I wanted to love this book, but there were some minor issues that made it hard. I am still so glad I read it read. It is a debut and I’m definitely open to reading the next novel. My problem with this novel was it felt too much and I couldn’t really keep up. I definitely think less would have been more in this case so we could focus on the story and character growth more.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

This book had an interesting premise; unfortunately, I was unable to really get into this one. I will still be on the lookout for any new books written by this author in the future. Thank you to Publishers Weekly and NetGalley for providing a free eARC of this book.

I really enjoyed this look into the lives of three non-Swedish Black women who find themselves living in Sweden. There are the advertising whiz who has been hired to clean up a PR disaster, the flight attendant who becomes the object of a wealthy White Swedish man's obsession, and the refugee who is trying to create a new life. These are women you would want to be friends with, who are all working towards something better for themselves.

The characters felt fleshed out and authentic. Their conflicts are varied and feel very real. The look at Swedish culture was very interesting to me. It seems open and accepting, but there are rungs on the ladder just like everywhere else.

My thanks to NetGalley and Soucebooks Landmark for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Intrigued by the premise of following the experiences of Black women in Sweden, a demographic that I haven't seen represented in media, I truly sought to enjoy this book. However, I found that I could not get past the initial 50 pages due to narrative voice and lack of interest in the characters.

I enjoyed this book despite it not having a happy or satisfying ending. Such is life.
We follow three black women with a commonality: being black women in Sweden. The three women face different circumstances while navigating the culture, but these circumstances are full of racial trauma.
It was interesting reading about black women in a different culture.
Tanesha was my favorite. character..

“You’ve built this delusional universe around us. It was never real.”

In Every Mirror She’s Black tells the story of three black women who find themselves living in Sweden. Kemi moves there to work as a marketing executive, Brittany reluctantly moves to pursue a relationship with a man she barely knows, and Muna arrives in Sweden as a refugee fleeing Somalia. While their reasons for relocating couldn’t be any more different, they all have hopes of starting anew and building a better life for themselves.

Initially, the link between Kemi, Brittany, and Muna is unclear and all seems to be going well for each of them. As the story unfolds and their loose connection becomes clearer, some cracks in the facade begin to form. Unfortunately, their experiences as black women living in white-dominated Sweden turn out to be far from what they hoped for.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one! It took me a minute to get into it because it did seem to start out a bit slow. But, I think the initial slowness was necessary to fully depict each character’s background and their growth. Once the story began coming together, I was completely engrossed and didn’t want to put it down. The multiple POVs add a bit of suspense to the story, sometimes changing right when it’s getting good. This story doesn’t end wrapped all up with a perfect bow on top. It is heart-breaking and tragic and thought-provoking. It explores some heavy themes inclusing racism, grief, trauma, fetishism, classism, and suicide. It’s an excellent debut novel. I’d definitely read more of Lola Åkerström’s work!

This is a book that I wouldn't have necessarily picked up but the title was intriguing. I loved all the women in the book and their stories. I would highly recommend.

3-3.5 Stars.

The thing is I liked this book and what it was trying to accomplish. I think it did a really good job at capturing the micro (and macro) aggressions Black women face living in a white, “Western” society where they are othered, and it did so through the perspectives of three very different women. Kemi is a marketing guru on the rise in corporate America who’s head-hunted to direct diversity and inclusion in marketing at a top Swedish firm, Brittany is a flight attendant, former model and general grown up sugar baby never quite recovered from a past trauma, and Muna is a refugee from Somalia who has lost everyone she’s ever loved, trying to build a life for herself in Sweden.. These three women’s diverse experiences, I believe, are intended to reflect the many different experience of being Black and female intersectionally in the “West,” where no matter your social class, social network or experience, there is a sort of discrimination and even dehumanization that takes place where you’re always seen as other and not quite deserving of respect and equal humanity. Specifically for these 3 women as immigrants/expats in Sweden, Black Womanhood in this context is lonely, isolating, disrespected, as gaslit to heck and back.

I found the author’s writing to be engaging and interesting. The thing is that I feel like this book may have tried to accomplish too much in discussing all the different means through which Black women experienced discrimination and so thematically it had perhaps too much ground to cover. Because of this, I think there was not enough time to build to an ending, the resolutions felt rushed and it didn’t come together for me. The first issue for me was the story trajectories for the three women- in the end there was no proper convergence- it felt like 3 very different projects about many very different issues (corporate discrimination and sexualisation, trauma recovery and autism, and issues for refugees and new arrivals in supposedly welcoming Sweden but then also radicalization and extremism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, fatphobia, gaslighting, domestic abuse, sexual violence). There were too many themes and moreover I would have liked to see more integration of the characters across the different plots- what existed felt very last minute. Chronologically, it took 2 years for Kemi and Brittany to connect and then it’s never quite clear why their relationship was what it was- was it due to their personalities, is it about them being Black women, it just seemed very out of character especially for Kemi to be the way she was. Furthermore, very interesting character dynamics would frequently be set up with supporting characters in a scene, only to never come up again- for example Kemi with Tobias’s sister, or Brittany and Antonia, the bits about multiracialism with Malcolm and Tobias- it’s like things were touched on that could have revealed something deeper about the characters but then without exploring that depth, we were rushed on to another theme or another event so that the net was cast wide but it didn’t have a chance to sink deep. A bit more integration may have helped us learn a bit more about the lead characters and even the supporting ones. The character trajectories were also clashing. They sometimes went through personality transplants (e.g. Antonia, Kemi from time to time) and acted completely out of character, OR they stagnated and by the end remained to me mostly static and they ended up in the knowledge and positions they already had at the beginning which kind of made me wonder the point at the end- Kemi gets a rushed realization at the end, Brittany ends up pretty much where she started in terms of power and agency, and Muna- the main sympathetic character in this is also more or less stagnant, if you can call it that. I think this book felt a little rushed at the end and the resolution with Muna felt to me a little too like a manipulative device for shock value like with Ahmed or Yasmeen or Khadijah- I mean I understood it and it made sense in a full circle way, but I also felt a little manipulated because of precedent about the fate of refugees and immigrants especially those who were Muslim.

One issue people may bring up is the treatment of ASD, the author does bring it up in a note at the back but if you’re at all sensitive to having a person’s toxic traits be linked to their neurodiversity, consider if this is for you. Themes of ableism also exist in this character’s experience.

I think what the author did well was write deeply flawed characters that were also relatable in the ways that most of us are self-saboteurs in some way. We’re prone to bad decisions and wrong choices and being influenced out of our own happiness. We deny the obvious red flags and consider other people’s opinions when we shouldn’t and don’t listen to good advice when we should. We are judged and discriminated against but sometimes judge and discriminate against others. The author in writing these characters teases out a lot of nuances around racism and intersectional lived experience for Black women in Sweden.

Overall, I liked this. It felt very realistic and authentic, even when I rolled my eyes at their decisions, I thought the author did a great job writing these people. I wish this had narrowed its thematic scope a bit to develop more deeply some of the nuances and tidbits dropped along the way in the plot. I’m glad I read this and highly recommend if you’re looking for a book about race set in what is often idealized Scandinavia, with messy main characters and ALL the drama. Beware that this is potentially a very triggering book so approach with caution.

Many thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for the advanced copy!

This novel integrates the stories of three black women living in Sweden, who are all connected to a rich white man, Jonny von Lundin. Kemi decides to uproot her life and accept Jonny's job offer. She moves to Sweden and hopes for a fresh start. Brittany is a flight attendant who Jonny is obsessed with. She accepts his offer to move to Sweden where he will lavish her with everything she has ever wanted. Muna is an African refugee who is trying to get citizenship status in Sweden. She is hired by a the contractor that cleans Jonny's offices as she searches for connection and meaning to her life.

The book alternates between the viewpoints of the three woman, which helps it to be a page-turner. I thought that by setting the book in Stockholm, the author gives the reader a fresh perspective to understand what it may be like to live as a black woman, but also their experiences in a foreign land that is classically known for its "whiteness." The story also strongly reflects on the idea of family. Family, whether by blood or by love, is unique to each of us. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and other times we take it for granted. But, we all seek it in one form or another.

Of the three storylines, I felt Muna's was by far the strongest and Brittany's was the weakest. The character development was uneven, and I was disappointed in the ending, which is why I am only giving this book 3 stars. Overall, I enjoyed the book and I appreciated the perspective it gave me. I recommend the book and I highly recommend it for book clubs, because of the rich discussion it could lead to,

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc of this book, in exchange for my honest opinion.

I really liked this book. It kind of reminds me of For Colored Girls. I love the connections between the three main characters who aren't otherwise related in any way. It was also refreshing not to solely read about the American experience with race and racism, but to get a globally expanded view of it through this book. Also, the endings!

Beautiful, compelling, and extremely well written, In Every Mirror She's Black is a daring exploration of being Black and female in an ever-changing and demanding society. The novel traces the connection between three women, Kemi, Brittany-Rae, and Muna and while these women come in contact with each other, they are not friends, and their status keeps them separated, yet they are bound together by Jonny von Lundin and their shared race.

I would not say that this novel has a happy ending, but instead truly amplifies that Blackness is not cosmetic and cannot be shed or donned when the mood strikes.

Summary:
A timely and arresting debut for anyone looking for insight into what it means to be a Black woman in the world.

Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm as they build their new lives in the most open society run by the most private people.

Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi's move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life.

A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury, and privilege—a life she's not sure she wants—as the object of his unhealthy obsession.

And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny's office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home.

Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, In Every Mirror She's Black is a fast-paced, richly nuanced yet accessible contemporary novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization, and tokenism, and what it means to be a Black woman navigating a white-dominated society.

Lola Akinmade Åkerström is an African-American (Nigerian-American) award-winning author, speaker, and photographer based in Sweden. This is her first novel.

I absolutely loved this book! I appreciate that it provide me, as the reader, a global perspective on how Black women are treated both professionally and in romantic relationships. I recommend this to my peers.

Wow. This book was so beautifully written. I was mesmerized by Brittany, Muna and Kemi. Their stories were completely engrossing. But this book was extremely depressing and definitely check out the content warnings for this one.

Absolutely loved it and I devoured it in 1 day. Beautiful story about three strong woman. Thank to the author, publisher and NetGalley

I thought this was a quick and enjoyable read. The alternating viewpoints really made the pages turn, and the Sweden setting and account of immigrant experience felt fresh. At points it was more like a romance novel than I was expecting, though.

This was a compelling story, well-written, and hard to put down. I was drawn to all three characters -- from very different paths and lives. This story masterfully dissects the way perception of race and class affects everything and delivers the lesson in a page turning story.

This book offers a gorgeous look into the lives of three women and the struggles they face in the complex demands of society, family and themselves.

3.5
In Every Mirror She's Black explores the experiences of three different Black woman navigating a white-dominated society in Sweden. Beautifully written, I was easily invested in each of them, their POV's, and storylines.

The three woman who end up in Sweden are all connected to the same Swedish man, but in different ways. Each story chronicles their experiences, hardships, struggles, and successes, and what that means for them and their futures. It also expose how women are viewed through the lens of racism, society, class, and sexuality.

I really wanted to love it this book and was disappointed that I didn't. I think it was a by-product of it not turning out the way I wanted it to. I had hopes and expectations that were not realized, especially at the end, but maybe that is the brilliance of the writing. Although it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, it was well worth the read. I will definitely be looking out for more releases by this author.

Thank you netgalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest option.

All I'm going to say is that this is stunning, raw, and full of magic. For me, it is a must-read to understand on how it is like to be a Black woman. This is a brief review, but all I'm going to say is that libraries and bookstores should have this book. This should be studied in schools/universities. Buying my copy today.

Many thanks to the author and to NetGalley for my ARC for an honest review.

I just reviewed In Every Mirror She's Black by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström. #NetGalley