I just love Church Girl by Naima Simone!

Aaliyah has run away on her wedding day and persuades her cousin to help escape from her domineering family. When she arrives in Chicago she applies for a nanny job and meets Von, who needs someone to look after his seven year old daughter Gia. He rejects Aaliyah as too young and inexperienced but ends up hiring her anyway, when his other options disappear.

Tattooist and bad-boy Von is in his thirties, has his own business, a foul mouth and a great lineup of dirty talk. He adores Gia, navigates his work and the pressures of his vindictive ex-wife until he finds himself falling for Aaliyah, who is young and too-innocent.

As an Australian, I was new to much of the Black English colloquialisms and jargon. It’s a crash course in slang.

Aaliyah is all the light to Von’s shade in that she’s only 24, very sheltered, and running away from a wedding arranged by her father. She’s got a lot of gumption which appeals to Von: “Get that head up, lil’ mama, and act like you know who the f*** you are.”

There’s a strong thread around self-responsibility and self-respect which Liyah is learning about herself. “You a bad bitch, but if you don’t believe it, how you expect anyone else to?” She’s supported by her cousin Tamara, who has built her own life away from the pious and suffocating Alabama Church family.

I love all the layers around their budding romance. Von has to navigate his vindictive ex-wife and custody battles around their little girl Gia, while Liyah needs to stand up to her overprotective and domineering parents and get rid of her ex-fiance. It’s a coming-of-age for Liyah, as she learns to trust the strength in her sweetness. Von just laps her up. The steamy times were great fun, especially as many of them are just in Von’s head. He’s imagining all the sex at every opportunity, but their relationship is a slow burn and this timing means the payoff is fantastic.

There’s nuance too, Von’s ex isn’t all bad, he recognises that she is hurting and that doing bad things doesn’t make her a bad person. Aaliyah still loves her parents, even as they have let her down. In a short romance with a domestic setting, it’s refreshing to have characters that are not singularly good or bad. The novel is on the shorter side, author Naima keeps it tight with nearly all the action occurring between home and work, in the same small part of Chicago. This keeps the story tight, even if I would have liked to see Von being a bad-ass out of his own environment.