Book Review: Love Is A Revolution by Renee Watson

‘Love Is A Revolution’ is a novel by Renee Watson that was published in 2021. It follows Nala in the summer before her senior year of high school as she navigates surges of change in her community now her cousin, Imani, and friend, Sadie are involved in a youth group called Inspire Harlem.

Inspire Harlem is a local youth group which seeks to inspire change by promoting an eco-friendly attitude and empowering young people of colour in the community. It didn’t appeal to Nala, at all, and she felt uncomfortable in the company of Imani’s other friends, particularly Toya, who critiqued the music choices at one of the group’s events for being overly sexualised and teaching young people their value comes from sex, which isn’t inherently true. This irks Nala at dinner, but she has bigger fish to fry, in the form of a new member of the Inspire Harlem group, Tye.

Tye is described as being a desirable, charismatic and Nala’s perceived polar opposite. Where he is a vegetarian, she is a meat-lover, where he is an activist, she would rather just have fun as she is, as her own unique form of rebellion. But, in a bid to impress him, she denies her love or meat, and claims vegetarianism. But, then the lies keep coming. Tye has her under his spell and she is crushing almost instantly, says she does community work at the local retirement home, an exaggeration at best. She simply visits her grandma there, but that second lie sends her head-first into a whirlwind summer romance with a boy of her dreams that thinks she’s someone she’s not.

Despite being marketed as a run of the mill YA romance about a little white lie, the book is very subversive. Where the cliques in YA novels are often vain, catty and demeaning, instead, the perceived clique of the Inspire Harlem youth group are vibrant, enthusiastic, compassionate and opinionated young people. They aren’t inherently malicious at all, even when Nala perceives their behaviour was such.

This is a love story, a love of yourself, your family, your friends, your city, your culture, your body and, most importantly, yourself.

I cruised through this book and felt really bad for Nala throughout. She hadn’t expected her new-found boyfriend to latch onto her community work as strongly as he did, and instead hoped she could just let it fizzle out, and claim she left to focus on school. She’s a real, relatable and compelling character that I often felt frustrated with. I loved her narration and how her primary focus for the summer was fun, and because of that the book was fun!

I’d wholeheartedly recommend this book!