Review: Chloe - Connie Briscoe

Review: Chloe - Connie Briscoe - March 2025

Friends, we need to talk. And by talk, I mean I need to process what just happened to me over the past few days because honestly? I'm still scratching my head.

You know that feeling when you finish a book and immediately wonder if you missed something crucial? Like maybe there were secret pages that explained the actual plot? That's exactly where Connie Briscoe's Chloe left me – standing in my kitchen at 2 AM, staring at the cover like it might reveal the answers to questions I didn't even know I was supposed to ask.

Let me paint you a picture. We start with Angel, a private chef who splits her time between summer gigs on some fancy island and working at a high-end restaurant the rest of the year. Standard setup, right? Enter Everett Bruce – successful, Black, billionaire, and conveniently single because his wife Chloe allegedly took her own life. Red flags? What red flags?

The romance develops faster than my ability to suspend disbelief. One minute Angel's flipping fish for wealthy summer residents, the next she's getting proposed to by a man who's basically a walking mystery wrapped in expensive suits. Because nothing says "healthy relationship foundation" like a summer fling that escalates to marriage proposals, am I right?

Here's where things get interesting (and by interesting, I mean confusing). Angel moves into Everett's family mansion and immediately gets those spine-tingling vibes that scream "maybe your predecessor didn't actually kill herself." Shocking plot twist: she's right! Chloe was murdered, and now Angel's playing amateur detective while trying to figure out if she's next on someone's hit list.

Look, I love Black literary fiction. I really do. There's something beautiful about stories that don't follow conventional patterns, that challenge readers to think differently. But Chloe felt less like an artistic choice and more like someone forgot to include a roadmap. The pacing jumps around like a caffeinated squirrel, character motivations appear and disappear without explanation, and the mystery elements feel thrown in almost as an afterthought.

Connie Briscoe clearly has writing talent – there are moments of genuine brilliance scattered throughout. Her descriptions of Angel's culinary world are mouth-watering, and when she captures the dynamics of wealth and class, it's sharp and insightful. But these golden moments are buried under layers of plot confusion and underdeveloped relationships.

The most frustrating part? There's a good story hiding in here somewhere. The premise of a working-class woman navigating elite society while uncovering dark family secrets has serious potential. Unfortunately, the execution left me feeling like I'd been served a beautiful-looking dish that somehow forgot the seasoning.

If you're looking for a mystery that makes sense or a romance with believable development, maybe skip this one. But if you enjoy the literary equivalent of a puzzle with missing pieces, Chloe might be your unexpected obsession.

Sometimes books leave you changed. Sometimes they leave you confused. And sometimes, like with Chloe, they leave you wondering if confusion was the point all along.

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Amazon: https://amzn.to/4eaoUHM