That Bona Fide Hood Love: Honesty and Prue

That Bona Fide Hood Love: Honesty and Prue by A.L. Tate
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Description
Growth is inevitable, Honesty Stride learns this after being in a dead-end same sex relationship with Yamena for ten years since the age of thirteen. After meeting Prudence Fischer, her cousin’s best friend and partner, Honesty finds herself fighting feelings that are foreign to her for someone of the opposite sex. When she decides to walk away from what she knows to experience the unknown, will she fall flat on her face or will the feelings be reciprocated? 

Eugene Stride AKA Gino, has always had his cousins best interest to heart. Unable to steer her away from dating his once affiliate Yamena, finds himself distancing himself from his cousin but keeping his eyes on her from the background. When an opportunity arises to get rid of Yamena once and for all, he jumps on it with no questions asked. Realizing that his cousin’s loyalty puts him in an awkward position, but the street code won’t let him fall back on the situation, he introduces his cousin to a situation that will allow all to come out unscathed. Will this opportunity backfire or go smoothly as planned? 

Prudence Fischer AKA Prue has been friends with Gino since they were younger. Running the streets and hustling has always come naturally to them. Tired of the street life, him and his people decide to go legit but their only way in is to find someone who fits in with that class of persons. Upon meeting Gino’s cousin, Prue realizes that she is the one to give them the in they need. Using the opportunity to orchestrate the partnership, finds himself slowly falling for the innocence of Honesty Stride. Will he be able to put his past behind him and be the love that she needs or will his selfish ways tear this love apart? 

Book Review
Pure and Honesty as a couple didn't work for me. Individually? yes. As friends yes? As a couple? No. I think the author did a good job of providing a tale of dysfunctional love or relationships. I'm hoping this was the goal as the story was short on love or romance at least when it came from Honesty & Prue as a couple. Example -Prue's reason for dismissing Honesty for three weeks and replacing her was flimsy and didn't quite come across as a good enough reason to handle things the way he did. Unless he, of course, was a teen and immature in the ways of communication, which he clearly was.

Not much time was spent in this first book building their relationship as a couple. In each scene, it felt forced. The whole relationship didn't quite gel. Gio and Kris were a cute couple and I found myself wanting to know about them and Chico. I would have loved to have seen this story told from Clint's perspective. It would have or could have been interesting.

The subplot of the story was what was interesting and kept me interested. I think the author has a good story here just the focus was on the wrong duo. That being said, I will be reading book two.
#justmytwocents

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