Sharp, but a tiny bit self-concious, this book is the right side of fragile and very enjoyable, in a weird, challenging way. Great characterisation, solid voice, worth a glance.

This book is a tough one for me to review. There was a lot to like about it. It was smart and incisive and observant, particularly around racial themes. It was a quick and engaging read, although I wouldn’t exactly say I enjoyed it. There were two things that were major stumbling blocks for me. First, the writing was maybe just slightly overwrought, or maybe self-conscious, and while I know they were an intentional stylistic choice, the run-on sentences were just out of control. Second, it was very depressing, and in a way where I couldn’t exactly figure out the point. Terrible things kept happening to Edie and she kept making awful choices and that was hard enough to handle as a reader, but it was more that everything was presented through such a bleak lens. I couldn’t get into the characters’ heads and I think it was because everything they did was presented so flatly, almost to the point of satire. The choice of jobs for Rebecca, for example, just seemed like too much. The interactions between the characters were listless and confusing. I do think the author intended this, that it is some kind of commentary on modern millennial life, and I think she probably achieved what she was going for - it just wasn’t for me.

My favorite thing about reading a debut novel is that you don’t really know what to expect from the author. Based on the plot of “Luster”, which on the surface is about a young black artist working at a low-level publishing job ends up in a relationship with an older white man who is in an open marriage, the book could go several ways. Luckily, “Luster” is a bold, blunt, darkly humorous, messy, and visceral novel. Edie’s observations on life as a Black woman just trying to figure it all out are so raw and watching this character navigate through various trials and tribulations was riveting. What author Raven Leilani was able to achieve in 227 pages is a feat and she is a writer I will be keeping tabs in the future.

I had a tough time with this one. Raven Leilani is an excellent writer who creates a rich inner world for Edie and expertly tackles the feelings and discrepancies that occur between those with different class and racial backgrounds, including the power imbalance in a relationship between a middle-aged white man and a young black woman.

Reading this wasn't an enjoyable experience. This isn't because of the quality of the writing (as mentioned, Leilani's writing is sharp and skillful), but rather because it seems like Leilani constantly lobs terribly situations at Edie with no reprieve. Also, while the first sentence is excellent, I struggled to get into Edie's head at the beginning of the book.

Overall, there are no kernels of hope here. If and when you read this, make sure you're in a good place mentally and emotionally.

Sometimes I have wished I could step inside the pages of a book and become for a time a character in the story. It would be fun and exciting to live in the world inhabited by these characters. However, in the book, Luster, I would never want to be a single one of these characters. They were all lost in the quagmire of their lives. Hurt, unsure, depressed, and morose might be apt adjectives for the four characters. Yet, while this was a sad, pessimistic story, it was one that quickly became fascinating as it was well written and enticed the reader to enter this dispirited world the characters found themselves in.

Edie, poor Edie, a young black woman, thinks of herself as a sexual object only seeming to derive pleasure from the act and never really seeing herself as an emerging gifted artist. She arrives at a point in her life where she is living with the married man, Erik, she has sex with, his wife, a medical examiner, and their adopted black daughter. They seem almost like mirages as they drift in and out of happenings, colorless, and cast into a sea of crestfallen lives. There seems to be no sense in lives that seem senseless, and yet Edie strives to be a number of things, an artist, a guide to Akila, and someone struggling to overcome sexual and racial mores in a time of fluctuating concepts and ideas.

This is not a happy book, one where everything comes up smelling like roses in the end. However, it is a book filled with questions and the knowledge of how to find your way in this world we are living in. What rules do we follow when there seems to be no rules?

Or is our life a painting or a photograph captured of us that makes us become real in the eyes of ourselves and the world?

Thank you to Raven Leilani, Farrar, Straus and Giroux , and NetGalley for a copy of this new author's book due out August 4, 2020.

I have no idea how to describe this book but I will give it my neat shot. It was one of the most real things I’ve ever read. The voice and tone was incredible, told from Edith’s experience a young black woman with a uniquely (in some ways) unfortunate past who makes a lot of poor life choices and seems to drift through life giving all of herself to anyone willing to accept it. I felt so sad for her the whole time.

When she begins seeing a man in an open marriage, his wife, Rebecca, who is obviously less than pleased with the arrangement, is curious about Edith and circumstances eventually lead to Edith living with her not-quite-boyfriend, and his family. Things are weird and uncomfortable but like a train wreck, I could not look away. All of the characters were so well-written , so honestly portrayed in all of their flaws. This was such a fascinating view of the dichotomy between such different cultures and experiences and levels of privilege. Surreal and so real at the same time. This book is probably not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thank you NetGalley, Raven Leilani, and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A surprising, at-times magical novel that is sharply written, and oftentimes dizzying. Leilani is certainly a gifted writer who is tackling themes here that don't often make it into mainstream literature.

My one reservation is that the quick turns in action, that are perhaps a stylistic choice, felt oftentimes unnecessarily confusing. I felt similarly to the flashbacks, as if they were cobbled together from previously written short stories. There were moments I wish felt more connective and less abrupt to the whole of the novel - but I also see how this is a stylistic decision, and find much to admire still. The novel has regardless stayed with me since reading.

Will recommend.

So I'm asking myself what I just read. Felt the book was all over the place.

I won this book thru Goodreads, but it never arrived.

Thanks to author,publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

A fantastic, sharp, funny, and wildly unique voice. A fast, great read and definitely one of the best debuts I've read this year.

This story follows Edie as she navigates her life and deals with the choices she has made to get her there. In that aspect, it seems like your run of the mill coming-of-age novel, but it is so much more than that. Edie chooses to begin a relationship with a man in an open marriage, complicated by the fact that the man's wife asks Edie to try to connect with her adopted daughter since they are both African American. Needless to say, this set up is not as picturesque as it seem. I can truly say I have never read another book like this one. The story is strange, which seems like a negative, but in this case it is just the best word I can choose to describe the rollercoaster that is Luster. A strange, whirlwind, wild ride through the life of Edie. Very enjoyable, I cannot wait to read more from Raven Leilani! Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a copy of this book for an honest review.

This is going to be a hard book to review. I'll start by saying that this was original, different, and unexpected.
Edie (Edith), a young black woman who lives in New York and works in publishing. She is broke and hardly makes enough for rent and other necessities. She doesn't shy away from new men and sex and some of her bad sex-decisions at the workplace cost her job. She then finds herself in the middle of a suburban white couple's open marriage. Edie is then propositioned by Eric's wife to be a confidant to their adopted Black teenage daughter, Akila, which is where things get a bit strange and uncomfortable, but also unputdownable. During Edie's stay as a guest in Eric and Rebecca's home (a bizarre living situation bred from retribution, necessity, and morbid curiosity) we get a window into Edie's childhood and her lived experience as a woman, a millennial, an African American and-- eventually-- an artist. This novel was described to me as a "fever dream" experience. Admittedly, I didn't really understand that until I read it. 5 damn stars. Fantastic, but really hard to review.

The television show, Scandal, does this cinematographic bit I’ve come to adore. When filming, a dollied camera pans through beveled glass before cutting to a close-up shot. The chandelier trademark evokes a sensual ambiguity, introducing viewers to a scene that feels off-limits. It seems appropriate, reading a book titled Luster kindles a similar primal sensation.

Everything about Luster purrs of intoxication — from Edie, the lackadaisical artist with her intellectual and inky-tragic interior dialogue, to the unspoken tension of the delusory threesome(ish) relationship she keeps up with Eric & Rebecca. You, the reader are plunged into the story’s quicksand, drunkenly cringing to see how close you can get.

But an intoxicated narrative does not imply sloppy narrating.
Leilani’s puncturing prose feels crafted for a spoken-word stage. And the characters she’s molded follow suit — given an allowance to be viciously unprocessed about their desires and disappointments.

Luster is as strange as it is seductive.

This was truly a shock & awe story...from the subject of a young black girl finding herself involved with a white suburban man with an open marriage to the bombs the author drops, with her most shocking commentary often dropped smack at the end of a paragraph. I actually really liked this boldness and found the writing at times captivating but found the overall story development a bit lacking. Entertaining for sure but much like other readers I find myself still reflecting and not changing much from my initial lack of being unable to describe quite what I was reading. I suspect people will either love Edie's voice or find it wholly unrelatable, not much in between.
Thank you for the opportunity to read early & review!

Holy cow, what a ride. Luster tells the story of a young girl from Brooklyn who starts an affair with an older man in New Jersey. The writing is sharp and witty and at times extremely funny. The attention to detail of the characters was so deep that I feel like I knew these people directly. I particularly enjoyed the story and rifts between Rachel and Edie. Its hard to believe this is a debut novel, and I can't wait to read more from Raven Leiliani

This book has one of the most perfect first sentences I've ever read. It's a smart look at an intergenerational, interracial, and class-mixed affair between a white married man in an open relationship and a young black woman in her twenties who is struggling to pay the bills.

Wow! What a book! I have no words to express the intensity of this book. As I am still working on my final review I want to say Please DO NOT SLEEP ON THIS BOOK. I promise you won't regret it. Thank you, Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the gifted copy.

Luster is a well written story that catches you off guard. It is well written and the characters are fully developed! It is about Edie a young woman who doesn’t always make the right decisions regarding her personal life, yet she seems to drift along. This story very honestly portrays how so many young women think or view life. Sex and race are subjects that are very relevant and always will be. This book will start those conversations. Good choice for book clubs.

I thought that this book was going to be a sharp, scandalous read but it mostly turned out to be a slew of what felt like incessant run on sentences and depression. I struggled to find the narrators voice and found myself altering her sound in my head with each new page.

As it turns out, the narrator, Edie, is nothing more than a depressed Zoomer longing for the things she didn’t get from her childhood. I did not feel that this was a satisfying read whatsoever and after finishing it I really just can’t shake the feeling of what the hell did I even just read.

There was definitely potential in the story line but the plot just did not deliver

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for advanced copy!

A twenty-something whose life is a bust.
Weaves a story of self-loathing, of race and of lust.
They say three’s a crowd,
And I was constantly wowed
By the dance between delight and disgust.


—————

Just trying to make it through her twenties, Edie finds herself involved in the marriage of an older married couple.

Phenomenal. Out in August, Luster is a stream of consciousness fever dream. A hilarious, kinetic poem on the insurmountable weight of the world only a twenty-year-old can feel where everything is both so important and utterly meaningless.

Every sentence was my new favourite.

“...I cover his mouth and say shut up, shut the fuck up, which is more aggressive than I would normally be at this point but it gets the job done and in general if you need a pick-me-up I welcome you to make a white man your bitch though I feel panicked all of a sudden to have not used a condom and I’m looking around the room and there is a bathroom attached, and in the bathroom are what look to be extra towels and that makes me so emotional that he pauses and in one instant a concerned host rises out of his violent sexual mania, slowing the proceedings into the dangerous territory of eye contact and lips and tongue where mistakes get made and you forget that everything eventually dies, so it is not my fault that during this juncture I call him daddy and it is definitely not my fault that this gets him off so swiftly that he says he loves me and we are collapsing back in satiation and horror, not speaking until he gets me a car home and says take care of yourself like, please go, and as the car is pulling away he is standing there on the porch in a floral silk robe that is clearly his wife’s, looking like he has not so much had an orgasm as experienced an arduous exorcism, and a cat is sitting at his feet, utterly bemused by the white clapboard and verdant lawn, which makes me hate this cat as the city rises around me in a bouquet of dust, industrial soot, and overripe squash, insisting upon its own enormity like some big-dick postmodernist fiction and still beautiful despite its knowledge of itself, even as the last merciless days of July leave large swaths of the city wilted and blank.”

Goddamn. Perfect.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC for review.

I closed the last page of this book with a sense of wonder of what is I just read. A deep-dive character study? An emotional thriller? A fever dream of ennui-laced lust? Maybe all or none of the above. It’s hard to place this book.

On its face, it is the tale of Edie, a wayward Bushwick inhabiting, young black woman in a dead-end job with little motivation who embarks on an affair with Eric, an older white man in an open marriage. The opening details of the affair felt a little clichéd but as soon as Edie’s foray with Eric bleeds over into a foray with his wife Rebecca and adopted daughter Akila, the story becomes strange and uncomfortable and utterly readable. All of the characters are annoying and selfish and messy, but they hold up nonetheless.

Leilani has her own style that can drag at times but can also make some jabs at the solar plexus. She manages to get in some not so subtle commentary on race and class without slamming the reader over the head. She can also be rather funnily self-aware, having Rebecca exclaim to Edie at one point, “Because you are not specific…All of this, it has been done.” Indeed, the mid-life suburbs-dwelling man shagging the younger messed-up woman has been done, but isn’t Leilani trying to cast it all in a new light? She is and she does. It’s a strange little trip, this book, but one worth taking.

I look forward to seeing what Leilani will do in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.