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In Every Mirror She's Black by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström

Contemporary fiction

In Every Mirror She's Black

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström, on your first book!

by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström

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Quick take

This absorbing debut turns a mirror on modern-day Sweden to reveal the ins and outs of life for three Black women.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Techie

    Tech world

  • Illustrated icon, Immigration

    Immigration

Synopsis

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.

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict suicide and abuse.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of In Every Mirror She's Black.

In Every Mirror She's Black

1

Kemi

America had decimated Kemi’s love life.

It had shredded her dignity and tossed its slivers into the air, cackling like a hyena. Relegated to picking up questionable prospects, Kemi was tired of wearing her invisible armor. A two-ton defense system that screamed to the world she didn’t need a man.

She couldn’t carry that weight anymore.

Lately, her dating life read like a dossier of shame. First, there was that one memorable dinner with Deepak. “I think I told you I’m a software developer, right?” Deepak began to overdose on his own voice twenty minutes in. Kemi simply glared at him. She figured his name-dropping his career the sixth time wasn’t worth a verbal response. The rest of the evening, Deepak intermittently punctuated his monologues with his love for “Black booty.”

Then there was the silent date with Earl, a white accountant from Ohio, who summoned visions of a serial killer. Earl kept staring into nothingness past her face. Each time he tried glancing her way, his hawk eyes floated down her cleavage then darted back to the intriguing void beyond her.

She wasn’t sure if he was shy or scheming.

And how could she forget the Jamaican real estate agent, Devan, whose gaze kept trailing every white woman who sauntered past their table while professing unflinching love for the sisters?

America had stretched Kemi’s limits and run her resolve through an involuntary boot camp. According to every dating survey she had ever read, she—a Black African woman—was the least desirable relationship prospect, alongside Asian men.

Those surveys said first choice was someone else.

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Why I love it

My favorite novels always begin with the characters. Are they memorable and believable, can I hope and laugh with them, do they teach me something new? Of course, I'd like an interesting plot, realistic dialogue, beautiful sentences, but I'll forgive the lack of any of these for strong characters. What an absolute gift then, that in In Every Mirror She’s Black we don't lack for anything at all.

There are three protagonists in the novel: Brittany, a former model turned flight attendant; Muna, a refugee originally from Somalia; and Kemi, a Nigerian American marketing executive. All three are Black women, who have or will be making their way to Sweden from someplace else. And all three are connected via a fourth character, Jonny von Lundin, a wealthy business owner.

This is a book with scope. You follow these women over multiple years; you see them struggle with their careers, their love lives. You watch them adjust to Swedish society, and encounter both classism and racism, which take the form of incidents that run the gamut from creepily subtle to hideously direct. And it is clear from the start that these are three distinct women—their individual journeys deftly illustrating the simple truth that Black women and their experiences are not a monolith. Brittany, Kemi, and Muna have very different values. They make different decisions and different mistakes.

I left this book having been moved, educated, and entertained. It is thrilling, disturbing, mysterious, sexy, and above all, complex. Brittany, Kemi, and Muna will live in my head for a long time, and I don't think you could ask for anything more from a novel.

Member ratings (1,368)

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Debut authors
View all
The Collected Regrets of Clover
How to End a Love Story
Lessons in Chemistry
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
All We Were Promised
A Thousand Times Before
Ariadne
The Wishing Game
The Days I Loved You Most
Red, White & Royal Blue
The Wives
Honey
Adelaide
Here After
Spitting Gold
The Ministry of Time
Did I Ever Tell You?
Northwoods
Middletide
This Spells Love
A Short Walk Through a Wide World
The Storm We Made
Neighbors and Other Stories
The Husbands
More
You, Again
The Other Valley
The Love Hypothesis
Shark Heart
Hard by a Great Forest
Maame
The Circus Train
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Other Black Girl
Weyward
Thistlefoot
The Push
Age of Vice
A Flicker in the Dark
The Lost Apothecary
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
One Day in December
Paper Names
We Are the Brennans
Black Cake
The Last Russian Doll
Olga Dies Dreaming
She Started It
Bringing Down the Duke
Crying in H Mart
The Kiss Quotient
Somebody's Daughter
The Hacienda
Beautiful Country
Lunar Love
Kaikeyi
River Sing Me Home
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Honey Girl
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Big Friendship
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White Horse
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All That You Leave Behind
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Leaving the Witness
On The Clock
All of Us with Wings
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