The Best Man: Unfinished Business by Malcolm D. Lee with Jayne Allen Delivers All the Feels
[front cover of a paperback ARC for The Best Man: Unfinished Business; silhouette of three adults] The Best Man: Unfinished Business by Malcolm D. Lee with Jayne Allen
adult contemporary fiction with romantic elements
Storehouse Voices, July 2025
First, dedicated fans of The Best Man franchise and its beloved characters need not fear how they’re treated in this first of three novels. In fact. One thread of Harper’s storyline seems to reflect the real-life author/screenwriter/director’s battle to protect and maintain the integrity of The Best Man universe. Mission accomplished.
Second, once readers - fans or not - start this novel they won’t want to stop. The compulsion to re/watch The Best Man movies and limited series and maybe even to reread this book while anticipating the release of book two in 2026 will prove difficult to resist.
Who are you?
Who are your people?
Where do you belong?
What’s the purpose of your life?
When is the allure of the familiar a trap, and when is it a safe space to heal and thrive?
With emotional vulnerability that’s often messy, visceral sensitivity, lots of humor and incendiary sexual tension in three acts, this story focuses on the decades-long interpersonal tension between Harper, Robyn, and Jordan. Within that complicated entanglement each is experiencing their own existential reckoning connected to present-day quandaries rooted in hindsight and some past trauma.
Recurring themes on meditation, self-care, and therapy dovetail seamlessly with riffs on complex family dynamics between those related by blood and by choice. The Best Man: Unfinished Business offers a grown-and-sexy examination of how circumstances change and relationships evolve and get reconfigured among people who know and love each other through multiple stages of life.
Forthright candor in the writing style resonates with poignant authenticity and many laugh aloud moments. Shades of Percival Everett’s Erasure mixed with Marita Golden’s The Strong Black Woman and The New Black Woman, and Dr. Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes along with a bit of the pathos of Sliding Doors, echoes of Living Single and Girlfriends fast-forwarded into their greater later era, too, in its joyous celebration of the multi-faceted expressions of being human while Black while delivering an entertaining, provocative read for and about real grown folks make this one of the best ways to satisfy fans’ desires for more new content featuring cherished characters.
an observation regarding the ARC given to me: high frequency usage of ellipsis punctuation (which is maybe a screenwriting convention - or a texting effect - that’ll get adjusted in the final version?) Oh, read Swept Away by Beth O'Leary late last night and it also used lots of ellipses so it's possibly a new trend in fiction.
This week's library support of my BAC (Book Acquisition Compulsion) issues
[a bookstack from top to bottom: Frenemies with Benefits, The Martian Contingency, Say Everything, Book Boyfriend, Crash Landing, Another Fine Mess, The Ephemera Collector] Oppressors hate it when the people they're attempting to oppress savor the simple, small, medium and grand joys of life, so experience lots of pleasure every day!
