Kennedy Mitchell is brilliant, beautiful and tired of being the only Black woman in the room.
Two years ago, she was plucked from reception for a seat at the boardroom table in the name of “representation”. Rather than play along, she and her best friend founded Token, a boutique PR agency that helps diversity-challenged companies and celebrities. With famous people getting into reputation-damaging controversies, Token is in high demand and business is booming, but when her ex shows up needing help repairing his reputation, things get even more complicated and soon Kennedy finds herself drawn into a PR scandal of her own.
My thoughts: this was a really interesting, thought provoking and enjoyable read. It’s part romance, part looking at issues in modern life, specifically around race and gender.
Kennedy is hastily thrust into a job in order to secure some diversity points and instead of just letting herself be steam-rollered, she siezes the opportunity to take being the token woman, the token black person, and turn it into a business that helps companies recruit a more diverse and proportional workforce, educating the dinosaurs as best she can along the way.
She’s also falling hard for her best friend/business partner’s brother Nate. They had a very brief thing years before, and despite starting out sniping at each other, it’s pretty clear that they’re meant to be. And Aurora (the bestie) is thrilled.
However an email hack of several companies, including some of Kennedy’s clients, threatens to ruin it all when Kennedy gets dragged into a scandal and has to find a way to salvage her business and her sanity. Navigating the mess left behind by her two-faced clients takes a lot of energy and it causes some stress with Nate. Can Kennedy save her business and her relationship?
I found it really interesting to read a book that blends discussion of these serious issues – racism, sexism, in a romance novel, mixing serious issues with something light and frothy. Readers can be both – a lot of writers have inserted serious things into their books, but not necessarily as explicitly as this. Putting it front and centre in the form of Kennedy’s experiences.
Kennedy is a strong and smart woman, she’s fully aware that she’s exploiting the stupidity and full on ignorance of the white executives of these companies, and why not. Turn the tables on them, show them what they’re missing by being close minded and plain wrong.
This is intended to be the first in a series starring these characters, and it will be interesting to see what Beverley Kendall does next.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 