I’m a writer, editor, and self-proclaimed shoe fanatic who loves finding opportunities to traipse through the streets of New York like Carrie in Sex and the City. With an undergrad degree in journalism from Howard University and a graduate degree from Georgetown University, I started a blog in 2007 about shoes, politics, and relationships that centered on my personal experiences with all three. Since then, I’ve contributed opinion articles to The Washington Post, Blavity, and more. My debut novel, The Shoe Diaries, was released in January 2022 by Harlequin Special Edition. The sequel, Bloom Where You’re Planted, will be released on May 24, 2022.
Reagan is a young Black woman who has been tirelessly checking off her list of “should’s” and building a picture-perfect life until she realizes she’s just like the hot pink stilettos that have gone unworn in her closet for years—beautiful to look at, but unfulfilled. When she takes on a “risk list,” she learns to trust herself again and finds love with an unexpected person. While the book focuses on one woman and her journey to trusting herself and love once again, it's her tight-knit circle of girlfriends who keep her grounded every step of the way and who show up during some of her most challenging and vulnerable moments throughout the book.
This story about 40-year-old Jenna Jones restarting her beauty journalism career and falling in love with a young videographer half her age has all the steaminess and will they/won’t they that you can want in a romance. But it’s also the unofficial sequel to Williams’ cult classic, Accidental Diva, and features dynamics friendships throughout. Whether it’s with Billie, the main character from Accidental Diva, and Elodie—her longstanding friends that keep her sane, or with the newfound friends she makes as she journeys through her reignited career, you’re bound to identify with these women and their friendship.
She's finally found her soulmate. But he's completely off-limits . . .
Former fashion editor Jenna Jones is forty, broke and starting over. Dumped by her fiance and fired from her job, Jenna begs her arch nemesis, Darcy Vale, for a role at her new online magazine. Surrounded by digital-savvy millennials who all speak fluent Twitter, it's soon clear that Jenna is in way over her head. And, to make matters worse, her ex has a new girlfriend.
But things get even messier, and a whole lot more interesting, when Jenna meets Eric Combs, the film graduate tasked with shooting…
After attending a New Year’s Eve wedding, three friends decide that they are going to either become engaged or get married by the same time next year. With a premise like that, you know it’s destined to include a plethora of dating and relationship shenanigans. Plus, with three main characters, it gives the reader a great and complex look into the lives of Black professional women. Throughout, the friendships kept me enthralled, and I found it to be a wonderful look into Black sisterhood.
In this runaway hit novel, three best friends come together for their sorority sister's glitzy wedding in Atlanta and make a vow to get married within one year. As they embark on their search to find their soul mates, they navigate the full-contact sport known as being a SSBFLA (successful, single, black, female in L.A.) and negotiate the shark-infested waters of making a name for themselves professionally in Hollywood.
Can Trista, the hyper-driven celebrity agent, find the time to schedule a meaningful romance? Will Amaya, the sexy starlet, convince the married hip hop-label exec she has been seeing to leave…
Kinsella is considered by many to be the queen of “chick lit,” and it all started with this first book in her massively successful series about the lovable, debt-ridden shopaholic, Rebecca Bloomwood. But while Becky is running around London trying to find creative and frankly, quite funny, ways to keep shopping and avoid paying off her debt, it’s her friendship with Suze that makes the book relatable. We can’t all rack up significant debt while still finding ways to buy more and more clothes, but many of us know what’s it like to have the goodhearted friend who only wants the best for us.
Meet Rebecca Bloomwood. She has a great flat, a fabulous wardrobe full of the season's must-haves, and a job telling other people how to manage their money. She spends her leisure time ... shopping.
Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems. She knows she should stop, but she can't. She tries Cutting Back, she tries Making More Money. But neither seems to work. The letters from the bank are getting harder to ignore. Can Becky ever escape from this dreamworld, find true love, and regain the use of her credit card?
A contemporary YA novel, this book will still appeal to all the adults who can remember what it was like trying to figure out who you were as a teenager, how your friends fit into your life, and what it means to shake things up but still maintain who you are at your core. Main character, Codi Teller, is lucky to have two very close friends by her side through it all, but she develops an additional, unexpected friendship with cool kid, Ricky, when she stumbles upon him kissing another boy at a party. Ricky brings Codi into his world full of new experiences, late nights, and a cute girl named Lydia who Codi definitely has a crush on.
From author Kelly Quindlen comes a poignant and deeply relatable story about friendship, self-acceptance, and what it means to be a Real Teenager. Late to the Party is an ode to late bloomers and wallflowers everywhere.
Seventeen is nothing like Codi Teller imagined.
She’s never crashed a party, never stayed out too late. She’s never even been kissed. And it’s not just because she’s gay. It’s because she and her two best friends, Maritza and JaKory, spend more time in her basement watching Netflix than engaging with the outside world.
So when Maritza and JaKory suggest crashing a party, Codi…
I don’t think you can talk about books that celebrate strong friendships without mentioning Waiting to Exhale. McMillan’s classic tale about four Black women learning to love themselves as they navigate relationships has been the standard for storytelling about Black female friendships since it came out in 1992. You’ll laugh, cry, get angry, and ultimately feel empowered by the end of it to take on the world—as long as your friends are right there with you.
The story of four vibrant black women in their thirties. They draw on each other for support as they struggle with careers, divorce, motherhood and their relationships with men.
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career and joins her husband in Southeast Asia when he takes a job there. She acquires several paintings by a colonial-era British artist that she believes are a warning.
The artist, Elizabeth Pennington, tells her own tumultuous story through diary entries that end when World War I reaches the colony with catastrophic results. In the present, Aislinn and her husband learn that terrorism takes many shapes when they are ensnared by local political upheaval and corruption.
"Aislinn Givens leaves a settled life in Manhattan for an unsettled life in Singapore. That painting radiates mystery and longing. So does Clifford Garstang's vivid and simmering novel, The Last Bird of Paradise." –John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake and The Inverted Forest
Two women, nearly a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives when they reluctantly leave their homelands. Arriving in Singapore, they find romance in a tropical paradise, but also find they haven't left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
In the aftermath of 9/11 and haunted by the specter of terrorism, Aislinn Givens leaves her…
