Tag: tiesthattether

Berkley (Thanks to the publisher for my copy!)
Genre: Romance
Release Date: September 29, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I could not look away from this book. Ties that Tether is an exploration of family relationships as much as much as romantic ones. Azere made a promise to her father as he died that she would marry a Nigerian man, ensuring that she and her family would preserve their culture. Her mother has taken every opportunity to remind Azere of her promise and tries endlessly to set her up with someone suitable. Azere’s single-minded approach to dating based on this promise is upended when she meets Rafael, a white man who just might steal her heart.

Azere struggles between her desire to maintain her culture after immigrating to Canada and her longing to also be able to adopt influences of her new country into her life. Her bond with her mother and entire Nigerian family is so strong, and her fight to try to please them is heart-wrenching. It’s clear how important Azere’s Nigerian roots are to her, but her difficulty in conveying this to her mother while also trying to steer her life in a direction that makes her happy tears her up. Igharo includes descriptions of different parts of Nigerian culture smoothly in the narrative, so readers who are unfamiliar with them are able to seamlessly learn about it without feeling disjointed from the storyline. I would encourage you to read Own Voices reviews to get a deeper sense of how Nigerian culture defines familial relationships and personal values.

I loved the romance in this book. It was steamy and oh so bingeable. The banter between Rafael and Azere was believable and flowed naturally. Toward the end, there was definitely some whiplash with ‘will they, won’t they,’ which felt like a bit much, but overall, their story was wonderful.

Ties that Tether is a powerful contemporary romance that covers a lot of depth. I’ve never read a romance story before that also had such a focus on the importance of culture, the difficulty of trying to combine cultural traditions from different parts of one’s own life, and the impacts that may have on family.

Buy Ties that Tether at an indie bookstore near you
Ties that Tether on Goodreads