The Blended and the Beautiful African American Book Club

Come join us at our African American fiction book club discussion!

We will be having discussions every month on many great African American authors so come join us when you can to discuss some great book reads! All adults are welcome, hope to see you there!

Our Book Selection for this month will be

"Like a Fly on the Wall" by Simone Kelly

About the author:

Novelist Simone Kelly has managed to bring love, dating, mystery, the supernatural and all of her other passions into the all-encompassing realm of storytelling. This includes business, since Kelly used to write books and draw its illustrations as far back as the third grade, when her mother made copies for her to sell in school.

The New Yorker’s playful sense of humor and love of adventure developed through the years to serve her well in international travels to locations like Peru, enlightening experiences as a certified Reiki-Master and in the demanding pace of being a media personality. Kelly enjoyed stints as a producer, manager and director with record-breaking startups during the dotcom explosion like theglobe.com, volume.com (HBO), and uproar.com.

As her resume and contacts began to expand, she unwittingly developed an affinity for artists, writers and philosophers ranging from the always engaging Eric Jerome Dickey, to the cerebral Octavia Butler, the masterful Stephen King and poignant Terry McMillian. Anyone reading Kelly’s work will also get a sense of powerhouse motivational speakers like Esther Hicks, Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay. Her quick wit and rapid fire delivery is a trademark that runs in step with the uber-talented Tina Fey and prolific Shonda Rimes.

Simone Kelly, CEO of Own Your Power® Communications, Inc., is an author, internet radio host & producer, holistic business, and intuitive life coach. Her previous books include a self-help book on marketing called, Jack of All Trades, Master of None? Her second book is a novel entitled At Second Glance that has set the stage for the smart and sexy Like A Fly on the Wall. It is now part of a two-book deal with William Marrow/Harper Collins and will be released Spring 2017. She currently resides in Hollywood, Florida.

About the book:

Meet Jacques Berradi. Moroccan-born and Manhattan-raised, his genuine, sexy-smooth allure goes hand in hand with a unique gift. Since Jacques was young, he has had the ability to read peoples’ energies, communicate with spirit guides, and even catch glimpses of people’s futures. Now a professional “intuitive counselor,” Jacques’s clients pay him handsomely for his insight. Unfortunately, Jacques’s psychic abilities don’t come with an off switch to tune out the world’s noise, nor do they always provide him with easy answers; recently Jacques has begun having dark, alarming dreams about his beloved father, a Moroccan immigrant who died when he was a boy.

Meet Kylie Collins, an adventurous, Miami twentysomething who is trying to find her footing after being laid off from a cushy music industry job. When a mishap brings them together, Kylie is instantly mesmerized by Jacques’s cool demeanor and intuitive abilities, and he’s captivated by her outgoing charm and breezy good looks. Seeking to learn more about her family history—including the identity of the father she’s never known—Kylie visits Jacques’s office to gain some insight about her future, and about her free-spirited and headstrong Jamaican mother, True.

But on the night that they meet, a rolling blackout cuts off power throughout Miami. Kylie and Jacques, and a few of his clients, head to the only place in the neighborhood with enough light to see: Like a Fly on the Wall Detective Agency. There, Kylie serendipitously lands herself the perfect new job as an apprentice private eye.

As partners, Jacques and Kylie are an unstoppable duo. Can Jacques’s intuition reveal the scandalous history of Kylie’s mother and father? Will Kylie’s newfound detective skills uncover evidence about the death of Jacques’s father? And will the chemistry that charges their friendship bubble over into something much, much hotter…?