3.5 Stars

I want to thank Farrah, Straus and Giroux for the e-version of Luster. I really hoped to like this book more but the writing style was not my style. I loved following Edie throughout the story and my gut hurting from the anxiety of not knowing how the story will turn for her next. The honesty and rawness of her character was wonderful.

I loved this irreverent, funny, & deeply moving story of a young woman trying to find her way through the disappointments of new adulthood. This book is highly quotable—Leilani writes truly dazzling, beautiful sentences, and I was constantly highlighting and hanging on her every word, texting lines from it to a group of my female friends. We get so many stunning moments of wisdom from Edie, the protagonist, as she meditates on grief, lust, art, race, family, relationships, womanhood, etc—and I kept finding myself cracking up in these often hilariously awkward interpersonal scenes & then moments later almost sobbing, recognizing the pain of Edie's loneliness and longing. I think this book perfectly captures the feeling of throwing yourself at the world in your early 20s and hoping something sticks. I will definitely reread this one, and I look forward to Leilani's career! This was an excellent, unforgettable debut.

Thank you to FSG & Netgalley for this ARC.

This book is like a punch to the heart. I know we are still only in the summer but I also know that it’s going to be one of my number one reads this year. The writing, the story, the depth, the descriptions, the messiness, the honesty… Luster is a book that is real, and that will grab you and shake you. I wanted to turn away at times, and throw the book down, but I couldn’t, I wanted to stay by Edie and see where she landed.

Edie is a messy character. But I was also a very messy 20-something living in Bushwick in Brooklyn, making crappy decisions, and dealing with trauma and grief, so I get it. It’s actually super refreshing to lose yourself in a character like Edie, relate to her, learn from her, and with her. Her voice is so honest and her character so deep and so raw, it felt like you were on a journey right with her while reading this book. It’s not an easy book to read, at all, and there is no instant satisfaction within the plot, you spend quite a bit of time squirming, revisiting your own bad judgment calls, and also feeling very uncomfortable. But it’s worth it. My favorite books are those that shake me, show me something else, and make me think deeply, and Luster did just that.

Edie is a 20-something Black woman living in a roach-infested Bushwick apartment, working an unsatisfying job at a publishing house, leading quite a lonely life peppered with questionable sexual choices. She is also an artist but doesn’t believe in her talent. She meets Eric online, who is married to a wife who agrees to an open marriage situation (with rules). Certain events lead Edie to moving in with Eric, his wife Rebecca, and their adopted Black daughter Akila. This leads to a dark, but moving, strange, but also weirdly normal set-up that you know will never have a happy ending, but is that what the reader wants anyway?

Raven Leilani has a very specific writing style: her run-on sentences translate directly to Edie’s thought process, and it makes the reader feel like they are living the scenes through Edie rather than by her side. I love that, and I love how smart the prose is, so many funny moments that shouldn’t really be funny but are because they are real life, and so many dark moments that you also feel intensely. I also really loved how Edie turns back to art and uses it as her way to move backwards through trauma, and then forwards in her life. There is a strong push to believe in oneself in the book, something I think we all need to do more of.

This is one of those books that I want to buy for all my friends, and go on and on about. I can totally understand why it is one of the most anticipated releases of this summer!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in return for an honest review.

Luster by Raven Leilani is about a Black young woman named Edie who makes a bunch of poor choices, knows that she is but continues to do so anyway. The wife of Edie’s lover takes her in when she loses her job and apartment. Both Eric and Rebecca treat her coldly even though they offered her home to her thus making her feel more alone.

Edie is witty and has a dry humor. You can feel her sense of exhaustion and lack of energy towards living. She battles in finding the will to live yet has hope to be someone and uses art as a way to make sense of herself. Important topics such as racism, sexism, and loneliness is displayed throughout the book. I think it's important for books on diverse characters to become more prevalent.

The writing didn't sit that well with me, unfortunately. There were extremely long sentences that almost seemed like they ran on forever but then would be a followed by a bunch of short ones. Because of that I found it distracting and it made me want to start skimming. Aside from that, it was different than what I’ve ever read before and pretty good for a debut.

Thanks to the publisher and to netgalley for the advanced copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the eARC of this remarkable novel.
“He thinks we’re alike. He has no idea how hard I’m trying.”

Edie is a newly-unemployed children’s book editor as well as a talented painter, who makes terrible decisions about whom to sleep with (and where). After losing her job, and beginning an IRL affair with Eric, she ends up living with his family - wife Rebecca, and adopted African-American daughter, Akila - in suburban New Jersey. While there she produces paintings of almost all of their belongings, cataloguing a life that she has not had growing up in upstate New York, or living in NYC.

While there, she has the time, and mysteriously gifted income, to grow as an artist, mentor Akila in Black haircare, and help Rebecca in small ways to realize what her daughter is up against growing up where they are.

All of this is told in super-sharp, of-the-moment prose (there are entire paragraphs that could be Instagram captions, in a very good way) that is absolutely captivating. Highly, highly recommended.

Fantastic debut novel! The writing pulled me in immediately and I so curious to see where the story would go. I didn't know much of the story summary beforehand, so I was really surprised by how the story unfolded. It was like, what are you doing, girl?! But I loved Edie's journey, and how she was trying to find herself. I do think some of the parts where she's staying in the house after she loses her apartment dragged a bit. I sort of understood why she stayed, but I also thought Edie might be more bothered by it. Overall, solid debut and I look forward to more from Raven. She's a fantastic writer!

I was left wanting more, in a good way. The author slowly gives you bits and pieces of Edie's history, both personal and professional. Edie wants to know everything about everyone and everything, but the author still keeps so much close to the vest.

Edie has no remaining family, makes interesting choices in the company she keeps at work, which all comes to a head at once. Intertwined with her relationship with a married man, she's suddenly and literally in their home, becoming a fixture, but not part of the family. One of the things I savored was the relationship between Edie and the couple's adopted daughter Akila. Akila so desperately wants to be around another person who looks like her, but is terrified that Edie will break up the home that she needs, after being the foster care system most of her life. There was similar push and pull with the wife, Rebecca, but in a more confusing and puzzling way.

I read this easily in a few days, and was thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. I'm looking forward to more writing from Raven Leilani!

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley for letting me read this in advance of the release date.

I'm in the minority in my feelings because I didn't particularly like this book but there were things in this book that I liked, which caused me to finish it to the end and am gon focused on that.

It’s the story of Edie, a twenty-three year old Black woman who loses her editorial job in a publishing house after accusations of inappropriate behavior. She enters into a relationship with an older, married white man in an open marriage.

I appreciate the topics of being Black in the publishing company, being a Black artist, living in NYC, white families adopting Black children, police brutality, family and love. Edie strength as well

<i>Luster</i> is Raven Leilani’s polished and stimulating debut novel, situated sometimes uncomfortably at the intersections of race, class, and generation. It’s the story of Edie, a twenty-three year old Black woman who loses her editorial job in a publishing house after accusations of inappropriate behavior: what guy in the office didn’t Edie hook up with, and what guy in the office would be fired for the same behavior? Edie lives in a dreary Brooklyn walkup with a roomie, an apartment that will familiar to any struggling young professionals scraping by in New York City. Edie’s parents are dead. Speaking of her married lover, Edie tell us that <i>”it turns out that maybe he is the only friend I have</i>”. Love, affection, emotional engagement, friendships, enjoyment: all absent from Edie’s life.

The puzzle at the core of <i>Luster</i> is Edie’s relationship with her lover and his wife, their relationship with each other, and how they tolerated Edie. For fear of spilling the beans, I’ll skip the details. This is a cast of difficult to understand characters. The couple’s recently adopted daughter seems both most sympathetic and most emotionally accessible.

Raven Leilani’s Edie reminded me at times of Jean Rhys’ early protagonists, especially Julia Martin in <i>After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie</i>. Of course, the differences between Leilani and Rhys, and between Edie and Julia, are obvious and many. But Leilani partially succeeds where Rhys succeeded brilliantly, in portraying a largely blank, anomic, and disconnected life, and portraying a woman simultaneously unlikable and sympathetic. Rhys is among my few favorite novelists. <i>Luster</i> might have been improved by a dose of Rhys’ vicious prose parsimony and even by Rhys single minded adherence to bleakness, rather than what Leilani’s ending <i>Luster</i> with Edie’s unexpected epiphany of redeeming self-discovery. On a more trivial note, <i>Luster</i> would have also been improved by alert copy editor alert enough to pic up on Leilani’s weird fixation with “twenty-three,” as in Edie’s age, the age difference between Edie and her married lover, the age of Edie’s landlord, and the age when Edie’s <i>”aunt Claudia would emerge from a small Harlem cult”</I>.

I would like to thank both NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ecopy ARC in exchange for this review.
3.5 stars

Thanks to FSG Books for the free advance copy of this book.

Edie is a young Black woman working in publishing in New York, barely making rent, sleeping with a series of the wrong people. She finds herself dating Eric, a married man from New Jersey in an open relationship. When Edie winds up unemployed and without housing, Eric's wife Rebecca invites her to live with them for awhile, despite not seeming to really be on board with the situation.

Oh my god. How do I even talk about this book? I can't form my own sentences after reading Leilani's, which are each individual works of art that form a masterwork. I kept stopping reading to simply stare at the page when the paragraphs were too perfect. The text drags you down with Edie, with occasional sentences that run on for pages, pulling you both forward and underwater at the same time.

Ugh, I haven't even gotten to the plot yet. It's not a highly plotted story, but I found myself whipping through the pages anyway. LUSTER covers everything from being a Black woman in a white-dominated field to the repercussions of growing up in an emotionally abusive home to simply trying to find yourself in a world that refuses to see you.

I know this review is a confused mess. That's because I am in no way equipped to review and critique a novel of this magnitude. You need this book in your life, I promise.

Content warnings: racism, sexism, self-harm, physical abuse, sexual assault, alcoholism, miscarriage, drug abuse.

When I read The Bell Jar as a young twenty-something I clung to it with such a fervor because I finally saw myself in the pages, even though it was written almost 50 years before. Over the years since, I’ve tried reading other novels that claim to capture the modern, young adult’s search for identity. I was widely disappointed, finding the characters to simply be moody and entitled. I believed I had simply aged out of identifying with the younger generation. Then Luster came along and I alternately can’t stop talking about it and am tongue-tied because it’s Just. So. Good! THIS was the book I needed as a young woman!⁠
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This debut novel is not “soft around the edges” so as to make it palatable and mainstream. It is raw, bold, and makes no apologies. I keep asking myself “How? How? How did she just do that?! How did Raven Leilani just pack all those huge themes into 227 pages and not a single sentence felt forced?! How? How? How?” I want to offer up a million quotes, turns of phrase, and sharp prose but I don’t want to take a single piece of the experience away from a reader.⁠
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This is the best book I’ve read this year! Please please please, if you have ever sought my advice on what to read I beg you to preorder this novel!

Riveting, sad, and hilarious all at once. At one point, the narrator says of the older white man she's seeing: "He has no idea how hard I'm trying." The same could be said for the reader of this book. Leilani seems to pull it off effortlessly, yet it takes great talent and practice to write like this. (Also posted on Goodreads.)

Lord, I don't think I could ever want to be this young again! The things young folk have to go through today. This book was an excellent read that had me holding my breath in anticipation at times and my gut, from laughing so hard, at others. Truly an enjoyable read.

I can’t remember the last time I was this mesmerized, this blown away by a debut novel—or any new novel. Leilani’s writing is so rich, so finely observed and carefully detailed, but also funny, smart, and emotional. It feels like it’s ushering in a whole new era of style—not the dumbed-down minimalism we’ve gotten used to in a lot of millennial novels, but a beautifully maximal lyricism. The story keeps a tight focus on Edie, the delightfully caustic protagonist (reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh’s bitter characters), and primarily one relationship with a man and a family (reminiscent of Sally Rooney’s tight focus on the relationship of just a few characters). But along the way the story touches on seemingly everything, in a way those comparisons don’t quite. It’s not overtly about capitalism or race or gender, but by embedding commentaries on these at the lived-in level of Edie's consciousness, it’s more incisive about them then a bunch of other books that try signal their awareness. I was genuinely sad to finish the novel because of how much I enjoyed the language, like getting to the end of a bottle of very fine wine. I hope this is a huge hit for Leilani and I’m craving lots more from her

This debut from Leilani is so strong. The prose is delicious and intricate, the tone is darkly comical, and the story is intoxicating. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be eagerly awaiting future work from Raven Leilani.

This is an absolutely stunning debut from Leilani. From the first page, I was hooked by the writing style; the flat tone elevated my reading experience, emphasizing just how much Edie has given up on life and boosting my emotional connection to her. While at first the novel appears to focus on her relationship with Eric, a mediocre white man in an open marriage, it shifts (thank <i>god</i>) and focuses more strongly on Edie's relationship with Eric's wife, Rebecca, and his Black daughter, Akila. Their friendship is tenuous and charged and impossible to look away from.

Not everyone is going to get along with this; I'd shelve it into the same category as <i>Supper Club</i> and <i>The Pisces</i>. <i>Luster</i> is about a messy woman who is just barely keeping it together. She makes terrible decisions, and <i>knows</i> that she makes terrible decisions. It's heartening to see this kind of novel featuring an ownvoices Black woman: as Edie herself comments in the novel, society has lower expectations of Black women and they have to be twice as good to be recognized as such. To allow a Black woman to be messy and difficult is all the more important in this context.

I'm honestly stunned that this is a debut and will be keeping a sharp eye out for Leilani's future works. I'll go as far as to say that she may have cemented herself as an auto-buy author for me and I am not complaining. Definitely recommend this if it sounds like it would be your kind of thing, and am hopeful that we'll see this longlisted for the Women's Prize.

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Luster by Raven LeilaniLuster
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Luster provides an urgent and new voice. Edie is young and adrift in New York, where she flails through life in the way many early twenty-somethings probably do. Jobs, men, family: it's all a mess and she is deeply affected by the struggles she faces.

Edie meets Eric, a married man, online. The two chat for a long time before they begin dating. The story basically spans the length of their relationship, which becomes increasingly entangled as Edie gets involved with his wife and daughter.

The pace and style of Luster is frenetic, which I don't mean as an insult. Everything is buzzing and fast, dizzy with adjectives that makes you feel like everything is spinning out of control much as it is for the protagonist.

In many novels, I find myself identifying with the characters. Even reading YA, I can put myself back into the high school mindset and remember the feeling of those impactful first loves and friendship dramas. But I found Edie to be quintessentially Gen Z, and while I could relate to the challenges of being a 23 year old woman, I felt Edie truly represented a new generation -- an exciting thing to read. Another key difference is that Edie is black, and Raven Leilani makes insightful commentaries about racial injustice in America. This is, unfortunately, always timely, but felt especially so given the current moment.

Luster was not always easy to read, but was definitely a worthwhile exploration of sex, love, race, art, and suburban milieu.

I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3375668792?book_show_action=false

I was disappointed in the writing. It seemed flat and uninspired and a little predictable and not very mindful. The writing gave the impression that the book's narrator was not an interesting person. I kept experiencing little hiccups in my brain as I read where I wanted the language to be more precise in a given sentence. Even if the novel's narrative voice is meant to reflect a character who is not terribly connected with her thoughts and her choices, her voice should be distinguishable from the next novel on the shelf...and listen, everyone but me is going to read and love this novel. I've felt this way about a few 2020 novels, where the language feels almost deliberately written to be uninteresting, but no one else seems to mind.

Thank you to the author, the publishers Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This debut novel is situated - sometimes uncomfortably - at the intersections of race, class, and generations. This is put to great effect by the wry, sharp writing, which I loved. However, I found the overall tone of the story very hard to take. It pulled me down into a quicksand of lugubriousness that I struggled to escape from for much of the book's length.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3

Luster is an amazing debut novel. It was so absorbing, I found myself 'flipping' through page after page without my eyes or thoughts leaving the screen for long stretches of time. It's poignant and brilliant and memorable. Edie won't be easy to forget and I'm so glad I got the chance to read it! Highly recommend. 4.5 stars.