Luster: A Novel

3.5 Excellent raw/honest inner dialogue. But with the exception of Akeela, I just didn’t like the characters.

This book was a huge disappointment. There was no character development, no plot, minimal dialogue, & a bunch of non sense in between. It read as if the author sat with a thesaurus to write the most basic sentences but because they had big words it depicted as if it was so profound.

DNF @ Chapter 4.

The description of the book definitely intrigued me, but I couldn't get past the coldness of the main character (though I do understand why she is written that way.) The writing itself was also not my personal favorite and it just seemed to revolve way too much around sex without really giving much to the reader (again, it was detached and cold, but maybe that was the point.)

I know others will love it but it just was not for me.

So much of the book is poetry. Storytelling in poetry. Beautifully written descriptions. And I'm really wanting the protagonist to be ok. I want them all to be ok. Being human is really hard. Raven Leilani does a beautiful job capturing that. Even if you aren't connected to the premise, you can't deny that this story is fresh. We've never heard it before. At least, it's never been written down before. That deserves praise.

This is an impressive work of art. The honesty, brutality, longing, and loneliness vibrate off the page.