Maya has all of it found out: She’s on the quick monitor to a promotion at her funding agency, she has an incredible residence in Miami, and she or he’s nonetheless relationship her good-looking faculty sweetheart, a retired skilled soccer participant who will virtually actually put a hoop on it someday within the close to future.
So when the producers of “Real Love”—a thinly veiled fictional model of the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise, during which creator Rachel Lindsay starred—provide Maya the possibility to be the lead on the upcoming season, she declines. Her greatest good friend, Delilah, will get the half, and virtually instantly, Maya questions her resolution. Her boyfriend breaks up along with her, and immediately the life she envisioned is up within the air. As she watches Delilah have the time of her life on “Real Love,” Maya should reckon along with her personal path.
In 2022, Lindsay launched a dishy essay assortment, Miss Me With That, which included reflections on her stint as the primary Black Bachelorette. (In 2019, she married the winner of her season.) Real Love is Lindsay’s first novel, and it’s pure enjoyable, a fizzy and relatable combination of feminine friendship, romance and profession struggles, with a splash of behind-the-scenes actuality TV.
Lindsay completely captures the uncertainty and exhilaration of single life, imbuing Maya with shades of Carrie Bradshaw, one other girl in her early 30s making an attempt to solidify her id and navigate romantic relationships with the assistance of her buddies. Unlike Carrie’s penchant for cosmopolitans, Maya’s drink of selection is an easy Crown whisky and Coke. Also in contrast to Carrie, Maya is firmly within the Ann Taylor and J. Crew style camp, which is a supply of countless chagrin for her fashionable and audacious youthful sister, Ella, who’s a hilarious foil to Maya’s smart persona.
Maya has doggedly pursued her profession and stayed in a protected however faltering relationship for years, so the likelihood of change is thrilling and terrifying. Should she keep in Miami and climb the company ladder? Move to Seattle with a sort and sizzling artist? Drop all the things and journey? Her final resolution is much less necessary than the straightforward act of selecting a course based mostly on what she desires for the primary time.
Real Love is an enthralling and pleasurable learn. I elevate a glass of Crown and Coke to Lindsay.
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