What Passes as Love: A Novel

Written by Trisha R. Thomas

Narrated by Soneela Nankani and Marcus Stewart

A young woman pays a devastating price for freedom in this heartrending and breathtaking novel of the nineteenth-century South.

1850. I was six years old the day Lewis Holt came to take me away.

Born into slavery, Dahlia never knew her mother—or what happened to her. When Dahlia’s father, the owner of Vesterville plantation, takes her to work in his home as a servant, she’s desperately lonely. Forced to leave behind her best friend, Bo, she lives in a world between black and white, belonging to neither.

Ten years later, Dahlia meets Timothy Ross, an Englishman in need of a wife. Reinventing herself as Lily Dove, Dahlia allows Timothy to believe she’s white, with no family to speak of, and agrees to marry him. She knows the danger of being found out. She also knows she’ll never have this chance at freedom again.

Ensconced in the Ross mansion, Dahlia soon finds herself held captive in a different way—as the dutiful wife of a young man who has set his sights on a political future. But when Bo arrives on the estate in shackles, Dahlia decides to risk everything to save his life. With suspicions of her true identity growing and a bounty hunter not far behind, Dahlia must act fast or pay a devastating price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781713612278

Trisha R. Thomas

Trisha R. Thomas is an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work finalist. She’s a Literary Lion Award honoree by the King County Library Foundation and was voted Best New Writer by the Black Writer’s Alliance. Her debut novel, Nappily Ever After is now a Netflix movie. O Oprah Magazine featured her novels in Books That Matter for delving into the self-esteem of young women of color and the insurmountable expectations they face starting at an early age. She lives in California with her family where she continues to write the Nappily Series.

Reviews for What Passes as Love

[Brenda Shealey Steele · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There has to be a part two please this was one of the best books. I read in a long time oh my God the characters were very memorable this author open my heart because all we ever read about is the pain and agony, but she put some imagination to work to let good things happen in spite of all the bad I want to know more books that she has written. My imagination tells me….. WAIT I don’t want to spoil it for FUTURE READERS but I can imagine a happy happy ending for a book 2 book 3, book 4, book 5 and so on . oh my God thank you

[sunnydrk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good plot that draws you in with interesting characters, but then leaves you hanging. There is just so much more that could be done with them. And then the end, just seems to come out of nowhere and make no sense as to how it happened.