trip to Harlem.
Reviewed by Jillian Bell
Emily Giffin, New York Times bestselling author of Meant to Be
Kennedy Ryan, bestselling author of Before I Let Go
Leah Johnson, bestselling author of You Should See Me in a Crown
.jpg "Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction by Aaron Douglas")
Tia Williams' novel A Love Song for Ricki Wilde contains flashbacks to the Harlem Renaissance, considered a golden age for Black culture and art in the United States. This movement, centered in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood, took place between the 1910s and 1930s.
During the period known as the Great Migration, when large numbers of Black families from the American South began to move north, many landed in Harlem. The neighborhood became a cultural destination as nightclubs and underground speakeasies opened at a time when jazz music was beginning to flourish. Greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington regularly performed in Harlem, often accompanied by large stage shows. Integrated bars like The Savoy featured dancing late into the night. It was in bars like these that iconic 1920s dance fads, such as the Charleston and tap dancing, began to gain popularity.
The first Broadway musical to be written and produced by Black people, Shuffle Along, debuted in 1921 and launched the careers of notable performers, including Josephine Baker and Adelaide Hall. It broke new ground by featuring a serious Black love story that wasn't played for comedic effect. Following its success, more Black-produced musicals appeared on Broadway.
Visual art by Black American artists took off like never before, with some drawing inspiration from African art traditions. Perhaps the most well-known of these is Aaron Douglas, who trained as a landscape painter before finding the unique approach he would be remembered for. His highly stylized silhouettes of Black subjects were informed by both the contemporary art deco movement and the flat aesthetic of ancient Egyptian art.
The Black literary scene also experienced massive growth, with writers like Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes gaining acclaim. Hughes was a developer of jazz poetry, a literary style that echoes the rhythms and repetition of jazz music. He also wrote plays, short stories, and non-fiction, and was a tireless champion for the Black working class. The novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston introduced books that depicted the lived experiences of Black people in the South in a way no white author could. Work by Black writers began to be picked up by mainstream publications like Harper's.
The Harlem Renaissance was closely tied to the beginnings of the civil rights movement, as popular Black writers and public intellectuals began to speak of Black pride, and magazines published by the NAACP and the National Urban League featured celebrated Black literary voices.
A number of factors played into the winding down of the era, including the 1929 stock market crash that began the Great Depression, as well as the end of prohibition in 1933, which made speakeasies less of a draw.
While the Harlem Renaissance took place during a deeply racist time, it permanently cracked open the doors of Broadway and major publishing houses to Black artists, and paved the way for the civil rights movement. Work from the period, like Louis Armstrong's music and Langston Hughes's poetry, continues to make an impact today.
Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction by Aaron Douglas, 1934
From The New York Public Library
Filed under People, Eras & Events
By Jillian Bell
The triumphant story of how an all-Black Broadway cast and crew changed musical theatre—and the world—forever.
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