Title: Making Love
Author: Aidan Wayne (Twitter)
Rating: Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Contemporary Romance, Urban Fantasy, LGBTQIA Romance, Demons & Angels
Release Date: January 30, 2017

Publisher: Riptide Publishing

Order Here: RIPTIDE PUBLISHING

Note: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed here are my own.

 

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Aidan Wayne’s Making Love is literally the cutest book I have on my kindle.

Making Love follows Carla, a cupid with an initially poor grasp of chemistry, who decides to help a succubus named Leeta find her true love after the agency Carla works for refuses to even grant her an appointment. Of course, initially, it isn’t just that Carla wants to lead Leeta to her True Love, but that Carla wants to prove that she’s more than just a good shot.

This book is a friends-to-lovers story that is so sweet that you’ll feel like cavities are imminent as you read. I kept clutching my kindle to my chest and grinning because I couldn’t get enough of how Carla and Leeta immediately click – and how Carla remains clueless to that connection for much of the book.  The “friends-to-lovers” trope is a BIG DEAL in fanfiction, but it works well here because of how Wayne fleshes out Leeta and Carla to where you maybe figure out before they do what’s going on.

So yeah, I adored the plot and the characters, but there are also other things that I liked about Making Love that I feel y’all need to know about.

First of all, Carla is on the ace spectrum, a demisexual cupid whose experiences with sex and non-platonic love are nonexistent. Do you know how much I love seeing ace-spectrum characters in this sort of fiction (or any kind of fiction) who gets to have a great and loving relationship? It’s so refreshing!

Second, Leeta and Carla are both coded as women of color. You can tell from the cover, that Carla has an afro (and in the book, wears her hair in puffs which is MY FAVORITE), but Leeta is described as having brown skin so yeah… she’s coded as a WOC too. (I don’t make the rules, folks).

People who aren’t new to my blog should know that I’m very passionate about positive representation in the urban fantasy genre, my favorite genre.

Aidan Wayne’s Making Love hits the target for me because it’s a short, sweet story that centers on characters that I can identify with on multiple avenues as a queer Black woman. The characters are adorable and I found myself sucked into their story, wanting them to get together from the second that they first met outside of Carla’s agency.

So if you’re a fan of goopy stories with adorable romance and a slow-burn that leads to sexy (but largely offscreen) shenanigans and a happy ending, check out Aidan Wayne’s Making Love!