The Very Unrealistic Life of Gabriela Valverde

By Diamond Speed

At 21 years old, Gabriela Arreola Valverde has already outlasted grief that should have broken her. She runs a multimillion-dollar company she never asked for, loves people in ways that defy easy explanation, and is raising twins with a woman she used to date and a ghost she used to love.

The Very Unrealistic Life of Gabriela Valverde is an urban fiction novel that follows Gabriela Black, Latina, unapologetically complicated from the night of her 21st birthday alone on the floor of her Riverside, Jacksonville apartment, through pregnancies, a vampire ex-girlfriend who refuses to fully depart, a high school almost-something who becomes her husband, and the slow, daily work of building a life that is genuinely hers.

This is a story about Black and Latina womanhood, chosen family, loving across difference, grief that stays and grief that grows into something else, and what it looks like to hold a legacy you were handed before you were ready.

Diamond Speed's 10th novel is her most intimate and genre-defying yet part supernatural romance, part family saga, part love letter to Jacksonville, Florida and to every woman who has ever built something extraordinary out of the unrealistic material of her actual life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H1M63PFK
• ISBN13: 9798196691546
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"