Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle and Zyla & Kai by Kristina Forest

Love Radio and Zyla and Kai both feature teen girls who are excited for their future careers but hesitant about love. That is until they meet their heroes, who are true believers in romance and all the hope it offers.

Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle

17-year-old Dani Ford doesn’t believe in love, despite her mother’s obsession with Black romance movies. Her classmate, Prince Jones aka DJ Love Jones, is all about love and relationships. He hosts a relationship advice show on his Uncle’s radio station and is the go-to when his loyal group of friends are having girl trouble.

Prince has had eyes for Dani since middle school and challenges her to give him three dates to make her believe in love. 

There is a softness and warmth to this coming-of-age romance as Prince tears down Dani’s walls and open her up to the possibility of love.

This book also functions as a loving tribute to Black culture. Dani and Prince are passionate about Black literature and music respectively. They have a loving respect for classics and modern tastemakers. Dani is obsessed with both Maya Angelou and Roxane Gay while Prince knows all about classic Motown while also being a Jay-Z fan. I liked that it never felt like a didactic “kids these days don’t know their history”.

Audiobook narrator JaQwan J. Kelly sets the audiobook tone from the jump with his energetic performance as Prince’s on-air personality. He delivers on Prince’s mix of smooth swagger and earnest vulnerability. I can always count on narrator Joniece Abbott-Pratt for a stellar YA performance and she delivers once again.

Love Radio reads like a modern take on the Black romance films of the 90s and 2000s. Can’t wait to see what LaDelle does next!

content warning: past sexual assault, a parent with multiple sclerosis

Zyla and Kai by Kristina Forest

After his ninth failed relationship, 17-year-old Kai Johnson decides to try the single life. That is until he is assigned to work in a cramped amusement park booth with Zyla Matthews.  Zyla doesn’t believe in romantic relationships–especially not after watching her mother’s repeated heartbreaks. It shouldn’t work between them… but somehow it does. Until it doesn’t?

I adored Forest’s debut but this book did not work for me at all. I am a total black sheep when it comes to this book but to me it felt like in a TV show where the Will They or Won’t They ? couple gets together too soon and then the show isn’t as good.

The book opens a year into Zyla and Kai’s relationship, the pair have run into the mountains and everyone is trying to figure out why. We then flash back and forth between the course of their relationship and the present day, slowly building to the mystery of why Zyla and Kai ran away.

I was intrigued at first but by the middle, I was just bored with it. We get told everything that is going to happen in the past by the present-day narrative and, to me, (mild spoiler) when the narratives meet it was so anticlimactic.

While I think this book has some interesting things to say about class dynamics and mental health in the Black community–the plot dragged for me.