Today’s book review is Love In Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold by Bolu Babalola (short stories, 278 pages).

“A highborn Nigerian goddess who has been beaten down and unappreciated by her gregarious lover longs to be truly seen. A young businesswoman attempts a great leap in her company – and an even greater one in her love life. A powerful Ghanaian spokeswoman is forced to decide whether she should uphold her family’s politics or be true to her heart. In her debut collection, internationally acclaimed writer Bolu Babalola retells the most beautiful love stories from history and mythology with incredible new detail and vivacity. Although Babalola focuses mainly on the magical folktales of West Africa, she also reimagines Greek myths, ancient legends from the Middle East, and stories from long-erased places. With an eye toward decolonizing tropes inherent in our favorite tales of love, Babalola has created captivating stories that traverse perspectives, continents, and genres.”

By now, you should have figured out that my taste in books and entertainment usually tends towards things with dragons, aliens, magic, and not taking place in the real world at all. However, the librarians in my area are working hard to make sure I have things to read, as I tend to go through books very, very quickly. I’ve also told my librarians when recommending things for me that I tend to prefer books with non-male main characters, dragons, and low romance, especially if it’s het.

Basically, this is to say that I would never have picked up this book to read if the librarians hadn’t put it in my hold box. I am glad I read it, though it took me an entire month of reading it a little bit at a time while having my meals or spending time on the stationary bicycle to finish. I’m definitely not used to books taking me this long to read but it was made easier by being a selection of ten short stories.

I will say that this book is something of a love story for men, as all but one of the stories in this collection focused on heterosexual relationships between men and women, and the one story that focused differently was a bisexual woman who had loved her husband very much, but then he died (no, she didn’t kill him), and she was forced to live in a world without him before finding pleasure in women. All the women in these stories are captivated by alluring men who see them for all they are and not just the shallow surface view, and all of the men show themselves to be deeply, truly in love with the women in the stories. I think that this is one of the few times where men are given so much emotional depth and credit and I found it hopeful, in the sense that men are not usually portrayed in such a positive light.

The Author’s Note for this book was also a very interesting read, to see the inspiration for these stories and the basic idea of how the stories were changed to empower the women instead of just allowing women to be the objects of men. I enjoyed seeing the author’s thoughts on the original myths and the retellings here.

Overall, I would say this book is a three on my rating scale. I’m glad I borrowed it from the library, I’m glad I read it, but I don’t think I will ever need to revisit it or reread it again, mostly because I really do like books about dragons and I didn’t feel it was fair to this very well-written book to rate it lower just because it’s not what I would normally read.

Babalola, Bolu. Love In Color: Mythical Tales From Around the World, Retold. HarperCollins, 2020.