We’ve been waiting for this one! Talia Hibbert, our July HerStory recipient, is so good, y’all! Her books are definitely steamy, so if you don’t enjoy spice, they might not be for you. But if you do, and if you love witty banter and lots of representation, oh wow, are these books for you (and, she just published her first YA book, so if you are not a spice lover, check out Highly Suspicious and Fairly Cute, which is just the sweetest and cutest book ever!)
Talia Hibbert herself identifies across multiple spectrums of marginalization: she’s a Black woman, queer, disabled, and on the autism spectrum, so her books and characters are filled with representation and inclusion. As she said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly when Get a Life, Chloe Brown was coming out (fyi, the main character in this book is Black, fat, and has fibromyalgia, and thus chronic pain):
“Who you choose to star in your romance novels and the happy ending that you give them and the love that you show them being worthy of can be very political. Especially because I write about Black women. Black women are often dehumanized and shown as unworthy of love, unworthy of care and delicacy – we’re presented as the ones who care for everyone else, so I do think it’s very political and an act of resistance to center black women and femininity in romance novels.”
The tagline on Hibbert’s website is “Sexy, Diverse, Romance,” and we can attest to the fact that this is the case. In each of her Brown Sisters books, themes such as neurodiversity, chronic pain, sexuality, mental health, and body positivity are all part and parcel of who the main characters are. Hibbert works hard to create worlds in which deeply real characters, fully formed and realized, get their Happily Ever Afters with fully formed and realized partners that love and respect them, not in spite of these things, but because, added up, they create an amazing person.
Our colorway honoring Talia Hibbert is called Take a Hint, which is the name of book 2 in the Brown Sisters series (Lorajean’s favorite for sure!). We hope you’ll take a hint from us and deep-dive into Hibbert’s wonderful writing.
Books by Talia Hibbert:
- The Brown Sisters books (Get a Life, Chloe Brown; Take a Hint, Dani Brown; Act Your Age, Eve Brown)
- The Ravenswood books
- The Princess Trap
- Highly Suspicious and Fairly Cute
Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:
- Kennedy Ryan
- Rebekah Witherspoon
- Tia Williams
- Denise Williams
- Farrah Rochon
- Alexa Martin
We hope you enjoy this HerStory Book Club as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We envision an open-ended Book Club, with folks reading or listening to whichever book they’d like from each author’s If you’d like a spoiler of all of the authors we’ll be showcasing this year, check out our website: https://knittedwit.com/herstory-2023-authors/
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