This story is set in Oakland, California, and while there are a few neighborhoods in Oakland that are what some might consider relatively well-off, Kiara Johnson doesn’t live in one of those neighborhoods. Kiara lives in a run-down Apartment building which is inappropriately named Regal-Hi Apartments, where the only thing high about it are some of the tenants. There is a pool, which is accessorized with used bags filled with dog poop floating on the surface. For Kiara, this is home, there is nowhere else to go.

Kiara’s family seems to be losing everything a little bit at a time, and a little bit at a time it diminishes her, taking the people she loves away. First, her father, who spent much of her young life in prison, died when she was just 13. Her mother was ‘sent away’ after another tragic event which followed not long after. She and her older brother Marcus are the only ones left in the apartment, neither one finished their education, and Marcus has dreams to be a star. They are broke, and rent is due. Kiara looks for jobs everywhere she can think of - but the local stores won’t hire her. She goes to the strip club hoping her brother’s ex-girlfriend who works as a bartender can give her a job, but at 17, she’s too young to work there. Her brother’s ex feels bad about not being able to help, so she offers her a drink. And then another, followed by two more. As she leaves, a man follows her out of the club, takes her to a place, and after he is done with her, he presses an unexpected roll of money into her hand and walks away.

It isn’t that she intended her life would turn out this way, but with her brother not able to have held onto a job and unwilling to find a new one because that would take away time from his time spent dreaming about making a career in the music industry, and a landlord threatening them with eviction, along with no money for food, Kia is glad to have the money. At least it is something. Temporarily.

There is a darkness in this story, softened by the beauty of the prose, but Kia is someone you will root for. Her life, at her young age with only vague memories of parental advice, has been filled with pain and an almost feral drive to survive which only increases as she is left with more responsibilities - including a nine-year-old whose mother leaves him with Kia, and then disappears. There is no one to turn to for help, and so she does what she believes she needs to, in order to endure.

This is a story of survival, of compassion despite the affliction of poverty and crushing injustices. An incredibly moving story shared through prose that mesmerizes. That Leila Mottley wrote this at the age of 17 is nothing less than astonishing.


Pub Date: 07 Jun 2022

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group / Knopf

Nightcrawling submerges the reader in the life of Kiera Johnson a seventeen year old women who has an overwhelming load of problems and responsibilities on her shoulders. She strives to take care of her older brother Marcus and her young neighbor Trevor in the face of escalating rent for a subpar apartment and the inability to get work because of her age and inexperience. With no other options available to her she turns to a life of nightcrawling. She is trapped by circumstances in a life that threatens her freedom and self worth and forced to face a wrld of injustice. The book is well written. The book provides a fascinating and thoroughly engaging read.

Leila Mottley is a 19 year old genius writer and NIGHTCRAWLING incredible. Even so I did not like this book so well, because every word, phrase, sentence, paragraph pulls out all the stops. It's like what happens to those 7- 8- 9-year-old kids who can sing O Mio Babbino Caro with such exquisite richness that everyone in the stadium stands up and weeps to hear it and the subtler notes go unsung and unheard. I can't help but wish this debut novel had been more strongly edited. It could have been dialed about 2/3 back, so that the high points of the story could really sing out and differentiate themselves.

Here is a passage, for instance;

"Dee wailed and squeezed and trembled until by mama's hums drowned it all out and then the tribe of us saw the hair, saw the tiny round that crawled from her body, turning her inside out,. The squeals began and the humming turned to changes and we all watched that child swim out his mama, head poking out more blood than hair, and my mama took him into her arms and laid him on Dee's breast and this was the sweetest, most whole thing to ever take place in our building, and the rain poured and poured and poured until Dee began to beg again and her birthmarked baby squirmed and Ronda gave up, passed Dee the pipe, and she faded into sky like she didn't hear her own baby crying."

Isn't that amazing writing? The rhythm, the motion of the language? But not for the whole book, please, and also, to my ear, it's just trying too hard to be amazing, even in this brief passage, where the amazingness gets distracting. The run-on sentence, while a feat, actually obscures the subtle, rapidly changing emotions and moods in this scene, things that could be brought out by a full-stop along the way. You may disagree. I'll definitely look forward to reading Mottley's next novel. I feel someone with this much natural understanding of language and storytelling will probably figure these things out very quickly even if changes aren't demanded by her editors.

This book blew me away! I was unable to but it down. Perfect, dazzlingly, very well written. The details the author described throughout the book was so amazing. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! No spoilers. Beyond amazing I enjoyed this book so very much. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Could not put down nor did I want to. Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Maybe even a book club pick.

This is a compelling and gripping story full of raw emotion. It is beautifully written. Kiara lives with her brother Marvus in a squalid apartment. Her dad is dead, her mother in jail. She and her brother no longer go to school. Matcus has dreams of becoming a famous rapper. He has had one or two jobs but either quits or is fired. Kiara is the responsible one, trying to earn enough to pay the rising rent and keep them fed. Her situation forces her into prostitution and she becomes the center of an investigation involving the police department. Several officers forced her to have sex with them purely for their entertainment. But Kiara is a survivor, lucky enough to have a great friend to support her.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

There’s no other way to put it, this one will break you. In the simplest of terms, Nightcrawling is about pain, survival, and injustice. We follow Kiara, a teenager from Oakland that does what she has to do to survive and to provide for herself and her kid neighbor, Trevor. I loved this author’s voice, and thought this was really well written. One quote from the book that I think sums it up well is “Oakland contains it all: heartbreak and yearning. Reaching for our young back.”

This debut novel by Leila Mottley comes out on June 7, 2022. Knopf Doubleday Publishing provided me an early galley in exchange for an honest review.

First off, I have major respect for the author. Not only was she an Oakland Youth Poet Laureate in 2018, she wrote this novel when she was just seventeen years old. I remember my own writing aspirations at that age (still have those unfinished works I toyed with at that time in my filing cabinet); what she has achieved was something I could only dream about when I was her age. I have made respect for Mottley for writing something so real, so topical and so powerful at such an age. I can only imagine what the future holds for her.

Kiara's story is so far removed from my own worldview, but I know that is not the case for so many young people of color growing up in the 21st century. This novel will resonate with a younger generation, but it might also serve as an eye-opening to so many others as well. Mottley does not shy away from harsh realities, even when she is balancing the truths about urban lifestyles with her beautifully descriptive writing style.

In some ways, this novel reminds me of Manchild in The Promised Land by Claude Brown, published in 1965. That coming-of-age novel detailed urban life in Harlem during the 1950's. We read that novel when I was a high school student in the 1980's (at age seventeen no less). The two share some common themes even though they were written close to six decades apart. Looking at the two together, it reminds me of how far things have come and yet how far things still have to go.

I genuinely have no words for how this books entered it’s way into my brain and planted roots in my soul. This was one of the best books I have ever read. I finished it in a day and I even read the entirety of the author’s note and the acknowledgements (Which I abashedly never do). All I can say is this is a MUST read for every one. The story of a young Black woman who is doing all that she can to keep her friends and family afloat when the whole world is against her. Leila Mottley, you are truly a dazzling visionary with a voice like none other and I cannot wait to see what is next in the cards.

This is out of my comfort zone of things I normally read, but WOW. This was not an easy read by any means but it was so well done. Very tough material and very sad, but it’s important not to forget about women who are victims of acts by police who are never able to receive justice because of cover ups and toxic police atmospheres.

While reading Nightcrawling, I had to take breaks to process that this incredible book was written by a teenager. Her raw, poetic and powerful work is a gift. The story of Kiara, her brother Marcus and Trevor, an abandoned child is written like a camera lens shining light on a dark and dangerous view of Oakland.. The impossibility of breaking out of the powerlessness of poverty, slumloards, the police and justice system and tenticals of exploitation are maddening. Kiara's brave and empathic determination; heartbreaking. This is one of the top books I've read this year and I will read Leila Mottley's future books. Just excellent. Thank you Netgalley and publisher for the opportunity to read this advanced copy of Nightcrawling in exchange for my honest review. It was a pleasure.

...
It's not often a book renders me speechless, but <i>Nightcrawling</i> is a difficult book to review because it's such a viscerally painful read. It's not one of those 'couldn't put it down' books-- in fact, I had to take a break half-way through to read a YA romance, and then come back to it. Also, that this is a debut by author Leila Mottley, who wrote it while still in her teen years, makes it all the more impressive and poignant. Mottley demonstrates skills far beyond her age and experience, creating a world that comes alive off the page, infusing her story and prose with raw emotion, and exposing the dark underbelly of a community already struggling under the weight of generations of inequality. But even as she addresses these social issues, the author never ostracizes her reader-- Kiara never lashes out or gives into 'woe is me' thinking. She is a fighter, she is innovative, she is the kind of bold and brave woman we empathize with and wish success upon, which is precisely why the book is so heartbreaking and hard to read. We desperately want to reach out and help Kiara and her family, but Mottley is unrelenting. She makes her point not by making political proclamations (see: the second half of Black Buck), but by refusing to give us the happy(ish?) ending we so desperately crave. This is Kiara's life, and like so many black and brown women, she cannot escape.
I suspect we're seeing one of the literary world's stars being born in Leila Mottley-- though I have to admit, while I'll read whatever she writes next, regardless, I do hope she'll give us some small shred of sweetness next time around.

"Nightcrawling" is Leila Mottley's excruciatingly painful story of a teen-aged girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders. In the absence of parents, Kiera aims to pay the rent for the apartment she shares with her older brother. He quit his job to focus on his goal of becoming a music sensation. Kiera is also caring for a 10-year-old neighbor whose drug-addled mother isn't doing the job. At 17 she's not qualified or of legal age for others, but she keeps looking.

Then prostitution finds her. The rest of the book is a compelling, harrowing tale of tragedy, pain, and abuse.

:"Nightcrawling" is well-written and worth reading.

Nightcrawling is as compelling as it is difficult to read. It centers on 17-year-old Kiara in Oakland, broke and vulnerable, as she tries to find a job in order to help pay the bills and ends up nightcrawling.

The novel is brimming with emotion and you can feel Kiara’s fear and desperation (and love) leaping off the pages. An incredible debut made even more incredible by the fact the author was 17 when she started to write this. A moving and startling exploration of systemic injustice. If you can handle the depressing subject matter, I recommend this to you.

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of Nightcrawling in exchange for an honest review.

When I read the synopsis of this on NetGalley, it wasn't fully clear to me (I suppose I am a lil dense) that "the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs" meant "prostitution."

The story starts with a 17-year old Kiara and her 18-year old brother, Marcus. They are living in an apartment sans parents - their father is dead and their mother is incarcerated. The circumstances surrounding her mother's incarceration are not immediately clear. It is suggested that she attempted to commit suicide, but we don't understand at this point how that landed her in prison.

They are behind on rent, and Marcus has quit his job and is pursuing a career as a rap artist, hoping and dreaming of a contract. After all, their Uncle Ty, who abandoned them after their mother was arrested, made it. They hear him on the radio. Unfortunately, he has made it clear that he wants nothing to do with the family he left behind.

Kiara walks her next door neighbor's son, Trevor to the bus, bounces around on the bus, watches her brother record, visits her friend, Alé at La Casa, Alé's parents' restaurant, looks for jobs that no one wants to hire her for since she is 17 and has no resume.

One day, while applying at a bar, she runs into an old friend, who used to work as a dancer but is now one of the bartenders. While they won't hire Kiara because of her age, her friend does give her a few drinks. Kiara stays a bit and watches the dancers. When she leaves, she is followed by a man she had made eye contact with. He tells her he knows they are both there for the same thing, and in a moment of recklessness and curiosity, Kiara has sex with this stranger. Afterward, he pays her and leaves.

Kiara realizes that the man thought she was a prostitute. In desperation, she decides to remove herself emotionally from the act, and try to get enough money to catch up on their rent. Meanwhile, Trevor's mom, Dee has disappeared, Marcus refuses to get a job to even get a little bit of money, and Kiara has kicked Marcus out and brought Trevor over to try to protect the 10-year old.

One night, Kiara and a man are caught by the police who release the man, but they take Kiara. Scared, Kiara gets rolled up in their nefarious get-togethers, her name passed around to others on the force. Sometimes they pay her, other times they tell her that her payment is not being arrested or being warned of when and where a sting operation will take place.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Kiara falls further into this dark rabbit hole.

This book was brutal. It eviscerated me, and it is a phenomenal debut by the author. I look forward to reading more from her. I did feel the ending was kind of rushed, and that there seems to be time missing between the beginning and the end, but it is still a worthy read that allows the reader a glimpse into the things we do when people are depending on them and everything seems to work against them.

This is the debut novel of a talented young author. It is well-written, but hard to read because of the grim subject matter. A 17 year old girl and her older brother are on their own, living in poverty and struggling to get by. The girl falls into being a sex worker and is then exploited by those in power. Gritty and dark.

United States Publication Date: June 7, 2022

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for this advanced reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

We MUST first, collectively, gasp in astonishment together that this title was started when the author was just 17 years old and is in fact today (in 2022) only 20 years old (if that, as I write this in March 2022). Y'all. Y'ALL. This voice is here to take on the world and compel you to hear what she has to say. Y'ALL.

Okay, the book she wrote. The lyrical, heartbreaking, magnificent book that she crafted out of experiences from her native hometown of Oakland, California. In 2015, in real life, police corruption was exposed within the Oakland PD. It involved under-aged girls and police officers using them for sex. Drawing from that event, Mottley imagines through her fictional character Kiara Johnson what happened in the lead up to the exposure of the corruption and what, specifically, might have happened to one of the girls. While the characters in this story are fictional, the experiences and events are all too real for many people living not just in Oakland but in America.

Kiara Johnson and her brother Marcus are on their own. Their Dad is dead, their mother incarcerated in a halfway house. Marcus dreams of being a music star like their Uncle Ty but his efforts are just driving he and Kiara deeper into debt. With the threat of eviction and hunger pains in her belly, Kiara hits the streets looking for money. And there is money on the streets, how much depends on what you are willing to do. When she isn't on the streets trying to make enough money to pay rent for two apartments and buy some groceries, she is the unofficial guardian to Trevor, a ten year old boy whose drug addicted mother has disappeared. She's making sure he's getting to school, staying fed, and has shelter. A lot of responsibility has been laid on 17 year old Kiara's shoulders. The day she turns 18 two cops show up at her apartment asking questions. They want her to answer in a specific way but Kiara, unsure of what is going on, refuses to answer at all until they coerce her by using Trevor as leverage. CPS cannot have Trevor, Kiara won't let that happen. From the day she turns 18 Kiara's life implodes and she becomes the focus and the key witness in an investigation against the cops who have been using her for sex on the streets.

You know what isn't fictional about this story? The corruption within the police department, not just Oakland's PD but the majority of them. Don't get me wrong, there are good cops but don't be deceived, there are also some really, really, really bad cops. Mottley doesn't touch up the edges of police corruption to make it more palatable. She just puts it out there, in its raw form, for digestion. It's going to make some people squirm. It's going to make some people dismiss this amazing work. Those people are living with their heads in the sand. My advice? Get your head out of the damn sand.

Mottley also does a masterful job of humanizing sex workers. In America, I can't speak for other nations, we have a really backwards idea of why people become sex workers. Mottley does her part in revealing their humanity in this title.

It's hard to believe Mottley is young, she writes with the soul of someone who has lived much longer in this world.

If we stand on the backs of Black women, who will carry them? Who will water us as we are constantly planting seeds and watering others?
 
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley was created due to police departments in the Bay Area like the Oakland police department who sexually exploited young women only to cover it up and leave these young women broken, abused, used, and silenced. Nightcrawling tells a story just like this. Where there is no happy ending, Leila gives meaning to the main character Kiara. You get to see her, hear her, understand her sacrifices, and ache because this young girl had to be both a woman and a child. Had to diminish her childhood to survive not only for herself but for others around her.
 
At just 17, Kiara has lived many times over. Set in East Oakland at the Regal-Hi apartments, Kiara introduces us to poverty, rent increase, and Oakland’s gentrification. Kiara lost her father to the system multiple times only to have him released to his death. A mother whose need for her father causes an aching that results in sudden death, a suicide attempt, and her mother in prison. All that Kiara has left is her older brother Marcus, her 10-year-old neighbor Trevor, and her best friend Ale’. Kiara’s mother instinct kicks in as she is a high school dropout with no resume, rent due, and her neighbor Trevor is hungry and without food because his mother has been consumed by drugs.
 
Kiara goes as far as having a funeral day with her best friend. A way to attend services to get free food and clothing left behind while others are mourning. Being unable to find work due to age and lack of a resume, Kiara is now facing her eviction and Trevor’s. Her older brother no longer holding her hand because he wants to live a false dream, but Kiara just wants to ease the hardship. A frustrating day turned into Kiara being drunk and losing her virginity to a white man who thinks she a prostitute. After payment, Kiara calculates how to make a living by becoming a streetwalker. 17 and dressed up, Kiara walking the streets for money leads her on a twisty slope filled with men and police officers degrading her body, her spirit, and mind, but her bills are paid. These same cops start to bring fear through pointing guns at her during sex, threatening to arrest her, and often ignoring paying her because their payment is in protection. As the underground corruption of the police for starts to leak, Kiara not only struggles with the decision of coming forward but must also deal with her everyday life and facing her broken mother. Balancing friendship and love, Kiara is stuck between being a mother and a child.
 
Nightcrawling is not a book to ease your thoughts. Nightcrawling is the means to survive in a world that makes you feel smaller by the second. The shift in structure, accountability, and access. Kiara has 17 years of life but has been aged in mere months. The mental strength it took to tell herself it is just a body. It is just sex. To face the crooked police system with the odds already against her, Kiara finds a way to survive and be loved.

#NIGHTCRAWLING by #leilamottley takes place between Oakland sky and asphalt. This precious sphere contains every single person seventeen-year-old Kiara needs to thrive: her best friend, Alé; older brother, Marcus; and Trevor, the little kid next door. Kiara spends her days looking for a job and finding ways to keep her loved ones sheltered and fed. Her attempts to carve a safe space get much harder as money runs out. Before long Kiara slips from the light of day and we have no choice but to watch the dark grab ahold of her.

At novel's open, Kiara begins her morning like any other. She uses bus passes scavenged from lost and found to search for work and attends funeral gatherings to feed herself. It's all unsustainable, but there is no safety net to rely on. One moment Kiara is on the swings, propelling herself into the dazzling blue and the next she is mistaken for a sex worker. The money she receives is enough to pay the rent, and for Kiara that means everything. If she can keep a roof over their heads, she would walk the streets again and again. But one night she runs straight into the cops, and her life turns into an endless cycle of motel rooms filled with men and their guns and badges. It is graphic and relentless, and I read on. I read on because I needed to see Kiara emerge from the other side, to breathe in the salt of the bay like from before. I read on because it is infuriating that a child can be sexually exploited when they shouldn't be anything other than a whole future lying in wait. And even for Kiara, it ought to be possible still.

Thank you to @aaknopf and @netgalley for providing an eARC for review. I created a #netgalley account on a whim two weeks ago and recognized this title from my own #goodreads shelf. This is a tremendous debut and I’m so grateful I got to read it early. #NIGHTCRAWLING comes out 6/7/2022.

An amazing story about Kiara, a young black woman in Oakland, who has to take to prostitution to try to support herself, her brother, and her young neighbor. A subject and a voice that are new and worth hearing. However, this book is also relentlessly depressing and 98% hopeless, and I was glad when it was over.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

What a great debut.
Writing is raw ,gritty and honest.
Looking forward to more from Leila Mottley. She started this one at age 17, she could be one to watch.
Thank you NetGalley for the early copy.