BOOK REVIEW

A Serious Book, Beginning With a Nude Model Smeared In Chocolate

The God of Good Looks was my favorite fiction read of 2024

Cover image from Goodreads

Bianca Bridge is having an affair with a politician.

The newspapers break the story to Trinidad and Tobago’s public with a photograph of twenty-three-year-old Bianca sitting on the beach in a yellow thong with her ‘man’ Eric. Her work colleagues respond without sympathy and social media is merciless. Then the politician’s wife gets busy ‘cancelling’ her, making sure she loses her job and making it all but impossible for her to be hired again. In desperation, Bianca takes up modelling.

And that’s where we find her at the opening of The God of Good Looks, beginning a journal to save her sanity, reminding herself she’s not a ‘human sex doll,’ after a day spent, ‘being slathered with chocolate syrup and squirted with whipped cream for a Valentine’s Day photoshoot.’

Obadiah Cortland is the ‘God of Good Looks’. It’s true he’s gorgeous, but the moniker has become part of his brand, not his ego. He cultivates his reputation as the ‘meanest man in the industry’, in control and destined for greatness. Obadiah is a genius makeup artist with ambitious plans for his makeup school and building a high-end clientele. Despite his brilliance, his limited social network leaves him short of investors. It’s getting harder to keep the business, OC Beauty, on the road, far less realize its full potential.

When Obadiah hires Bianca, he thinks of her as a pampered rich girl with social contacts that can help OC Beauty. He’s rude, arrogant and cold to her because he thinks he needs to take her down a peg or two.

Bianca tolerates Obadiah’s obnoxious behavior since the only other job offer on the table was a soft porn photoshoot with a photographer who sexually harassed her.

She’s excited by the creative challenges that come with her role and intends to dazzle her boss professionally with her competence, turning OC Beauty’s promotional magazine into an advertiser magnet worth every inch of its glossy paper.

But she hasn’t counted on Juliana, Eric’s wife, deploying her social and business influence to undermine Obadiah and…