Tense, fast-paced, and darkly hilarious, Priya Guns' debut will drive you wild. Your Driver is Waiting is the perfect satire on today's gig economy.

I couldn't finish this one. It was well written enough from the quarter I read, but I guess I was expecting something darker given the description of a contemporary, gender-flipped Travis Bickle. It felt more dark comedy adjacent than gritty. I do think the premise is great, the concepts are super relevant and worth exploring (the unrelenting grind for people living paycheck to paycheck with people depending on them, performative allyship, and so on).
It just didn't pass the vibe check for me.

A struggle for me to want to push through after a point (which might be on me for picking this to cross off over the holidays). Damani kept me in this, but for whatever reason it is so much harder to see the same irrationality I might display in a straight relationship when it is played out in wlw romances. Not in my lesbians, my heart cries, even though I know we all make these bad decisions through hormones sometimes. Anyway, solid enough contemporary not-romance, with a bit of a messy ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced digital copy.

This book started off strong for me--Guns' strength lies in her character and world-building. I instantly "got" Damani, her grieving mother, and her group of activist friends who were more like family. This novel is definitely a product of its time--filled with people scraping by paycheck-to-paycheck who will give what little they have to help the community they've built for themselves, all while advocating for a more just world. There's also the white allies, who mean well but do nothing to affect actual change. Whose performative activism masks the fact that they don't reeeallly get it.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The story started to fall apart for me when Damani takes Jo, her new girlfriend, to meet her friends. Jo dons her white savior cap, refuses to listen to people of color who have experienced the oppression she claims to fight against, then gets their safe haven raided. For some reason, this does not dim Damani's lust for Jo, and Damani threatens everything she loves by stalking her now ex-lover, breaking into her house, and making reckless decisions that could leave her and her mother without a roof over their heads.

As I looked at the page count, I wondered how Guns was going to wrap up the story with so little real estate left. Surely not everything would be resolved, but there would be some finality, right? I could suspend belief that Damani's mother, left incapacitated by her husband's death, was able to recover enough to help her daughter once her daughter could no longer help herself, but inserting Jo back into the narrative to relieve all of their financial stress didn't track. Wasn't this the same person sobbing in the arms of a police officer twenty-ish pages earlier after Damani nearly ran her over with her car (again)? It just felt like Guns needed a tidy ending, but it didn't feel earned.

Your Driver is Waiting is a fierce and powerful read that is absolutely invigorating. This is a book that isn’t afraid to tackle racism, twisted politics, and performative allyship. Damani is a Sri Lankan driver for a rideshare app that is predatory and inflicts terrible demands on its drivers. As protests rock the city, Damani meets a beautiful rider named Jolene. Yet when the heat turns up and the protests become personal, Damani is left struggling to deal with the fallout from one pivotal night.

This book is an intense whirlwind. The writing feels gritty and realistic; Damani felt like a relatable and genuine character. I really enjoyed the writing style; it was darkly sarcastic and poignant. Damani is in a losing battle and she knows it; she must fight every day simply for the right to exist. She doesn’t even have time to properly mourn her father, who died suddenly while working at his job. This was heartbreaking, especially when another character compared Damani’s loss to the loss of her dog. And yet, we all know someone like this! Jolene is performative, narcissistic, and relates everything to her own pain. There was such bitter irony when Jolene organized protests for the rideshare drivers and yet Damani was unable to attend. She literally could not stop driving in order to take care of herself and her mom!

Priya Guns did an excellent job of weaving in Damani’s relationship struggles with her mother. They often fight due to her mother’s disapproval for LGBTQ+ people and Damani's choices, yet find themselves united in bottomless grief. Damani must take care of her mother when her mother struggles to leave the apartment and perform daily tasks such as feeding herself. Despite these intense struggles (caretaking is a second job), Damani always does her best to take care of her mother at serious cost to her own well-being. I enjoyed how Damani came to terms with and explored her relationship with queerness (especially her haircut!).

Your Driver is Waiting is a fervent and passionate shout into the world. This would be such a good book club pick; I definitely found myself wanting to discuss it and wondered what happened next to the characters. Your Driver is Waiting releases February 28, 2023. Thank you to Priya Guns, Doubleday, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Your Driver is Waiting is filled with rage, societal issues, and a taste of dark humor. I love how Priya Guns wrote the character of a Sri-Lankan female driver. On the other hand, Jolene, a self-proclaimed woke "ally", is someone that we have come across once or twice in our lives. Although Jolene is objectively unbearable, she is a worthy character for making me laugh due to her ignorance. The start was a bit slow but finishing it is worth it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Your Driver is Waiting.

I remember watching Taxi Driver at an age when I shouldn't have been watching a movie that dark.

Your Driver is Waiting is nothing like Taxi Driver, and I know I shouldn't make comparisons.

It started out well. Damani is a struggling rideshare driver, doing her best to keep her family intact. Her dad is dead. Her mother needs constant care and looking after, and the city is social and politically divided, charged with rallies and protests nearly daily.

Then, Damani meets the woman of her dreams. And that's when the narrative turns silly. Like YA silly.

The writing becomes sugary sweet, using phrases to describe Jolene as the sun and all the corny prose to describe how in lust Damani is.

I get it, sexual chemistry exists. But the way Damani lusts after Jolene is just silly, especially when the narrative is supposed to be serious.

I wasn't surprised at Jolene's betrayal. What do you expect from someone you barely know? And Damani barely knows this woman.

I soon lost interest in the narrative, nor did I care about Damani. I did sympathize with her mother, but recently I've read quite a few novels where the main character needs to step up because a spouse is deceased and the remaining wife or husband has fallen apart.

The writing was fine, but the narrative didn't pull me in like I hoped I would.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to read Your Driver is Waiting.

This was as delicious as a good sweet and sour meal!

The biting commentary on her passengers had me almost in tears! I am all about dark humor and this was dry and right on the nose with the political thoughts.

I only wish the romance bits weren't included because they bogged the rest of the story down imo.

This book was fast-paced, unique, full of witty satire, and had my attention from the beginning. I’ve never seen the movie Taxi Driver, but now I feel like I have to watch it lol. Damani was such an entertaining MC and I loved the blunt train of thought you get from her the whole time.

Damani drives for a ride share app and you see time after time how much BS she has to deal with on a daily basis. From the asshole passengers in a hurry to the endless microaggressions. You really feel her struggle of being absolutely overworked, undervalued, and underpaid. While at the same time the customers are thinking they’re being ripped off because their ride is $120 - but she’s only making $30 and guess what, mom needs a banana and some tea!

The reality of tallying up the cost of necessities and thinking about how much of your time, body, and mind you have to trade for it… These components of the story would have been enough to hook me, but when you throw a passenger-turned-love-interest into the mix, things really got intense.

Jo seems perfect and understands Damani, until she shows her true colors and does something unforgivable. I don’t want to give away anything more, so just read this one for yourself! Thanks so much Netgalley and Doubleday for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

This novel was biting, rageful and a critique of woke "allies" and the actions they deem as "revolutionary," whilst policing how people actually effected handle their protests and strikes.

Full of grief, rage and overwhelming responsibility, the novel follows main character Damani, who is struggling to support herself and her mom following the sudden loss of her dad.

Torn between having to work every minute she can and being part of the change she wants to see, she is critical of white allies who are out protesting "for change."

There are hints through out the novel that let you know something big and horrible is coming but wow does Damani take explosive to a new level. Hers was a snap heard round the world.

The marketing department did a hell of a job here -- the cover and blurb instantly caught my attention. Unfortunately, I am not the right reader for this book. I wanted something dark and gritty and instead got a ride share driver who masturbates in her car between jobs. I'm sure there's something I'm missing here, but this just wasn't the book for me.

On the plus side, I now know I never have to watch Taxi Driver.

I did not finish this. I tried so very hard to get into the plot and I just couldn’t. Maybe it just wasn’t for me.

2.5 stars rounded up. Your Driver is Waiting is a contemporary literary fiction novel set in the city, following rideshare driver Damani as she navigates the city figuratively and literally. She ends up falling for one of her riders, Jolene, but she feels that there’s something off about their relationship, all while the city is moving closer to implosion.

Honestly, I just don’t think this book was for me. As someone who hasn’t read much litfic in the past, I struggled with style and pacing. It took a really long time for anything to actually happen plot-wise, and when something did happen, it felt kind of dry. Instead of having an overarching plot like I was expecting from the summary, it felt like nothing really happened. Damani’s relationships with most of the characters weren’t as fleshed out as I would have liked. As a reader, we were told how much Damani cared for her close friends, and how she felt towards Jolene and her other fares, but this was never really shown. The only exception to this was the descriptions of her relationship with her parents— I found these sections to be really evocative and emotional. The big reveal at the end also kind of fell flat to me, just because I don’t think I was invested in the story. Once again, I’m not sure if stylistic choices were made because of the genre or consciously by the author, and I simply haven’t read enough litfic to really tell the difference.

The social commentary in this book was definitely one of the highlights for me, as the author didn’t really shy away from talking about “radical” politics that most contemporary novels shy away from.

The complaints I have about this book are very personal, which is why I’ve kept my rating relatively high, so I can’t wait for this book to come out and see what other readers think of it!

304 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication February 28, 2023
Thank you to #netgalley and #atlanticbooks for the advanced reader's copy of #YourDriverisWaiting by #PriyaGuns. This is a fast paced thriller about a hardworking Sri Lankan rideshare driver. This novel is supposed to be a genderflip on the classic 1970's movie Taxi Driver. Honestly it was not giving Taxi Driver. It stands in its own right. The book is witty and funny. A real page turner. You will finish it quickly.

Unfortunately, I did not finish this one. With the prompt of gender switched Taxi Driver, I know this is only getting darker from its choppy and dark beginning.

Your Driver Is Waiting is a phenomenal satire that has a dark sense of humor and dives deep into the issues surrounding current social movements while pulling ZERO punches!

Really tense I was drawn right in by the story the characters.The female version of Taxi driver well written entertaining.#netgalley #doubleday

i had a bit of a reading slump this month but this was super quick to read
didn’t get totally invested in some of the characters to really connect emotionally with the story
but the core message really hits and i resonated w a lot of the conflicts
writing is simple enough nothing too fancy
however this ISNT GENDER SWAPPED TAXI DRIVER?? did u even watch the movie

I may be one of the few readers of this novel who hasn't seen Taxi Driver, so I will not be making any comparisons. The premise caught my interest, but the execution didn't quite fulfill me. The story takes an exaggerated (well, at least for now) version of our current sociopolitical circumstances and does a great job of playing up certain aspects. At the same time, this approach seems to be increasingly more popular lately and I don't think this version adds anything I haven't read before. For those who haven't already been saturated by these takes, this book might be more impactful. I would have liked to have Damani's relationship with her parents fleshed out a little more, and in particular, what things were like with her father. Even in Damani's reflections on the past, she seemed to always be as her present self and it made me curious about what she was like at different points in her life.

The deal: Rideshare driver Damani is constantly struggling in a fucked up system to make ends meet and care for her mother. Then she meets Jolene, a rich little white “activist. Tensions rise in their unnamed city. (This is not a romance novel. It’s a dark comedy/satire/character study.)

Is it worth it?: Sure is. I tore through this. It’s got all my favorite things: messy women, impossibly short chapters, fourth wall breaking, sharp social commentary, a makeover moment, I could go on and on.

Pairs well with: Casey Johnston’s newsletter “Ask A Swole Woman”

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