Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Love Radio is a hard-hitting, heart-warming, YA-Romance following two teens in Detroit approaching the end of their high school years.
Prince Jones, our male lead, has an Uncle who is a popular radio-DJ. Prince, being raised with his Uncle as a strong influence in his life, loves all things music. He also loves helping people.
So, when his Uncle offers him a segment on his popular hip-hop show, Love Radio, Prince graciously accepts. His mission, to give romantic advice to those seeking it. He is dishing advice and good music. It’s perfect.
Dani Ford, our female lead, dreams of moving to NYC and going to college to become a writer. She has always dreamed of becoming a writer. The only thing standing in her way at this point is the dreaded college essay.
You would think that would be an easy task for an aspiring author, but Dani had something happen to her a while back, a traumatic event, that has ended up having an lasting impact on many different facets of her life.
Dani has started to withdraw a bit from her peers, a fact her loving parents definitely recognize, yet they’ve been unable to get Dani to open up to them about what’s going on.
When Dani and Prince meet, he’s smitten. He’s actually been noticing her for a while, but has never had the courage to speak to her, but how can he give out serious love advice if he can’t even follow it himself.
While their first real encounter isn’t perfect, the two definitely make an impression on one another.
From there, we follow the two as they get to know one another and Prince vows to win Dani’s heart over just three dates. The Reader gets a front row seat not just to the exquisitely-adorable dates, but also to what’s going on behind the scenes in both Prince and Dani’s home lives.
Will the self-proclaimed teen love doctor be able to get the girl, or is all his love talk just hot air?
I absolutely adored this story. From the very start I was enamored with these two characters. Both of them were very well-developed and likable. It was so easy to get behind them and cheer them on.
For me, one of the highlights was all the incredible heart-felt details that LaDelle put into both of their backstories. Both Prince and Dani were very committed to their families and the scenes involving their family members were indeed some of my favorites.
And even though there are a lot of heavy-hitting topics explored, there was also a lot of fun and humor in this as well. The banter between Dani and Prince, as they got more comfortable with one another, had me laughing out loud and, at times, blushing a little.
I loved how mature these two characters were. Even though they were teens, that didn’t mean they couldn’t have their heads on straight. They both had goals, and in spite of outside influences, they both were steadily working towards achieving the things they wanted.
Additionally, I liked how they learned to support each other and help one another work through their difficulties.
I did listen to the audiobook and one thousand percent recommend that format. The narration was so spot on. The narrators absolutely brought these characters to life.
I went through it over the course of this story, feeling pretty much every emotion under the sun. I learned from these characters and was inspired by them. It melted my heart.
Overall, as you can tell, I loved this. It had so many strengths as a story and I feel like it is so underrated at this point. I really hope more people discover this wonderful book and give it a go.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I cannot wait to read more from Ebony LaDelle!!!