Hood Rich: A Dope A** Love Story by Lucinda John. Published on April 27, 2018 by Shan Presents Standalone or Series: STANDALONE Page length: 484 | Kindle Version Crown rating: Eh, 2 crowns Reviewer: Bella How long did it take to finish? About 2 weeks Living life in and out of detention centers, troubled teen Tauheed “Rocky” Epps is sent to live with his uncle in hopes of being steered in the correct direction; however his hunger for the streets is greater than the hunger of a starved person. With dope boy ambitions, Rocky eats, sleeps, and breathes just to hug the corner of the block clutching on to kingpin dreams.

Wish, the young ghetto princess, is a normal middle class teen born into a family filled with secrets. With her two best friends by her side she takes on life like a storm making the mistakes normal teenage girls make. Everything in her life is stable until young, handsome, Rocky swoops in stirring up a world wind of drama. From the moment Rocky laid eyes on Wish he knew he would make her his wife, but with him trying hard to create a name for himself in the game and the swarm of girls demanding his attention things between them become complicated. Fast forward ten years later things between Rocky and Wish are better than ever. The once adolescent couple that couldn’t seem to get it together are now considered hood royalty, the “IT” couple, relationship goals. Rocky has finally accumulated the amount of clout in the game that has him sitting high on his throne with Wish by his side. With the perfect woman, children, money, and all the finer things in life at his disposal Rocky consider himself hood rich, a person who started from the bottom of the barrel and has made it to the top. Jealous becomes an issue when women tries their hardest to push Wish out of her spot. When temptation hits, Rocky finds himself losing his family. Sick and tired of the infidelity Wish finds herself in the arms of another arms. What was once a solid foundation starts to wither away slowly. In this draw dropping stand-alone you will shadow the life of two young love birds through the beginning, middle, and current stage of their relationship. You will first hand experience the hard work, sweat, and tears it takes to be committed to someone. This dope ass love story will take you through the motions, you will either root for the couple to stay together or beg for them to stay apart.

What I liked:
I thought this book was written and edited well. I really like the plot twist with Rocky at the end that led to his enlightenment. I thought it was a good way to bring it full circle because I didn’t see that coming even though it was something that had been mentioned countless times throughout the book. I liked that the idea of the story following along with the main characters love story from when they were teenagers until adulthood. I loved Rocky’s relationship with his baby sis ☹ and the bond Wish, Goldie, and Neecie seemed to have.


What I did not like:
Well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait to finish this book. I honestly felt like it was just a book full of the same thing. As Rocky and Wish grew up and their relationship continued, they seemed to continue to do the same shit. Spoilers ahead! Rocky kept cheating. Wish kept cheating. They kept crying about how much they loved one another but then would repeat the same thing. I guess they were young and dumb but to keep reading it was annoying as hell to me. There was nothing intriguing about this storyline because all it was, was the same stuff. Makeup, cheat, breakup, repeat. I was over it. I was not rooting for their love story. They were supposedly relationship goals but I laughed so hard when I read that. Nothing about their story made me feel for their love or ever want a relationship like that.

The timeline for the story was off at times. As a writer, I’m such a perfectionist when it comes to timelines (especially if dates will be posted which they were in this book). I pay attention to them and I’m a little OCD about them so it irked me when something didn’t add up in the time listed. For example, one part of the book ended around May, 2011 and then picked up in January, 2013. Supposedly 3 years had passed. My math isn’t perfect but yeah. I’m a stickler for these things.

In the beginning, I liked that the author kept the book to being Rocky and Wish POVs. But then suddenly she threw in Goldie and Nat in the final chapters and I was completely thrown off and annoyed. I almost skipped through their chapters because I didn’t understand why their storyline mattered enough to give them POVs. I couldn’t care less about them. It bothered me even more that the Epilogue was told through Goldie’s POV. Reading it, you’d think it had been her story all along that we were reading.

One last thing, Rocky was a walking contradiction. He called his mom dumb for staying in an abusive relationship but then he hit Wish a couple of times himself. Like boy you need to get help yourself.

Would I recommend this? Read it again? Read the next book in the series?
I wouldn’t recommend it. There was nothing about it that held my attention because it was just repetitive situations for the most part. The author seemed to just want to create a book full of excessive drama. Not my cup of tea.

Rating:
I gave the book 2 crowns and 2 stars because though the storyline was nothing spectacular and didn’t keep me entertained, I thought the author did good at the quality of writing. Not all urban literature books are edited well and this one was so that’s something I must praise! Maybe if this story was told over a shorter timeline with more insight on the couples good times and not just the drama, then maybe I would have rated it higher and been more connected to the characters.