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When Dreams Float
When Dreams Float is a sensuous African American romance set against the lush backdrop of Tahiti and nearby islands. The story follows Melanie, a travel writer recovering from a painful divorce, and Winston, a charming and confident doctor she meets by chance at an airport jewelry counter. Their connection ignites quickly, deepening through a charged plane ride and growing even more complicated when they unexpectedly end up on the same cruise. The plot blends travel, emotional healing, flirtation, and slow-building intimacy, all framed within the warmth and escapism of the romance genre.
I found myself reacting to the writing the same way Melanie reacts to Winston’s presence. One moment I was caught up in the playfulness of their banter, and the next I was watching her pull back, unsure whether to trust what she felt. The author writes attraction through small gestures, glances, and touches that land with real weight. The scene on the plane where turbulence throws Melanie into Winston’s arms stands out. It isn’t just physical; it reveals her reluctance, her longing, and her fear all in one breath. The story knows how to stretch those moments without overdoing them, letting the tension rise naturally.
I also appreciated the author’s choices around character grounding. Melanie isn’t just a romantic lead; she’s a woman with a past, a career, and quiet internal battles she doesn’t always name out loud. Winston, for all his confidence, shows flashes of vulnerability that make him more interesting than the typical smooth-talking hero. Their dynamic feels honest. Sometimes messy. Sometimes sweet. There’s a little humor, a lot of heat, and just enough emotional complexity to make the story feel fuller than a simple getaway romance. And the travel writing details add texture. The descriptions of the islands, the cruise ship, and the small cultural observations make the setting feel like more than a backdrop.
This book would hit the spot for readers who love romance that’s sensual but also rooted in character healing and emotional discovery. If you enjoy stories where two people meet at the wrong time but can’t quite step away, you’ll connect with this one. And if you’re drawn to travel-inspired romance, tropical settings, or slow-burn chemistry that simmers before it boils over, When Dreams Float delivers exactly that.
Pages: 185 | ISBN : 1585711047
When Dreams Float
This book sweeps readers straight into the shimmering warmth of Tahiti, where love, lust, and self-discovery intertwine beneath the tropical sun. When Dreams Float tells the story of Winston Knight, a confident and rational doctor, and Melanie, a thoughtful, recently divorced woman searching for peace and renewal. What begins as a fleeting encounter in a jewelry store turns into a passionate and unexpected connection that follows them from the skies to the sea. Their chemistry ignites instantly, and the story sails between emotional tenderness and sensual intensity as both characters learn to navigate vulnerability, trust, and desire amid a stunning island backdrop.
The writing is lush and sensual, yet it carries an emotional honesty that surprised me. Author Dorothy Elizabeth Love has a way of describing intimacy that feels both raw and poetic, balancing physical heat with emotional truth. Sometimes the dialogue leaned toward melodrama, but I found myself forgiving it because it matched the heightened emotions of two people trying to mend their hearts. The pacing was unhurried, letting the tension simmer until every glance and touch felt earned. What struck me most was how real the characters’ hesitations felt. Winston’s logical mind warring with desire, and Melanie’s fear of being hurt again, those moments felt relatable, and I caught myself rooting for them to let go and just love.
There were moments when the steamy scenes took up so much space that I wanted more time to breathe with the characters outside of their passion. Still, the story had a rhythm to it that kept me turning pages. Love’s writing feels cinematic, with descriptions that glow; silk against skin, ocean breezes, and all the sensory details that make a setting come alive. It’s a romance that doesn’t shy away from fantasy or physicality, yet it carries a beating heart of forgiveness and self-rediscovery. I felt a genuine warmth at the idea that broken people can still float toward something beautiful.
I’d recommend When Dreams Float to readers who love sensual stories that mix emotional healing with tropical escapism. It’s for those who believe that second chances aren’t just possible, they’re necessary. If you like your romance lush, dramatic, and unapologetically passionate, this one will leave you smiling long after you finish the book.
Pages: 227| ASIN : B0FQJPKNX1
Lovely and Suffering
Lovely and Suffering is a searing collection of poetry from Stacy Dyson chronicling a year in the life of a Black woman navigating a pandemic, political upheaval, and unrelenting racial injustice. Spanning the deeply personal to the fiercely political, Dyson’s poems bear witness to grief, rage, resilience, and love. Written from March 2020 to March 2021, this book documents what it means to survive and speak when the world wants your silence. The poems are raw, unflinching, and achingly honest. Dyson blends lyricism and spoken-word fire in a narrative that is part journal, part manifesto, and all heart.
Reading this book knocked the wind out of me more than once. Dyson doesn’t just write poems, she lays down testimony. Her voice is unapologetically fierce, drenched in lived experience and spiritual grit. Whether she’s honoring Breonna Taylor or calling out white liberal performativity in “Karen, Your Mammy Done Left the Building,” Dyson never flinches. The writing is blunt, rhythmic, and stinging. Her mix of intimate grief and public fury creates a powerful dissonance. She doesn’t aim to make readers comfortable. She demands they feel what she feels, and she earns that demand.
What stuck with me most was the deep tenderness under the rage. Dyson’s tributes to community, family, and sisterhood are gorgeous. In “Je T’aime” and “Quieted Soul,” she reveals how healing hides in the laughter of a child or the memory of ancestors who “never run/ not unless it is toward the enemy…” These moments were breathtaking. But there’s a loneliness too, a poet aching for a better world, and exhausted by the work of building it. Sometimes, the poems felt like confessions. Sometimes, they roared like war drums.
I’d recommend Lovely and Suffering to anyone who wants to understand the emotional toll of being Black in America, especially Black women. It’s for people who want their art honest, loud, and bruising. She speaks with heat and clarity. And if you’re willing to listen, you’ll come out changed.
Pages: 146 | ISBN : 1955683018
Under Orders of Silence Inspired by the Book of Job
Under Orders of Silence is a modern and deeply emotional reimagining of the biblical Book of Job, set against the backdrop of institutional injustice, grief, and faith in a fractured world. The novel follows Malik Rosario, a former soldier turned community leader and principal, whose life crumbles under political, societal, and deeply personal weight. As his school is dismantled, his reputation smeared, and his family torn by tragedy, Malik is forced to confront not only public betrayal but also divine silence. This is a tale about endurance—not just of suffering but of love, dignity, and truth in a world that seems determined to erase them.
The writing is poetic without being overdone, tender and furious in equal measure. Author Quinton Taylor-Garcia doesn’t just describe pain, he walks you through it, sits you down with it, forces you to feel it. The pacing is slow in parts, but it’s the kind of slow that lets heartbreak settle into your bones. Malik’s voice is quiet but sharp, filled with dignity even as the world strips it from him. And Imani—his wife—feels so real, so raw. The book doesn’t chase resolution. It honors uncertainty, like Job did, and that makes it sting all the more.
The ideas in this book wrestle with the big ones—God, truth, systemic oppression, grief, legacy—but they’re delivered in such relatable and grounded ways that it never feels like a lecture. Taylor-Garcia plays with silence in stunning ways. Not just literal silence, but the silence of institutions, the silence of faith under pressure, the silence between loved ones too broken to speak. There’s so much rage simmering under the surface, but it’s channeled into something graceful. I did struggle with the density in a few sections, especially during the longer philosophical dialogues, but even then, the language remained evocative. And there’s this underlying heartbeat of hope that, somehow, never dies.
If you’ve ever lost something and didn’t know how to scream about it, this book will find you. I would recommend Under Orders of Silence to readers who love literary fiction rooted in faith, justice, and emotional truth—fans of James Baldwin, Jesmyn Ward, or even Toni Morrison will feel at home here. This is for the ones who sit in silence but still get back up. Who still believe, even when belief hurts.
Pages: 150 | ASIN : B0F775SQ3C
An Old Soul
Reading An Old Soul felt like flipping through a vivid photo album of the late ’90s—sun-drenched streets, VHS stores, sweaty CTA rides, and all. M. Kevin Hayden tells the story of Isaac André, a thoughtful, offbeat 25-year-old from Chicago’s South Side who’s just trying to make sense of his life, his past, and the weirdly precise coincidences that keep nudging him toward something… bigger. Between working at Big Shoulders Video, helping his grandma with groceries, and being a low-key jazz and sci-fi nerd, Isaac starts experiencing reality in ways that don’t quite add up. Then, a late-night chatroom encounter changes everything.
Hayden’s writing hits that sweet spot between lyrical and raw. The book’s opening—Isaac sweating it out in Chicago’s brutal summer heat—pulled me right in. It’s textured, specific, and alive. There’s this subtle magic threaded through the ordinary moments, like buses always arriving on cue or the TV glitching in a loop—small, eerie clues that something’s off in Isaac’s world. That grounded surrealism reminded me a bit of early Richard Linklater or Donnie Darko, minus the angst and with more Miles Davis.
But the soul of this book, for me, is Isaac’s quiet longing—for connection, for clarity, for meaning. It’s in the way he tenderly checks on his grandma every day, how he geeks out over Philip K. Dick and jazz records, how he paints a mural in his tiny attic apartment of a sun-drenched meadow with two silhouetted figures. That mural is such a beautiful, wordless representation of hope and memory and maybe even fate. And the scene where he finally goes online for the first time was straight-up nostalgic gold. That slow, clunky loading screen. The “You’ve got messages!” voice. The awkward chatroom banter. And then he meets Noa, aka BirdGurl9, and suddenly his world expands in a way that feels both cosmic and heartbreakingly personal.
Hayden nails the vibe of being young, smart, and totally unsure if you’re lost or exactly where you’re meant to be. The scenes with Sharika at the video store—her insults, Isaac’s restraint, the sheer mundanity of rewinding VHS tapes—make the oddness of the rest of the story feel even sharper. And the way the universe seems to respond to Isaac’s quiet goodness made me weirdly emotional. This isn’t just a story about synchronicity; it’s about faith—not religious faith, but that quiet, gut-level trust that maybe you’re not as alone as you think. Maybe the right people show up when you need them most.
By the end, I didn’t want to leave Isaac’s world. An Old Soul is a book for anyone who’s ever felt out of step with the world but still believes there’s something waiting for them—something meaningful, something more. I’d recommend it to fans of coming-of-age stories with a touch of the mystical, readers who love deeply specific character work, and anyone who’s ever searched for “something” late at night on a dial-up connection.
Pages: 233 | ASIN : B0F453QXNG
Zero to Hero
The Jake Matthews Saga: Ascension follows a blind teenage boy who is abducted and taken to another dimension to fight in a war and save the planet. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I started writing this story after reading the Percy Jackson and The Olympian Series in high school. That story took me on an adventure and had done something for me that I wanted to do for others, thus my journey to being a writer began and I hadn’t looked back since, Yes, life got in the way and that prolonged my finishing the book sooner but, all in all, it worked out for the best. Also, having a blind protagonist do something extraordinary was just interesting to me at the time.
Jake struggles to find purpose in his life and becomes bored with his mundane existence. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
The idea was that Jake is too smart for his own good and his intellectualism has placed him on a pedestal, and since that is the case, there’s nothing in life that’s a challenge for him along with the fact he is unable to see the world in color which ‘colors’ his perspective on life. Jake’s being whisked away to Figueroa was to give him a sense of purpose and present a challenge worthy of his intellect. Saving multiple worlds from impending war was just the challenge.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
My book is not as convoluted as picking a theme or any major plot points. This book was written purely with imagination with the intent on having as much fun and adventure as possible. The overall trope, for that matter, is zero to hero and shows how someone that has the precursors for being extraordinary transitions into someone that exemplifies the term in every way.
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?
There will be a second novel that will focus on Jake’s reign as the king and how he ascends to an even higher plane of existence while his empire goes through drastic changes. Jake will go on yet another journey worthy of his intellectual and physical prowess; however, this time, he will ascend from being a king to a God. The book will also cover how his wife, Cheryl, and four children deal with the fall of the empire while Jake is gone.
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One night, Jake is dragged away to another dimension to a planet known as Figueroa. On this planet, he meets The White Figure General, X-Otropolis, who tells Jake he’s been chosen to stop The Great Figueroan War and defeat The Black Figure.
Jake finds himself learning swordplay and developing his might to save a planet that is more connected to Earth than he thinks as The Great Figueroan War spreads across dimensions, where Jake not only has to save two worlds, but enlist help from unlikely allies including Thalia, the girl he thought was lost to him forever.
The Jake Matthews Saga: Ascension
Josiah Akhtab’s The Jake Matthews Saga: Ascension artfully blends the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy, infused with elements characteristic of young adult fiction. In this narrative, we meet Jake Matthews, a visually impaired teenager grappling with a sense of directionlessness. Despite his blindness, Jake possesses a remarkable ability to perceive the world through his other senses. Yet, his daily life seems boring until an unexpected turn of events catapult him into another dimension – the planet Figueroa. Here, Jake is thrust into a role of cosmic importance: to thwart The Black Figure and bring an end to The Great Figueroan War. Under the tutelage of The White Figure General of X-Otropolis, Jake hones his combat skills, slowly unraveling his pivotal role in the fate of not just one but multiple worlds.
Akhtab’s narrative may remind readers of a video game plot, intertwining elements reminiscent of classics like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. While familiar, the trope of ‘the chosen one,’ is reinvigorated in Akhtab’s hands, illustrating how a well-worn concept can remain engaging when approached with a fresh perspective. The story poignantly explores the inner world of a teenager like Jake, whose mundane reality is dramatically transformed, echoing the daydreams of many adolescents yearning for adventure and significance. Akhtab’s prose is imbued with contagious excitement and fervent joy, lifting the story beyond the conventional confines of its genre. While The Jake Matthews Saga: Ascension might not break new ground in terms of originality, its strengths lie in sharp, witty dialogue, imaginative scenarios, and a sprinkling of inventive twists. These elements coalesce to render the book a commendable and enjoyable read, particularly for those fond of sci-fi and young adult adventures.
The Jake Matthews Saga: Ascension is a spirited foray into a world where sci-fi and fantasy converge, appealing especially to young adult readers. Josiah Akhtab skillfully crafts a universe that is both familiar and refreshingly new. Jake Matthews’ journey resonates with a universal appeal, capturing the timeless allure of transformation and discovery. This book stands as a testament to the enduring power of imaginative storytelling, where even well-trodden paths can lead to captivating destinations. For readers seeking an engaging blend of adventure and character growth, Akhtab’s novel is a noteworthy addition to the genre.
Pages: 522 | ASIN : B07ZY9DQ5V
LITERARY TITAN 