Nick and Jasmine are the perfect couple; they have been dating for over two years and everything seems perfect. But Nick is thrown completely when Jasmine rejects his marriage proposal and is so humiliated that he decides to move to Chicago and make a fresh start in Ever After by Edwardo Jackson.

Nick is king of the world when he first arrives in the Windy City and quickly begins dating a succession of potential Jasmine fill-ins. Soon enough, however, Nick sinks to the depths of despair when the dates stop coming and the nights get very, very lonely. In desperation, Nick breaks all of his dating rules as he attempts to replace Jasmine (even the one about married women). The only good thing to come from all the upheaval is Nick’s discovery of a passion for acting.

Nick decides to go after a degree in acting to further his chances of find work when he moves to California to pursue acting full time. Just as he’s walking out the door to drive to San Diego and leave Chicago behind for good, the phone rings; it’s Jasmine. Nick has yet to find another woman to replace her in his heart, is this Nick’s chance to find happily ever after?

Ever After was really quite surprising to me; I’ve recently started reading "Black" fiction after many years of avoiding it for the most part. Most black authors put in too much detail for my taste and seem uncomfortable on paper with expressing themselves. They try too hard to sound grammatically correct, and end up sounding too uptight and using phrases that few people use in real life. This book does have all of those problems, which hopefully Jackson will have toned down or erased completely in his next work; however, it does have something else. That something is a look into the maturation of a black man.

This is not a sociology book in the least, but within this romance story there is a young black man trying to figure out life and how to be happy living it. It’s very interesting watching Nick stumble into the facts of life and how he interprets them. You become so involved that after finishing the book you still think about Nick and wonder how he’s dealing with the new situations in his life, which is exactly what any good author would want.