Luster – Raven Leilani

Synopsis:

Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. And then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric’s home and family.

Razor-sharp, provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Luster by Raven Leilani is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young now.

Review:

I listening to this book on audio in one go (on a very long car journey)

Usually I can’t listen to a whole book on one sitting but this one really captivated me. I really enjoyed it.

The characters were so rich and well written, I was so invested in the storyline. So honest and self-aware.

I felt the ending could have been handled differently (hence the 4 star rating) but still very much enjoyed it!