The most common reason book lovers give when asked why they love to read is the freedom that it affords them. Within those 300 pages or so, they can shapeshift and be or see anything.

In this one with the blue cover, you barely escape with your life as you fight vicious demons and conniving sorcerers, and if that ‘reality’ is too much for your blood pressure to take, maybe this book that features a group of crime-fighting besties is the one that will change your life forever. 

There is no genre though that has made that promise of delicious escape to readers more earnestly than romance. Watch as these two (or three, I’m not judging) stupendously attractive people fall irrevocably and nauseatingly in love. 

The possibility for you within those pages is meant to be endless. But for many of us, they often haven’t been. 

Despite my love for romance, sometimes growing up it felt like it didn’t love me back. I would walk around the library, searching for anything that centred divine, intelligent, messy, charming, capable Black people with the same level of understanding that I had of them.