Urban Reviews - Your Source for the Best in AA Fiction!

  3.5 out of 5 books   Tamron Hall’s debut thriller AS THE WICKED WATCH, centers on the growing problem of missing and exploited young black females. Set in Chicago, Jordan Manning is a news reporter who is reporting a story about a missing black teen who had a promising future ahead of her. The police treat the disappearance as a runaway case even as days go by with no one having contact with young Masey James. Jordan is unsettled by their dismissive attitude toward the case, as similar cases involving a missing young white teens would garner more media attention.   Jordan decides to take on a little investigating of her own. Faced with Masey’s uncooperative friends and family and being ignored by law enforcement, Jordan starts to realize Masey’s disappearance is part of a larger scheme.  Calling on friends in law enforcement and her co-workers she can trust, she leaves no stone unturned to get justice for Masey and all black and brown girls who are tossed away...

  3.5 out of 5 books As YINKA, WHERE IS YOUR HUZBAND opens, Yinka, a thirty-one year old bank operations manager is attending her younger sister Kemi’s baby shower.The family is all there including her village of aunties.  The focus of the shower seems to be more on Yinka's relationship status as they offer up prayers for her to find a husband. Yinka’s mother is a young widow who had to raise Yinka and Kemi on her own so she was really concerned with when her oldest daughter will wed. The problem only exacerbates when Yinka’s cousin announces her engagement and Yinka is laid off from her job instead of receiving the promotion she bragged about to her family.  Yinka decides to execute Operation Find A Date for Rachel’s wedding as well as other goals she would love to achieve. She has six months to find a date but the dating pool is slim pickings. With Yinka holding on to her virtue until marriage, being darker complected and preferring her natural hair over relaxers and we...

  4 out of 5 books Langston Brown is a wrongfully convicted black man facing the death penalty for a horrific bank robbery gone wrong referred to as the Mother’s Day Massacre.  He is accused of killing several bank guards during the commission of the crime, although witnesses state the perpetrator is white, not black. His daughter Liza, who has dreams of being a songstress, drops out of Julliard to attend law school to help her dad obtain his freedom. She enlists the help of her employer Eli Stone who owns a jazz club.  When they receive news that her father will be executed within thirty days, it is a race against time to get to the truth of what really happened that fateful day.  THEY CAN’T TAKE YOUR NAME is a tale of a broken judicial system, the crisis of wrongly accused minorities and the reality of being a casualty in a society that tends to overlook others. This book is a nail biter that at some points had me hollering and side-eyeing the characters. An emotio...

UPDATE: All of the author tables are sold out! Didn’t get a table and want to still be a part of the book fest? Take advantage of one of the sponsorship packages : https://bit.ly/gmbf2023 ______________________________ UrbanReviewsOnline.com presents the 15th Annual Great Midwest Book Fest. The Great Midwest Book Fest will be held on Saturday, June 17, 2023 from 1pm to 4pm at Xchange Event & Creative Space 3334 N. Holton Street, Milwaukee, WI. Great Midwest Book Fest is a three hour book fair that is open to the public with a $10 admission. This year's headline authors will be National Bestselling authors LaJill Hunt, Naleighna Kai and more! There will be 10 to 12 authors selling their own books. The first hour will be dedicated to author introductions. Each author will get five minutes to either read an excerpt of their book or to tell attendees more about themselves or their books. This will be followed by a 10-15 minute Q&A session with the attendees. Please be advis...

  UPDATE: All of the author tables are sold out! Didn’t get a table and want to still be a part of the book fest? Take advantage of one of the sponsorship packages : https://bit.ly/gmbf2023 ______________________________________ UrbanReviewsOnline.com presents the 15th Annual Great Midwest Book Fest featuring Essence bestselling author LaJill Hunt, USA Today bestselling author Naleighna Kai, and more! Saturday, June 17, 2023 from 1pm to 4pm Xchange Event & Creative Space 3334 N. Holton Street, Milwaukee, WI. $10 admission What is an Open Call? An Open Call is when the registration is open for author tables for the Great Midwest Book Fest. An email will be sent to all authors that are on the Open Call list first! Contact Radiah Hubbert at radiah@urban-reviews.com to be added to the list!

4 out of 5 books Being p regnant, unwed ,  and  alone,  Sara King flee s  Chicago,  Illinois,  and the Calvary Hope Church . She promises to keep in touch with her best friends, Violet and Naomi  as she  starts  her new life in Memphis, Tennessee.  Sara takes up residence  in Naomi’s  aunt,  Mama Sugar’s boarding home where she meets  a colorful cast of  flawed  characters who become family. Sara carries a lot of anger   with her stemming    from her mother’s early death and the   conditions in the home with her father,  Saul King, the pastor of Calvary Hope Church.  Sara ha s  a hard time bonding with her son, Lebanon , and showing him a mother’s love but she  has an   adopted family within Mama Sugar’s boarding home  who  are willing  to step in. As Mama Sugar tries to crack the shell   of selfishness,  hatred,  and  pain ...

4 out of 5 books Ruby King and her mother,  Alice, are faithful members of  the local  church  so the shock of Alice’s murder   not only rocked the residents in southside Chicago but the  members of Calvary Hope Church   as well.   Alice’s husband, Lebanon  owns a bakery and  is  known to be mean and abusive towards Alice .  Everyone sees the bruises and welts she tries to cover up. Although Ruby is  twenty-four  years old and works as a law clerk, she still lived at home  with her parents, experiencing and attempting to hide the horrifying secrets that dwell within.  Lebanon King  gets his anger and abusive ways from his upbringing. He was raised by a mother who didn’t love him and took every opp ortunity to let him know. His anger led him to kill a man where he served time in prison.   It comes as a surprise that Pastor Jackson Potter is one of Lebanon’s closest friends.  The bond of their f...

5 out of 5 books Jeanette Yates dying wish is to return to Eureka Georgia to right a wrong and be buried in her hometown.  Her granddaughter  Charlie  , a n  organizer within the Civil Rights Movement  is somewhat  reluctant to visit the Jim Crow south but she want s  to honor her grandmother’s final wish.  Upon her arrival in town, she is shocked to find out the secret of her heritage and that she has a twin sister, Magnolia who  is  passing a s  white.  Their parents were killed in a racially motivated hate crime which caused them to be separated soon after they were born.  Connecting with her twin is not an easy task especially with their racially ambiguous appearance  in a  segregated town  and a long-held curse that other worldly beings want resolved.  The twins’ mother, Marie Yates, a black woman, and her  white  lover, Dean Heathwood, the heir to a cotton plantation were on their w ay ...

  3 out of 5 books Sylvester Armstrong is a young biracial male, who is the only child of a single black mother Dahlia, living in the harshest ,  most segregated part of Chicago in the 1930s.  His mother work s  at a salon but without a consistent clientele, she take s  on odd jobs to support her and Sylvester.  Sylvester’s uncle Percy  teaches   him to commit petty crimes and pickpockets  at the age of eight which help s  the family to make ends meet.  Sylvester introduce s  his friends to his schemes and a bond  is  formed between them.  After a tragic accident that took the life of Sylvester’s mom, he  is  on his own  and his activities  are  starting to attract the wrong attention.  In steps Christiano Benetti, the head of well-known Mafia family that  runs  the Extension.  Christiano is Sylvester’s father who remained in the shadows much of his life.  He take...