What is your opinion?
The First Spark ( Fracture Souls)
"Amazing book! 10/10! It started off so good! Very interesting and eye catching, the author did an amazing job! I love the characters and the book cover! I will definitely read again! "
A trip straight to New Orleans
"Review I started reading without knowing quite what to expect and, damn, I was hooked right away. The description of New Orleans' heavy, humid air turns the city into a living character full of energy. Following Jonquel and Stacey into this dense universe creates an immediate curiosity. It's a stylish read with a mystical vibe that keeps you hooked from start to finish. If you like immersive stories, go for it."
I WASN'T READY! WHEW!
"Listen, I don't just hand out five stars. I need you to understand that before I say anything else. I have read enough books to know when something is special and when something is just decent with a pretty cover. This is special. This is the kind of book that has you in your feelings at 2 AM when you should have been asleep three hours ago. Let me tell you about Jonquel first. Because she is everything. She is not the helpless girl waiting to be saved. She is not the good girl who loses herself over a man. She is a girl who was four years old when she made the split-second decision to push her baby sister toward the edge of a bathtub so she would take less of the burn. She gave up her own skin to protect someone she loved. That was the first true thing she ever knew about herself, and it defines everything about who she is. She fights. She protects herself. She cries and gets back up. She is guarded in the way that only girls who have been through something real are guarded, not as a personality trait but as a survival skill. I knew her before I finished the first chapter. A lot of us are going to know her. And Stacey. Lord. This man should not make sense as a love interest and yet here we are. He is out here moving weight in the streets of Huntsville Alabama with military precision at seventeen years old and somehow this author makes you understand every single choice he made to get there without excusing a single one of them. He is not soft. He is not pretending to be something he isn't. He sees Jonquel, really sees her, scars and walls and all, and he doesn't flinch. Not once. I LOVE the scene where he finds her burn scars and just quietly presses his lips to them without making it into a whole thing. Whew! I had to put the book down. I needed a minute. The soul bond between these two is not your typical romance trope. This author builds it slow and patient the way it deserves to be built, from a feeling in a hallway years ago to shared dreams to real time visions that hit both of them like physical blows. By the time the supernatural element is fully in your face you've already been feeling it for chapters without realizing it. That's not luck. That's skill. The secondary characters are not props. Nyla is the heart of this entire story and every single scene she's in reminds you why. Selah is complicated in the way real people are complicated, she will make you want to scream and then she will show up for her sister in a moment that makes you understand exactly why she is the way she is. Monae is a real best friend, not a sidekick. She has her own wound and her own dignity and her own story running underneath everything. And the setting is everything. 2005 Huntsville Alabama feels so specific and so real that I could smell it. The gospel station playing low in the car. The Black Planet drama. The vegan breakfast these girls are sneaking away from every chance they get. The faded eagle airbrushed on the back of a blue Suburban that means something to this family that you don't fully understand until it matters. These details don't feel researched. They feel remembered. Because they are. The author is right because this is not an urban romance. I need people to stop putting that label on books like this because it flattens everything that makes it extraordinary. This is a fated love story set against an urban backdrop. This is two souls who have been finding each other across lifetimes finally landing in the same city at the same time and neither of them having the language for what's happening to them. It's giving 365 Days meets Outlander meets Love and Basketball if that makes sense (its the best way I can explain it) except it's completely its own thing and honestly it might be better than all three. I have been waiting for a book like this, and I didn't even know I was waiting. If you are a Black woman who has ever felt like romance wasn't written for you, like the love stories that get celebrated were never about girls who look like us, sound like us, survived what we survived, this book was written for you specifically. Read it. Tell everybody you know to read it. I'm still reading it but so far (the platform is a little slow on updating only showing I read two chapters but I'm on the 11th chapter so hopefully it updates to reflect that), it's absolutely amazing! I'll be waiting on book two."
