The Only Black Girl in the Room

Book excerpt: An ambitious reporter stuck doing diversity checks for her white colleagues gets her big break in this compelling debut novel perfect for fans of Jayne Allen, Jasmine Guillory, and Zakiya Dalila Harris. Genevieve Francis, a 25-year-old Black reporter, assumed she’d go into her fourth year at her newspaper job with a bigger story than the latest seasonal ice cream flavor. Instead, she’s relegated to doing copyedits and sensitivity reads on the articles her white colleagues write. So when Gen finally gets the opportunity to cover a prominent CEO’s gala, she leaps at the chance—this will be her biggest assignment to date. The only problem: The CEO is her ex, Jude, whose marriage proposal she publicly rejected four years prior. Following their awkward run-in, Jude personally requests Gen to write the first-ever authorized profile of him. The potential for scandal, if anyone digs into their past, is high, but Gen decides to risk it—if she proves herself with this profile, it could jumpstart her dream of writing articles centered on Black voices. But between the racist backlash from her colleagues and her conflicting feelings toward her ex, Gen soon realizes she’s in way over her head. And it may be more than just her career on the line. Timely and thoughtful, this energetic debut explores what it means to believe in your future when everyone and everything is working against you.