Author: Erica Ezeifedi

I was really feeling like comfort food (when am I not) and wanted something sweet. What’s more comforting than a s’more cookie!? The Salty Marshmallow (fitting name) tells us how to get these glorious things here.

Stella is brilliant with numbers — which has resulted in a pretty sizable salary — but clueless when it comes to romance. She thinks that, as someone with little to no life experience and Asperger’s, it just makes sense to hire a professional to teach her the ways of love. That’s where Michael Phan’s fine self comes into the picture. The escort will teach Stella everything from kissing to beyond missionary *wiggles eyebrows*, but their arrangement soon starts to feel comfortable in a new way.

Kris is looking for her big break through a reality show, while D’Vaughn is looking for an exaggerated way to finally come out to her mom. To achieve these goals, the two decide to be on the reality show Instant I Do, which means they’ll have to plan their wedding in six weeks, and convince their loved ones that they’re actually in love with each other. Then they’ll get the $100,000 grand prize and all the other goodies. Of course, the cash prize isn’t the only thing at stake by the time that six week marker comes around.

Michelle is a graphic designer who is doing pretty well for herself…career-wise. Romantically, it’s a little dry. And Gabriel, her ex boo thang from when she still lived in the Bronx, is also doing pretty well as a co-owner of a celebrity gym in L.A. When Michelle gets brought on for a marketing campaign for Gabriel’s gym, those old feelings resurface, but some things have to be worked out before the relationship can really flourish.

Jessica P. Pryde is a contributor at Book Riot! She is one of our resident Romance experts and, here she has edited a collection of essays that both uplift and examine romance through the Black gaze. Contributors include everyone from Jasmine Guillory to Beverly Jenkins, Kosoko Jackson, and more.

This was just released yesterday and is already on a few radars (it’s Jenna Bush Hager’s February book club pick, which I mention again below). It follows 25-year-old Maddie, a British Ghanian woman who is struggling to crawl out from under a mountain of stress. From caring for her father who is suffering from late stage Parkinson’s to dealing with a distant (but somehow still) overbearing mother and constant micro aggressions at work, she just really needs a break. She gets it in the form of her mother finally returning to London, and seizes the chance to start carving out a path for her independence. She accomplishes a few firsts — like living with roommates and engaging in some internet dating — but when something terrible happens, she has to pivot once more. This is a story that has all the seriousness of caring for a sick parent and work stress, but it centers a charming main character and has lots of humor and levity as well.

Lensinda is a young Black woman working in the Canadian town of Dunmore in the 1800s, around the time the Underground Railroad ended. Dunmore is a town that many formerly enslaved people fled to seeking freedom. When a slave hunter is shot dead by an older woman who came by way of the Underground Railroad — and who refuses to leave before authorities come — the crusading journalist Lensinda works for asks that she get the elderly lady’s testimony. But it won’t be for free. She’ll only talk if Lensinda agrees to trade a story for a story. Soon, readers are taken on a journey of Black American history, which shows just how much Black and Indigenous people’s stories have intersected throughout the North American landscape. The older lady also has a secret for Lensinda that could change everything for her.

As I mentioned a couple newsletters ago, I’ve really been into apocalyptic stories lately. I think watching and reading them a lot naturally makes you wonder how you’d fare in the same situation as the characters, so this book is right on time for me. Aretha falls in with a group of survivalists after having become an attorney and striving for partner, only to see that dream gradually slip away. When she meets coffee entrepreneur Aaron and moves in with him, she starts to wonder if her goals in life really make sense for her as she falls into an underground world of selling guns. Apart from having an interesting premise, this book also just has some great comedy moments, which makes sense since the author used to write for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Note: I just realized this is also a book club pick for Roxane Gay’s club!

This story of the differences between socioeconomic class in modern-day Nigeria centers around Eniola, a young boy who struggles with paying for tuition and other expenses after his father loses his job; and Wuraola, a girl from a well-off family who is practicing as a doctor. Though their life circumstances are very different at first glance, there is some overlap, like small instances of violence. Adébáyọ̀ writes in a way that is empathetic and lush, slowly building up characters and their surroundings in a way that is immersive.

Chambers’ chill world opens us up with nonbinary tea monk Sibling Dex, who doesn’t quite know what they want out of life. For now, they just try their best to serve tea in their traveling wagon and provide a listening ear to anyone who wanders in. One day during their travels, they meet a robot named Mosscap, who appears so long after humans agreed to free the robots that their existence was thought to be mythical. Now that robots are ready to mingle with humans again — on their own terms, of course — they want to know what humans need. This novella offers up the most comforting and cozy existential crisis.

In this manga, Seishuu Handa is a calligrapher who has achieved great acclaim for being so young. But when a veteran calligrapher judges his work to be uninspired, Seishuu’s hubris leads him to punching the old man in the face. He gets unofficially exiled to an island by his dad to cool off and think about things. As a lifelong city boy, Seishuu takes a little time to adjust to country life, but he’s got a rambunctious teacher in the form of adorable first-grader Naru. Being in the countryside, and with such kind neighbors, changes Seishuu in ways even his family don’t see coming. There’s also an anime out for this that is seriously so sweet and chill to watch.

Sentaro is a young man living in Japan who has baggage — he feels scarred by his criminal record, and he has dreams of becoming a writer, which may be getting squandered by his drinking habit. So what does he do? He just keeps on making dorayaki, a Japanese confection that is a pancake filled with sweet bean paste. He meets Tokue, an elderly woman, and she starts to teach him how to make the best ever sweet bean paste. But she has a past, too — one that has been wrought with ableism and disease.

These last two books are contemplative to me because reading them requires us to situate ourselves within the larger framework of the world (Immense World) and the universe (The Milky Way). In Immense World, Ed Yong expands how we perceive the world by explaining how animals perceive it. He brings in German biology and philosophy to show how truly vast our world is if you think of it in terms of perception. It’s really interesting learning about how other animals have not only more honed senses, but totally different senses that allow them a completely different reality compared to ours.

The Milky Way has seen it all — literally — and is ready to spill, honey. Astrophysicist and folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier writes an autobiography of the Milky Way in its own voice — covering everything we know of its existence, from its start as clouds of gas scattered through primordial plasma 13 billion years ago to when humans gave it a name.