Book Review // Blue Roses By Tope Omotosho

Title: Blue Roses

Author: Tope Omotosho

Series: Flower Series

Genre: Contemporary Christian Romance

Age Category: Adult

Blurb

LOVE OR FAMILY: WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

Curvy girl, Odavwaro King has three dreams: proving herself to her affluent Christian adoptive family, finding her place among her boisterous cousins, and securing forever with her childhood crush. However, her confidence wanes when her crush gets engaged to her less-than-friendly cousin. To avoid potential humiliation, she reluctantly accepts help from an unexpected source: Nelson Banjo.

UNEXPECTED ATTRACTION.

Nelson offers to pose as Odavwaro's fake date, unaware that their long-standing platonic relationship would evolve into something more. As chemistry ignites, Nelson grapples with opening his heart to another woman after being hurt by a past love (Yellow Hibiscus).

NEW OBSTACLES EMERGE.

As Odavwaro and Nelson explore their newfound attraction, the engagement falls apart, prompting Odavwaro's crush to woo her, leading to family discord, betrayal, and a threat to their budding romance. For Nelson, it's like reliving a painful past. With her deepest desires within reach, Odavwaro must make a difficult decision.

"Blue Roses," is a heartwarming Christian romance that delves into themes of faith, the power of choice and can be read as a standalone.

My Review:

As previously mentioned above, Blue Roses is the fourth book in the Flower series by Tope Omotosho. If you missed my reviews of the previous books, I reviewed books 1 and 3 here and here. Even though I have read book 2, I didn't get the chance to make a post about it unfortunately. I was looking forward to reading this book because I was interested in the two main characters and wanted to see what their own back stories were.

The female main character is called Odavwaro and she is a plus-size girl who was adopted into a wealthy family when she was a child. But she works as the executive assistant to Erinma, who is the main character in Book 1. Oda is an interesting character because she has congenital anosmia and she can't smell anything at all. One of Tope's strong points as an author is writing unique characters and this one was certainly an interesting one to read about.

There are so many things going on in Oda's life, which include her struggling with her identity and constantly feeling like she doesn't belong in the family she was adopted into. She also is constantly bullied by her cousins and she is also trying to get over a heartbreak that involves a close friend--André, who is now currently engaged to one of her cousins. But while Oda is minding her business, trying to juggle all the drama in her life, she keeps running to Nelson Banjo and the relationship which starts off as just work colleagues morphs into something more. 🤗

Nelson Banjo aka Nelly was a character we saw more of in Book 2 of the series. He was in a relationship (or shall I say a situationship) with Isi then--one of Erinma and Oda's friends. But Isi left him for someone else because she had an instruction from God to do so. Of course this broke Nelly's heart because he cared a lot about Isi.

In this book, we see Nelly initially struggle with his feelings for Isi, but how he eventually lets go and strikes a friendship with Oda. Soon he realises he can't stop thinking about Oda and then he starts entertaining the idea of being in a relationship with her. Nelly also comes from a dysfunctional family and he has to deal with a lot of anger towards his father and work towards forgiving him for past mistakes but this doesn't come easy. I liked getting to know more about Nelly's character in this book. I think he matured a lot both in his character and his faith in God. Even the way he handled his relationship with Oda was very graceful and he was always so kind to her and treated her with respect.

Oda on the other hand had a lot of unresolved trauma and this caused her to make some mistakes. Some of her decisions really frustrated me especially when it came to André. There were so many times I wanted to jump into the book and give her a little shake, so she could snap out of it and come back to her right senses. The whole drama with her cousins was also quite frustrating and I wish Oda had the courage to remove herself from those situations and even cut off the relationships with the people that were so bent on damaging her self-esteem. By the end of the book, I thought she might have even benefitted from going to therapy because she had a lot of deep-seated emotional issues that needed to be addressed. But it was great to see that she learnt a lot about her true identity in Christ.

Nelly was definitely my favourite character in this book and I loved how God helped him deal with the suppressed anger he was carrying in his heart. There was one revelation about Nelly's dad that I was a bit confused about and even though the man single-handedly destroyed his family, I wasn't convinced that he was truly remorseful or that he truly understood the pain he had caused his wife and children--especially Nelly.

Overall, I enjoyed the romance between Nelly and Oda. I also loved the meaning of the book's title and what that signified when it was pointed out at the end of the book. I thought it was a perfect title for this story especially when it concerns Odavwaro.

Book 1 is still my favourite book in this series so far, but you can check out the entire series on Selar and Amazon. You can also connect with Tope on instagram.

If you are looking for more Christian romance novels which tackle deep themes and shine the light of Christ, then you can check out my Christian romance books here.

Thank you so much for reading.

God bless you

Joanny 💕