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I love reading books with friends and sharing my thoughts and frustrations about the characters with them. There’s just something fun about buddy reading that makes the reading experience a lot more memorable. Picture this: debates over fictional characters and discussing plot holes, and predictions.
In our latest book recommendation, we’ve curated a list of seven books to read with your friend group. These books explore themes such as friendship, sexuality, coming of age, loss, and love, offering room for engaging conversations on important social issues worth discussing among friends.
Read our recommendations below.
BUTTER HONEY PIG BREAD
Author: FRANCESCA EKWUYASI
Genre: FICTION
Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the story of Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision. However, Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won’t be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also runs away, attempting to fill the void of that lost relationship with casual flings with women. She eventually discovers a way out of her stifling loneliness through a passion for food and cooking.
But now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward. Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of solid friendship, faith, and above all, family.
PATSY
AUTHOR: DENNIS-BENN
GENRE: FICTION
When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, it comes after years of yearning to leave Pennyfield, the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where she was raised. More than anything, Patsy wishes to be reunited with her oldest friend, Cicely, whose letters arrive from New York steeped in the promise of a happier life and the possible rekindling of their young love. But Patsy’s plans don’t include her overzealous, evangelical mother―or even her five-year-old daughter, Tru. In this novel, Nicole Dennis-Benn gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to choose herself first―not to give a better life to her family back home. Patsy leaves Tru behind in a defiant act of self-preservation, hoping for a new start where she can be, and love, whomever she wants. But when Patsy arrives in Brooklyn, America is not as Cicely’s treasured letters described; to survive as an undocumented immigrant, she is forced to work as a bathroom attendant and nanny. Patsy weaves between the lives of Patsy and Tru in vignettes spanning more than a decade as mother and daughter ultimately find a way back to one another.
BRIDGES ARE FOR BURNING
AUTHOR: BINA IDONIJE
GENRE: FICTION
On the eve of Valentine’s Day, Oghogho ‘Gigi’ Dempster wore her heart on her sleeve. At almost thirty-one, she was single and ready to mingle after nearly two years of relegating her love-life to the curb in favour of growing her fledgling social media company. Her beautiful best friend Alana was newly pregnant for the love of her life, Benjamin Halal, and her sister Efemena ‘Fifi’ was married to wealthy aristocrat, Lotanna Dike. But on that night of February 13th, Gigi wasn’t looking for what her best friend and sister had; not love or marriage, but a temporary connection and intimacy. How could she have known that that night would dramatically alter the course of her life?
THE BLESSED GIRL
AUTHOR: ANGELA MAKHOLWA
GENRE: FICTION
Young, beautiful and ambitious, Bontle Tau has Johannesburg wrapped around her finger. Her admirers are falling over themselves to pay for her Mercedes, her penthouse, and her Instagrammable holidays. She’s come a long way, and it’s been far from easy. Yes, Bontle gets the blues from time to time. The shrink keeps wanting to talk about a past she’s put behind her. But what she doesn’t think about can’t hurt her, can it? Darkly comic and sharp, The Blessed Girl explores conversations about men, mental health, and getting rich by any means necessary.
HIS ONLY WIFE
AUTHOR: PEACE ADZO MEDIE
GENRE: FICTION
Afi Tekple is a young seamstress who lives in a small town in Ghana with her widowed mother, spending much of her time in her uncle Pious’s house with his many wives and children. Then one day she is offered a life-changing opportunity—a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo, a man she doesn’t truly know. She acquiesces, but soon realizes that Elikem is not quite the catch he seemed. He sends a stand-in to his own wedding, and only weeks after Afi is married and installed in a plush apartment in the capital city of Accra does she meet her new husband. It turns out that he is in love with another woman, whom his family disapproves of; Afi is supposed to win him back on their behalf. But it is Accra that eventually wins Afi’s heart and gives her a life of independence that she never could have imagined for herself. Peace Adzo Medie’s debut novel, His Only Wife, is the story of a relatable heroine who illuminates what it means to be a woman in a rapidly changing world.
SMALL WORLDS
AUTHOR: CALEB AZUMAH NELSON
GENRE: FICTION
The one thing that can solve Stephen’s problems is dancing. Dancing at Church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop, while the DJ spins garage cuts. Dancing with his band, making music which speaks not just to the hardships of their lives, but the joys too. Dancing with his best friend Adeline, two-stepping around the living room, crooning and grooving, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone, at home, to his father’s records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known.
Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free? Set over the course of three summers in Stephen’s life, from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within.
THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES
AUTHOR: DEESHA PHILYAW
GENRE: FICTION
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a collection of short stories that explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being ‘good’. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions.
There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher’s wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta’s ‘same time next year’ arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other.
With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.