This intense character study focuses on two middle-aged women, Liselle and Selena. Liselle is hosting a dinner party for her husband, Winn, who has just lost an election to be a state legislator in Pennsylvania. Liselle, a Black woman, is recollecting comments made by her outspoken mother, Verity, about how Liselle lives the life of a rich, privileged woman, with a big house, white husband, and housemaid. Liselle is shocked to learn that her husband is under investigation by the FBI. While dealing with these realities, she remembers her life as a student at Bryn Mawr College, where she was in a relationship with Selena, another Black woman. While there, the two were open about their love and their fierce determination to live their lives on their own terms.

Selena, plagued by hyper-anxiety about all of the world's ills, has been in-and-out of mental hospitals in the years since she's seen Liselle. After a chance meeting in a grocery store, the two end up thinking about each other and the book chronicles their lives leading up to a defining moment and the issues that affect them, including racism, sexuality, and love/marriage.

I always enjoy a book that is laser-focused on a strong character, and while this one is that in regards to Liselle, I was interested but not gripped by her story. As her dinner party progresses, she starts questioning her life choices, especially her marriage to a man that she's not sure she truly knows and the lost love she regrets. Her backstory reveals a woman who lived an unabashed lesbian lifestyle, so to see her so settled in a life she's not fully comfortable with, is a shock. Selena's storyline is not as detailed, yet the despair that plagues her is relatable. When in college and in a relationship with Liselle, Selena wasn't as outspoken as Liselle, but seemed to be able to keep some of her anxiety at bay by feeling happy in love. I still felt like her story wasn't as detailed as it needed to be for the reader to become completely immersed in her rebirth.

A short 208 pages, this novel felt unfinished to me. There are allusions to the work of poet Audre Lord (the Afrekete in the title) and similar story beats to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. I did enjoy this look at two complex, middle-aged women who reassessed their lives and their relationship with each other, but I was left wanting more background on Selena and more closure at the end.

King’s superpower as a writer seems to be to take very specific fictional situations and mine them for relatable human experiences, including humor, pathos, good, evil, and heart. This collection features a bunch of great stories, with some standing out above others. I really enjoyed “Creature,” “Five Tuesdays in Winter,” and “The Man at the Door.” Some themes that carry through all of them are parent-child relationships, life and death, sexuality, love, and coming-of-age. King has a lovely way with words and there are several lines in this collection that resonate. I read parts of this and listened to the audiobook, which has a different narrator for each story (including Perfect Strangers’ Bronson Pinchot!). If you love short stories, this is a great collection to experience.

This engaging historical fiction novel follows the friendship and lives of two women in the 17th century court of Jacobean England. Anne Turner is a seamstress who befriends Frances Howard, the Countess of Somerset, who she dresses her for an event at court. Over time, Anne comes to know Frankie and sees the bruises from the abuse Frankie suffers at the hands of her sadistic and impotent husband. Anne and Frankie grow closer as time goes on, including when Anne's husband dies and Frankie embarks on an affair with the King's consort, Sir Robert Carr.

All of the court machinations and the events are told through first-person narration by Anne. Jago spins an intriguing fiction around the true-to-life core of this story: In 1615, Anne was hanged for her role in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury (she provided the poison that was put in tarts supposedly fed to Overbury), the only man seemingly standing in the way of Frankie getting an annulment from her cruel husband and marrying her true love, Sir Robert Carr. When on the scaffold, Anne was forced to wear the extravagant starched cuffs that she was known for introducing into the court fashion scene. Frankie was convicted of being an accessory to the murder (working with Anne to hatch the poison plot), but ended up being pardoned in 1622.

Jago envisions a close friendship between the two women, explores the sexism and abuse they are subjected to as women living in the late 1600s, and questions the legitimacy of the murder conviction (did the poisons they concoct really kill Overbury or was Anne railroaded by a zealous and misogynistic Chief Justice?).

I really enjoyed Jago's spinning of this historical fiction tale. At times it's a bit uneven as the action slows when it's one court backstabbing after another and the lack of page time between Anne and her children prevent the reader from truly connecting with her on a strong emotional level. Yet the treatment the women face, even Frankie, as supposed high-class courtier, is devastating and does reverberate through Jago's gripping tale. If you love historical fiction and narratives that focus on the role of women in historical societies and the abuse/sexism they faced, this is the book for you.