Hood Rich: A Dope A** Love Story by Lucinda John. Published on April 27, 2018 by Shan Presents Page length: 484 Pages Crown rating: 2 crowns, simply for the drama factor. Reviewer: Parker How long did it take to finish? 12 days 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:
My favorite part of the book was the friendship between Wish, Goldie, and Neecee. I also like how the author took the correct steps to make sure we remembered that we were reading about children via them being worried about getting in trouble with their parents, the characters receiving beatings or finding themselves on punishment when they did something wrong, the characters attending school, etc. It was also well written and free of the usual errors that seem to plague urban writers.

What I did not like:
The first thing that should have red flagged me was how the synopsis basically tells the entirety of what’s going to happen with the story. Second, this novel was unbelievably long and drawn out just to have the characters on the same merry go round from their teenage to adult years. I mean the exact same. Rocky cheats, Wish takes him back, they break up for a day and Wish sleeps with someone else then takes Rocky back. Wish lies, Rocky lies, Rocky cheats, Wish sleeps with someone else. These dynamics are sadly what makes up the entire book and it honestly gets a bit old after a while but it’s an ample amount of drama so I guess. If I didn’t have to keep reading due to this book being B and I’s “book of the month” I would have stopped reading at around 20%. There was absolutely no growth between Wish and Rocky’s relationship until the very end of the book. And by very end, I mean the last seven pages. A good number of the characters that were mentioned could have been left out, and it seemed as if certain situations only existed to create “drama” but didn’t necessarily make sense. I didn’t care for either of the main characters. If I had to choose a favorite, it would probably be Goldie.

Would I recommend this? Read it again? Read the next book in the series?
No, I wouldn’t recommend this book. It wasn’t a great read.

Rating:
I’d rate it two stars for being well written.