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The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil

from $11.99
Hardcover:

One knock at the door. A secret buried since childhood. And a woman who must choose between the life she carefully built and the truth she has spent decades running from.

From Mara Brock Akil — the award-winning creator of Girlfriends, Being Mary Jane, and Forever — comes a powerfully moving debut novel that readers are already calling one of the best books they've read in years.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00

__________________________________________

About the book:

From the outside, Dionne Daphne has everything: a coveted position as beauty editor at a prestigious New York magazine, a boyfriend who looks like he stepped off its pages, a social life among New York's upper echelon, and a girlhood shaped by debutante balls and carefully maintained appearances. But that is only from the outside.

When her ex-boyfriend appears at her Brooklyn doorstep, Dionne allows herself to hope — for reconciliation, for the future her mother always envisioned for her. Instead, he delivers life-threatening news that sends a crack running through her picture-perfect world. A crack that grows, deepens, and pulls her straight back into her past.

Set against the backdrop of 1990s New York, The Revelation of Dionne Daphne follows Dionne on an unplanned road trip with an unlikely stranger as she races toward the truth she has hidden since childhood — confronting the family, the secrets, and the buried pain that shaped everything she became.

Mara Brock Akil brings to her debut novel the same unflinching honesty, poignancy, and celebration of Black joy that made her television work a cultural touchstone for millions. The Revelation of Dionne Daphne tackles the school-to-prison pipeline, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the complexity of Black women's identity with equal parts gravity and warmth.

At its heart, this is a novel about what happens when you stop hiding your pain long enough to finally feel it — and discover that the light you've been searching for was buried inside you all along. It is a story of broken lovers, fractured families, and distant friendships all slowly, bravely finding their way back to one another.

One knock at the door. A secret buried since childhood. And a woman who must choose between the life she carefully built and the truth she has spent decades running from.

From Mara Brock Akil — the award-winning creator of Girlfriends, Being Mary Jane, and Forever — comes a powerfully moving debut novel that readers are already calling one of the best books they've read in years.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00

__________________________________________

About the book:

From the outside, Dionne Daphne has everything: a coveted position as beauty editor at a prestigious New York magazine, a boyfriend who looks like he stepped off its pages, a social life among New York's upper echelon, and a girlhood shaped by debutante balls and carefully maintained appearances. But that is only from the outside.

When her ex-boyfriend appears at her Brooklyn doorstep, Dionne allows herself to hope — for reconciliation, for the future her mother always envisioned for her. Instead, he delivers life-threatening news that sends a crack running through her picture-perfect world. A crack that grows, deepens, and pulls her straight back into her past.

Set against the backdrop of 1990s New York, The Revelation of Dionne Daphne follows Dionne on an unplanned road trip with an unlikely stranger as she races toward the truth she has hidden since childhood — confronting the family, the secrets, and the buried pain that shaped everything she became.

Mara Brock Akil brings to her debut novel the same unflinching honesty, poignancy, and celebration of Black joy that made her television work a cultural touchstone for millions. The Revelation of Dionne Daphne tackles the school-to-prison pipeline, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the complexity of Black women's identity with equal parts gravity and warmth.

At its heart, this is a novel about what happens when you stop hiding your pain long enough to finally feel it — and discover that the light you've been searching for was buried inside you all along. It is a story of broken lovers, fractured families, and distant friendships all slowly, bravely finding their way back to one another.

  • Publisher: Storehouse Voices

    Title:The Revelation of Dionne Daphne: A Novel

    Author: Mara Brock Akil

    On Sale Date: June 30, 2026

    ISBN 13: 9780593597774

    ISBN 10: 059359777X

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $30.00 USD

    BISAC: Fiction / Women

    Page Count: 288

    Dimensions: 9.6 in H | 6.4 in W | 1 in T

    Weight: 1 lb

  • Mara Brock Akil is an award-winning writer, producer, director, and showrunner whose body of work has reached more than 38 million viewers since 2020. She is the creator of Girlfriends, Being Mary Jane, Love Is, and Forever — including the new Netflix adaptation of Judy Blume's beloved novel — as well as Netflix's Stamped from the Beginning. Her accolades include two NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Writing, two Black Reel Awards, a BET Comedy Award, Essence's Visionary Award, and multiple appearances on Variety and The Hollywood Reporter's most powerful lists. She is the 2026 recipient of both the prestigious Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television from the Producers Guild of America and the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award from NATPE.

    Beyond her screen work, Akil launched The Writers' Colony in 2021, a Los Angeles-based writing residency dedicated to supporting underrepresented writers in developing their craft. The Revelation of Dionne Daphne marks her debut as a novelist — and the first title from Storehouse Voices, a new imprint from Crown Publishing committed to elevating Black voices in literature.

  • The reviews are in! Pre-release readers are calling it brilliant, emotionally gripping, and impossible to put down:

    • Early readers describe The Revelation of Dionne Daphne as the truest, most joyful, and most honest portrait of Black womanhood in the 1990s they have ever encountered in fiction — the book they wish had existed to answer the question of what that era really felt like.

    • Reviewers praise Akil's prose as eloquent and fearless, saying her ability to wrestle with deeply serious subject matter while never losing sight of warmth, humor, and Black joy is nothing short of extraordinary.

    • Readers note that Dionne's internal battle — as she awaits potentially life-altering news while confronting secrets she has carried since childhood — makes for a story that is as emotionally resonant as it is impossible to set down.

    • Book lovers across genres call it a triumph of debut fiction, a novel that tackles the HIV/AIDS epidemic, family trauma, identity, and redemption with equal measures of courage and grace — and leaves you changed by the time you reach its final page.

This book is for you if:

  • You love women's fiction that goes deep — stories about healing from trauma, forgiving your past, and learning to love yourself before loving anyone else.

  • You're drawn to richly evocative stories set in the 1990s that capture the joy, fear, and cultural complexity of that era.

  • You're looking for your next book club pick, one with layered themes, an unforgettable protagonist, and no shortage of moments to discuss long after the last page.

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