This Could Be Forever by Ebony LaDelle

This compelling and complex romance about love across cultures follows a Black girl and Brown boy who find themselves—and each other—while pursuing their passions the summer before college.

Deja’s got a plan. The first in her large family to go to college, she wants to study chemistry and sell natural skin care products, like the ones she already creates from plants grown on her family’s North Carolina farm. It all starts with the Onward Bound summer program at the University of Maryland, the summer before school officially starts.

Raja’s got a dream. His traditional Nepali parents want him to study engineering and settle down in an arranged marriage, but his passion is art, and he wants to open his own tattoo parlor one day. In the meantime, he’s apprenticing at a tattoo shop in College Park, Maryland.

When Deja walks into the shop where Raja’s working, they both start crushing hard—over the course of the summer, they fall more and more deeply for one another. But the closer they get and the more their lives entwine, the more they find that dating someone who doesn’t match your parents’ expectations is harder than they ever imagined.

Can they bridge the divide between the vision their families have for their futures and the lives—and love—that are starting to feel like destiny?

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Meet The Author

Ebony LaDelle is the author of Love Radio—which was People magazine’s best book of the summer, Apple Books’s best book of 2022, an Amazon’s Editor Pick, and featured on the Today show. Prior to being an author, Ebony was a brand marketing director in book publishing and worked at Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, among others. Born in Michigan, awoken at Howard University, and cultivated in Brooklyn, Ebony can usually be found eating out somewhere or being the undisputed Mom Friend of any group. You can visit her online at EbonyLaDelle.com and follow her on social at @EbonyLaDelle