BookBrowse Reviews A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

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A free-spirited florist finds love in Harlem…but her new beau's secret may stand in their way.

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.

This review first ran in the March 20, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.