Honey & Spice

Honey & Spice is the debut novel of bestselling British Nigerian author Bolu Babalola, a screenwriter and journalist published by major outlets including Vice and Cosmopolitan. Babalola achieved international recognition with her short story collection Love in Color (2020), a Sunday Times bestseller, and followed this in 2022 with Honey & Spice. A college-set romance, the book follows the adventures in love and friendship of Kiki Banjo, a British Nigerian college student who agrees to stage a fake relationship with campus hottie Malakai Korede to help them both with artistic projects. When this arrangement becomes more than they anticipated, Kiki is forced to confront her own beliefs about love and identity within the rich and diversified Black student culture nestled within her predominantly white university. Through these concerns, the novel explores the key themes of Community Versus Competition, Love and the Risk of Betrayal, and Cultural Pride and Heritage.

The novel received wide critical praise and was selected for Reese’s Book Club and TikTok’s Book Club Book Awards. It became a Sunday Times bestseller on publication.

This guide quotes from the hardcover US first edition published in 2022 by HarperCollins. Citations use page numbers in this edition.

Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of sexual harassment and microaggressions against Black characters, which are discussed in this guide.

Plot Summary

Kiki Banjo is beginning her second year of school at Whitewell College, a fictional British University. She decides to put an end to the secret hookups she’s been having with Zack Kingsford, the president of the African-Caribbean Society (ACS), a club also known as “Blackwell.” As she leaves Zack’s room, Kiki runs into a good-looking young man and instantly clicks with him, but sees him heading to another girl’s room. Kiki meets with her best friend, Aminah, who helps her run her music and relationship advice show, Brown Sugar. Aminah reports fights among girls belonging to the different Blackwell cliques, and Kiki deduces that the handsome stranger, new transfer Malakai Korede, is the cause. She uses her show to call him out as a “Wasteman”—a man who wastes women’s time—and counsels her listeners not to waste their time on a man who isn’t sincere.

Kiki meets with her mentor, Dr. Miller, who suggests that Kiki should increase the reach of her show to improve her chances of securing a summer arts internship at New York University. She advises Kiki to get out of her comfort zone and work with another promising student, an aspiring film maker, who turns out to be Malakai. Kiki prefers to stay on the edges of Blackwell society, with Aminah being her only real friend; she does this because she was hurt in previous close relationships.

At the Friday night social event for Blackwellians, Kiki observes two attractive and popular young women, Shanti and Chioma, both accusing Malakai of leading them on. Zack approaches Kiki, suggesting that they get back together. To shake him off, Kiki kisses Malakai. She finds him dangerously attractive, but takes the opportunity scold him for leading on the other girls. Malakai notes that she’s behaving hypocritically, since she just used him to make Zack mad. Kiki loses her temper and pours her drink on Malakai’s lap. She is embarrassed about this the next day when he and his friend, Kofi, come into the restaurant where Kiki and Aminah are having brunch.

The girls walk with the guys to the basketball court and Kiki and Malakai fall into conversation about their various art projects. Malakai suggests that Kiki could help him with his next film by interviewing young couples, and she suggests they could pretend to date so she could have him on Brown Sugar to talk about romantic relationships from both sides. They agree to a timeline and parameters for their fake relationship. When a fellow student, Adwoa, asks Kiki to use her show as a platform to speak out against a debate planned between the Blackwells and the Whitewell Knights, a group with an overtly racist agenda, Kiki declines; she’s afraid getting political will lose her listeners, and she doesn’t want to risk her internship.

Malakai invites Kiki for dinner at a funky diner called Sweetest Ting to get started on his film plans, and the two connect in easy banter. Malakai tells Kiki about his ex-girlfriend, Ama, and Kiki reveals how hard it was for her in high school when her mother was sick with cancer. As they stage appearances and host a dialogue on her show, Kiki enjoys her time with Malakai, and a friendship begins to blossom. They are admired as a cute couple, and the audience for Brown Sugar grows. Narrative flashbacks to Kiki’s high school reveal how she lost her friend group, including her best friend, Rianne. When Rianne’s boyfriend, Nile, tried to get together with Kiki at a party and Kiki turned him down, Nile told Rianne Kiki came on to him. Kiki has decided to hold herself apart so she can’t get hurt again but now increasingly finds herself drawn into friendships. When Rianne reaches out via social media, Kiki feels conflicted. Malakai insists she has to socialize to make their plan work. Kiki cautiously forms new friendships with Shanti and Chioma and realizes she was being hypocritical in holding herself apart and judging others. Kiki and Malakai also grow closer, and she learns about his troubled relationship with his father, whose infidelity has made Malakai suspicious about romantic relationships, just like Kiki. She warms further to Malakai when he dresses as a character from her favorite novels and takes her to a romance convention in cosplay. Kiki runs into Rianne, who apologizes for believing Nile, and they cautiously reconcile.

Kiki finds herself increasingly attracted to Malakai, and they become physically intimate. Adwoa brings Kiki proof that Zack has been taking money from the Whitewell Knights to sabotage Blackwell events, and Kiki uses her show to call for a new ACS election. She’s starting to enjoy her new relationships and feel she’s really part of Blackwell when a vicious video from Zack goes live, claiming Kiki was angry when they broke up and sharing a picture of her in her underwear. Hurt and humiliated, Kiki hides away, and when Malakai tries reaching out to her, she reminds him their relationship was fake and breaks things off. Kiki hides in her room until Shanti, Chioma, and Aminah stage an intervention where Kiki learns Zack has threatened and blackmailed other women. She also realizes that her feelings for Malakai aren’t fake.

Kiki arranges to expose Zack with a popup Brown Sugar show at the AfroWinter Ball in collaboration with a gossip columnist, Simi. At the ball, Kiki publicly admits that she hooked up with Zack and then staged a relationship with Malakai that turned real. Kiki admits that she’s in love. In response, Malakai uses clips from his film to confess that he’s in love with Kiki also. The novel ends with Kiki running for president of the ACS and being accepted for the NYU internship.