Love in Colour

Amazing writing ! Each story could be a full length book, I wanted to know more about so many of the characters and was sad when some of them were over. I am not normally a romance kinda girl but after this seriously considering picking up her other book!

  ‘You are a queen. You are Lorde, Angelou, Simone, Walker, Hooks, Davis, Morrison, Knowles, Fenty, Robinson-Obama. You will shake the world, you will move the earth, you will be audacious with your essence, you will take up all the space, you will not stay in your lane, you will build new roads -''
Myths, legends and folklore offer hope and courage. They are made of magic and love and feelings. Bolu Babalola takes mythical tales from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Persia, Greece, Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Lesotho, Mauritania, Gambia and breathes new life into millennia-old stories. And as detrimental as it may sound, the legends are resurrected to live again inside the hearts and minds of modern young women. To inspire and soothe and guide...
A goddess wants to be respected and seen for what she is, for love and not for beauty. Two sides of the spectrum meet risk all to love each other. An aspiring journalist confronts her ridiculous boss that also happens to be the sister of the man she loves in a delightful twist of the Psyche and Eros legend. An ambitious woman finds love in the most unlikely of places and another defies her family's principles to mark her own path in life and love. In my favourite story, a brave warrior leads her people to safety and freedom and falls in love with her champion. 
Nefertiti becomes a seductive, powerful source of justice and retribution. A young woman cannot appreciate her unique beauty until she finds the courage to stand up to a hideous bully. A pop star asserts her power over the ones who wanted to control her after a night under the stars. Thisbe and Pyramus become college lovers that overcome their fears over their feelings. A woman who doesn't let others dictate her destiny find the courage to accept her beloved's apology. 
Osun, Scheherazade, Psyche, Attem, Yaa, Siya, Nefertiti, Naleli, Z hiny, Thisbe, Tiara, Orin, Alagomeji. Names of women. Names of Love celebrated in all its tender and terrible forms in an outstanding collection by Bolu Babalola
If you don't cry reading the Author's Note, you are heartless and terrible.
‘'Time in love are intertwined, they are both measures of life, they are the two clocks. And, for love to operate as it should, it is imperative that the timing should be right.''
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
 

Like most anthologies, the quality of the individual stories was uneven. I loved some and felt meh about the others.

This took me way too long to finish, but that was because I wanted to be able to sit and read an entire short story in one sitting, to let it wash over me, and apparently I don't sit down and read for long anymore. #sad

But I absolutely loved most of these stories, they took traditional myths and stories from a whole bunch of different places (Persia, Greece, Nigeria, Lesotho, Senegal ... and that's just off the top of my head) and reimagined them so they were love stories, mostly in modern times, and where the women had agency! There were also some original stories at the end of the book.

In flipping back through, I realized that almost all of these women's stories was completely memorable in the telling. An exceptional feat, especially because ... well, the first sentence of this review. Plus, I finished several of these with a big smile on my face.

I think my favorites were Orin, Naleli, Thisbe, and Nefertiti, but I don't think there was a weak story in this collection.