Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a love story between a woman floating numbly through grief, and a world full of so much life and joy begging to be felt again.

Feyi's journey is endlessly moving and full of so much raw humanity. She's a mess in the way that we all are; moving through wounds so deep that your brain chooses dissociation, putting on a mask and pushing down any rogue feeling because every emotion is at risk of detonation.

Her choices can be placed in a vacuum and dissected for moral purity, but the question Emezi pushes toward the reader is a simple one: isn't complexity the true beauty of existence? If we open ourselves up to our chaos and our flaws, we're welcoming pain and conflict, but aren't we also welcoming the joy of being human?

Through Feyi's experience, Emezi insists that sometimes the boundary between right and wrong is more gray than we'd like to admit. Each character in this book is elaborate and deeply realistic. They each have their own issues and strengths, their own experiences influencing the way they present themselves and the way they connect to others. Despite all of the hurt, the foundation for every tangled conflict is love and care. Emezi insists that making mistakes that hurt each other doesn't negate that love and care.

Our gut reaction to test for moral purity and to place people into good or bad boxes is often misguided. Everything we do happens in the context of our memories and experiences, and that complexity is so intensely personal that it's impossible to judge from an outside perspective.

Emezi proves this with evocative, decadent prose. Feyi, despite clinging to avoidance and believing she's cut herself off from the world, wears her heart on her sleeve. She feels everything so intensely, and Emezi makes sure the reader feels it too. From the unfathomable depth that is grief, to the desperation to feel normal again, to the guilt and anxiety and fear and excitement, Feyi's emotional journey propels you forward every step of the way.

Alongside nuanced emotion, Emezi's writing showcases such a deep love and appreciation for the Caribbean. There are mouth-watering depictions of food, intimate scenes involving Caribbean dance and music, homages to African and Caribbean artists, and immersive details of island living dotted throughout every chapter. Through Emezi's love for the culture, Feyi herself is able to find pockets of joy, able to begin to feel that insatiable desire to live again.

So deeply, uncomfortably, beautifully, unapologetically human. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a reminder that human existence is unbearably tangled in grief, care, desire, and fear, and it demands that you hold love and harm in tandem.