Two exes. One summer wedding. Zero chance of escaping the heat.
Prepare to laugh, swoon, and fall head over heels with this irresistible standalone romance from Bolu Babalola, the bestselling author of Honey and Spice, a Reese’s Book Club pick.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Bolu Babalola’s Sweet Heat, which releases on September 2nd 2025.
Twenty-eight-year-old Kiki Banjo hosts the popular podcast The HeartBeat, solving romantic conundrums and dishing out life advice. But behind the mic, career setbacks and a devastating breakup have left her hanging on by a thread. As she’s preparing to be the Maid of Honor in her best friend’s wedding, everything starts to unravel, and Kiki is left wondering if she ever had the answers.
Then Kiki finds herself face-to-face with the Best Man, her ex-boyfriend, Malakai—the smooth-talking, absurdly handsome, annoyingly perceptive man who stole her heart and then shattered it. While Kiki’s approaching rock bottom, Malakai’s been on the rise as a filmmaker, and now they have no choice but to play nice until the wedding is over. Both are hell-bent on ignoring the smoldering chemistry between them, but as they navigate the chaos of wedding plans, career ambitions, and Kiki’s growing fears about the future, they can’t ignore the spark that’s only getting hotter.
They just have to get through the summer. So why does it feel like playing with fire?
With Bakari, everything was simple, cut and dry, not so much an enchanted forest of romance, but a neatly manicured national park, clean paths, trimmed hedges, no messes. I liked that. I needed that.
It was kind of funny how I was able to joke about us having a kid together within the first ten minutes of us meeting when now, a year or so on, the idea of us getting married is sending me into a conniption.
Bakari clears his throat. He looks softly nervous and his thumb presses into the back of my hand with purpose. ‘Look, you’ve been stressed about what you’re going to do when you wind up The Heartbeat’s tour. MelaninMatch has just been acquired by Cypher and, like, not to be weird about it, I’m doing really well right now because of that.’
He’s talking about the huge business acquisition that saw the successful dating app he’d created when he was twenty- three blow and become international. It’s odd how little Bakari and I discuss money despite the fact that he’s a tech founder who was on the Forbes list by twenty- five, and I always scan Ready To Eat avocados as unripe avocados at self- check- out because they’re 20p cheaper. He started with a dating app created for Black people looking to find love, then created an app called ShortCutz that would pool all the barbers in your vicinity – this led to him creating Onyx, an umbrella company that would serve underrepresented communities. It had a team of twenty that was fast- growing and whose merch was responsible for everything from the giant T-shirt I wear while spooning peanut butter directly from the jar when I’m Going Through It to my stationery, with which I journal when I’m Going Through It. Both things have been put to use recently. While my boyfriend was doing Well, I was doing Fine. Technically Fine. As fine as an overachieving eldest Nigerian daughter could be after quitting their job out of nowhere. I’m down to browsing graduate courses only once a day now rather than once every hour of every day.
I slowly nod, although I’m not sure what I’m agreeing to or with. The fact that his career’s soaring whilst mine is plummeting? Bakari isn’t the most romantic guy in the classic way (he once called holding hands down the street ‘a bit inefficient for our purposes. What is it for? You know I care about you, and it’s not great for optimised walking’), but, still, I didn’t think a proposal would involve him talking about how marriage might make the most financial sense like I’m in a Regency romance, and my family are struggling gentry with a crumbling manor, having to retrench. Although, I guess a Nigerian restaurant that has gone into decline because more of a certain kind of person who’s willing to pay £10 for a cakepop at the ‘artisan bake shop’ has moved into the area may count. (They’re called Fat & Flour. Their bagels are very dry.)
From the book SWEET HEAT by Bolu Babalola. Copyright © 2025 by Bolu Babalola. Published on September 2, 2025 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
