Book picks similar to
Giving Up the Dream by J.L. Campbell


romance
african-american-fiction
family
african-american

Project Queen II


Teresa D. Patterson - 2010
    When she enters their lives, she brings along chaos and mayhem. She desperately seeks the love that her mother, a woman who cares more for drugs than her own flesh and blood, couldn’t give. She only knows how to show and feel love by opening her legs. A night that begins as partying and fun turns into horror. The events that transpire blacken Della’s heart. She vows that the pain inflicted upon her will be inflicted back on her attackers. She will pay them all back - with a vengeance. What happens when her obsession with getting even causes her to spiral out of control?

Everybody Ain't Your Friend: An Urban Romance Thriller


Tanisha Stewart - 2021
    

Crack Money With Cocaine Dreams


Jahquel J. - 2014
    And so are the drug dealers that flood them. When your pockets are empty but your needs are full, you do the unthinkable. After her mother walks out on her at seven years old, Messiah Garibaldi was groomed to be a boss. Being the daughter to a mob boss and maid, she learned early to never mix business with pleasure. Messiah and her best friend, Jaylah, cook some of the best dope to man, which is how the ruthless drug lord, Tech, enters her world. Never being the one to be in love, Rasheed enters Messiah’s life and opens her to the possibility to love. Will Messiah mix business with pleasure? There’s only one thing in his way: Eli, Messiah’s companion. Eli is money hungry and broke. When giving the opportunity, Eli pulls off a stunt that might end his life. LB is a low-level nickel and dime drug dealer for Tech. Tech has been promising to put him on for years. Tired of being broke and watching Tech reaps the benefits of his labor, LB decides to step out and link up with Rasheed. Staten Island is small, everyone knows everyone…but do they really? When you have crack money but cocaine dreams, envy becomes your best friend.

Til Death We Do Part, Too


Bruno Beaches - 2021
    She seems wonderful, and it is love at first sight, and they marry quickly. However, not all is rosy in the garden, and a lifetime’s baggage rears its ugly head. Pablo’s ex-wife re-establishes contact with him, and he desperately seeks to exorcise the demons of that betrayal and divorce, but he gets drawn into a double life. Then, one shocking day, Hellion goes to work, and inexplicably, and without warning, fails to return home. Now he has to try to understand another devastating, bewildering calamity.Til Death We Do Part, Too is a story that scrutinises the impact of unfinished business, baggage, emotional damage, and lingering love. It balances heart-breaking loss with resilience, disorientation with hope, and desperation and bitterness with true enduring love and understanding. There is much insight into the reality of relationships and the frailty of the human psyche. It is told with immense depth of feeling, humour, and faith.

Desdemona's Closet: A Christmas Tale


Sabrina B. Scales - 2019
    A tough exterior is her claim to fame, and necessary for the life she lives. But even the toughest have been known to let their guard down at Christmastime. Hilarious by nature, Pharo is the perfect match for Des. And though he wasn’t exactly looking, fate doesn’t care about that. When chance encounters with a stranger happen twice in one day, it's too big to be a coincidence and he's smart enough to know it. Join these two on a hilarious, heart-filled, nutmeg scented journey to love in tight spaces!

Side Effects of Loving You 2


Dominique Thomas - 2015
    He’s struggling to find her while also fighting charges that are trying to put him back in jail. Olivia is struggling to trust Kadar when all she wants to do is love him. She's given him her heart and a daughter, but still she feels it might never be enough. She finds comfort in Angel, Kadar’s new business partner, but dealing with him only leads to a whole new set of problems. Drew and Kadar find themselves disconnected and confused as to where they should be. Love has never been in question when it came to the people they loved, but it seems like it’s getting harder and harder to make it work. Highs and lows Drew, Aamil, Kadar and Olivia have experienced it all. Take one final ride with the crew and see if they can make it through the greatest storm yet? From paternity tests to separation this book will take you through many emotions. See who can weather the storm and who can’t in part two of Side Effects of Loving You.

The Purest Love For The Coldest Thug


Miss Jenesequa - 2018
    However, deep down Solána knew her stubbornness had sent her mother to an early grave. After tragedy strikes, she gets back on the right path and focuses solely on herself… until she stumbles upon a bewitching addiction like no other, with not a single cure in sight. 
Kisan, known to many as Mace, on the surface appears to be a collected, handsome, and prestigious young man. And he is… among many other things. Those that know more, know him to be bold, calculated, and extremely cold-hearted. They know how crazy he truly is; how he can lay one finger on a trigger and aim perfectly without fail; a gentle giant to not one single soul but the only woman who has his heart—his three-year-old.
 Kisan and Solána are immediately drawn to each other, sparking an uncontrollable fire between them that neither party are able to put out. However, when the attractive heavy hitter and stubborn beauty’s worlds collide, it sets off a cascade of life-changing events. Events that not only change their lives but the lives of everyone around them. Loving a man like Kisan could potentially be the most intense and intimidating thing of Solána’s life, but is she willing to risk it all for a man she should be running far away from? And is Kisan willing to let a woman access the deepest, darkest parts of him?
They say the purest love is hard to find… but now that Kisan has found it, can he make it last? Or will his inner demons get the best of him?

From the Pole to the Palace 2: A Love Nobody Expected


Diamond D. Johnson - 2016
    As the days go by, Jameeka realizes that Levi isn’t the man she thought him be, but it’s too late because she’d already done the unthinkable, and Seth would never get back with her in a million years. Now that Seth and Dreka finally are in a committed relationship, is it enough for her to leave the pole alone and finally settle down in the palace where she belongs? Dreka promised herself that once she let those three words, I love you come out of her mouth, that she would hang up her dancing shoes, but is that true? In addition to everyday relationship problems, she is now faced with deep, dark secrets that she thought she had left behind in her past, but she now has to bring those secrets to light. This second installment is filled with drama, laughter, and secrets. Some will make it out in the end, but others won’t.

Mr. Wrong


Anna Black - 2013
    When she gets an invite to attend her high reunion, she debates if she should attend because she didn't want to go single and alone. Her best friend ZACHARY JENNINGS, decides he'd go with her as her doctor boyfriend to help her save face with her high school love WADE HARRIS, whom she quickly discovers she is not over. Drama is on the horizon for this trio when WADE comes back into BROOKE'S life, because ZACHARY is also in love with BROOK and he secretly wants the relationship to fail.

Bebe's By Golly Wow!


Yolanda Joe - 1998
    A big, strapping "steak-colored" man who is as strong as he is sensitive, Isaac is the man of Bebe's dreams. But he's also a father dealing with the challenges of raising a thirteen-year-old daughter on his own.Much to Bebe's surprise, Isaac's whip-smart daughter, Dashay, turns out to be the "other woman" who threatens to keep them apart. Meanwhile Sandy, Bebe's best friend, who is struggling in the workplace as she clashes with the new owners of the radio station, continues on her adventure in search of true love, refusing to give up. Set in Chicago and told in alternating voices, Bebe's By Golly Wow sparkles with Yolanda Joe's deft storytelling, in-your-face dialogue, and marvelous insight as she paints a sensitive and funny tale of modern romance, family transitions, and heartfelt friendships.

Coffee with a side of You (Entertainment District Book 1)


B. Love - 2017
     Rocco Tate was in the business of giving and taking. As a real estate developer, he gave to potential business owners that he believed he could profit from, and took the businesses of those that he believed he couldn’t. When Rocco decided to invest in a few blocks and turn the space into an entertainment district he didn’t expect Nyx to stubbornly hold up his plan. Her business was clearly suffering because of the competition of a major coffee chain on the same street, and Rocco was sure Nyx would immediately jump on the opportunity to work with him. She didn’t. Her persistence to keep her business matched his persistence to buy it from her. And as he pursued her business… Rocco also found himself pursuing Nyx’s heart. Tired of men withdrawing more than they deposited into her, Nyx refused to allow Rocco access to either… but will that consistently be the case? Or will she end up like the other hundreds of business owners that fell for Rocco’s devastating charm and hand over the keys to both her business and her heart?

Guardian of Eden


Leslie DuBois - 2011
    No jury. No witnesses. Seventeen-year-old child prodigy Garrett Anthony has to answer that question. As he holds a gun to the head of his sister’s rapist, he flashes back to his traumatic past: five-years-old in a foster home, seven-years-old stealing food to survive, and at 16 visiting his black father in prison for the first time. After years of fighting to secure a stable life for himself and his sister, he finally has a scholarship to a prestigious Washington DC private school and the love of a Virginia senator's daughter. But this new found and tenuous happiness begins to unravel once he reveals the family secret which is the catalyst to the painful decision he must make. Can he take the life of someone else and continue to live with himself?

Is the Bitch Dead, Or What? (The Ritz Harper Chronicles Vol. 2)


Wendy Williams - 2007
    Playing a clever trick of her own, Williams left her heroine on the brink of death at the end of the novel. Now the second installment of the chronicles reveals what Williams’s readers are dying to know: Is the Bitch Dead, or What?The drive-by shooting that brought her down forces Ritz to look back on her climb to the top and the people she loved, lost, used, and abused along the way. There’s the brief dalliance with Tracee, her best friend, and the romance with a man with some secrets of his own; the loss of her beloved Aunt M; and the recent appearance of the father who abandoned her and is now demanding a financial payoff and fifteen minutes of fame. At the heart of it all is Ritz’s need to figure out where the real-life Ritz ends and the radio bitch begins.For the huge audience hooked on The Wendy Williams Experience and readers itching to find out what happens to the over-the-top star of Drama Is Her Middle Name, Is the Bitch Dead, or What? is packed with all the irresistible shocks and insider dish that make Williams the hottest voice in America today.

Church Chick


Michelle Carey - 2012
    In a shallow attempt to move forward, she marries the older Deacon of the church, but is liberated when he dies on their wedding night. Now free to find love and happiness, Sabrina discovers the dark side of love and lust when she is confronted by her new best friend Blair; when Blair thinks Sabrina has stolen the man she loves.

Taking Care of Business


Lutishia Lovely - 2012
    . .After a long bout of misfortune, betrayal, and broken hearts, the Livingstons and their soul food empire are thriving. Toussaint Livingston is the Food Network darling, Malcolm Livingston's BBQ Soul Smoker is still the toast of QVC, and Bianca Livingston's brainchild TOSTS--Taste Of Soul Tapas Style--is a sizzling sensation on L.A.'s Sunset Strip. It seems that nothing can stop the progress of this third generation--until a dish called trouble gets added to the menu.Jefferson Livingston is the only sibling who feels he hasn't made his mark, a fact for which he partly blames Toussaint. But with a recent promotion and a sexy new assistant, Jefferson is ready to show his cousin just how big a mistake he made. Then a fire breaks out, an old enemy rears his ugly head, and a stranger threatens the family's legacy. Jefferson and Toussaint must now work together to keep the dynasty from falling apart. Can they put their differences aside long enough to take care of business? There's only one way to find out. . . ."A great new taste in the literary world." --Carl Weber