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A review by loveambreen
Luster by Raven Leilani
3.0
This book is a giant trigger warning for literally everything. Like, seriously, was the author playing trauma bingo or something?
You know that pretentious straight white man genre about a starving writer/artist in New York City and all the sex he has? This is that but with a Black woman.
Had this been written a few years ago then it might have had a bigger impact, but now it just feels shallow and superficial. It feels like an MFA assignment about poverty. I have liked novels like this with woc before and I don't know if the difference here is me or this book, but either way I did not enjoy this. On the chance that the difference is me, I'm giving this book three stars instead of two.
The one saving grace was the dynamic between Edie and Akila. Akila was stiff and didn't feel very childlike to me, but I still found myself most invested in their scenes.
You know that pretentious straight white man genre about a starving writer/artist in New York City and all the sex he has? This is that but with a Black woman.
Had this been written a few years ago then it might have had a bigger impact, but now it just feels shallow and superficial. It feels like an MFA assignment about poverty. I have liked novels like this with woc before and I don't know if the difference here is me or this book, but either way I did not enjoy this. On the chance that the difference is me, I'm giving this book three stars instead of two.
The one saving grace was the dynamic between Edie and Akila. Akila was stiff and didn't feel very childlike to me, but I still found myself most invested in their scenes.