Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I really enjoyed the first 20% of this book, I felt like we were getting to know the characters well, and the way they dealt with situations made sense. After that though, it fell off for me. I don’t need to like a character to engage with them, but i do need to understand why they’re acting a certain way, and I absolutely didn’t here. I stopped reading at 49% as it was just getting too weird with characters making decisions that made no sense to me.

Luster by Raven Leilani was billed as one of the most anticipated debut novels of 2021. Set in New York City, it is about a 23-year-old black woman, Edie, and her relationship with a married older white man, Eric, which eventually becomes a sort of menage à trois with his wife Rebecca. Edie also gets to know and bonds with Eric and Rebecca's adopted black daughter Akila, who also struggles with micro-aggressions.

There is some clever and provocative social commentary in this novel, although I can see why it has also been quite polarising among some readers. The detached and matter-of-fact tone of the main protagonist in response to such uncomfortable experiences is well-written and brutally candid. Edie is a millennial woman full of contradictions, and she is sometimes vulnerable, misanthropic and prone to self-destructive behaviour. From Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan to Issa Rae in Insecure, there have been several other novels and TV shows depicting this type of character recently, so it no longer feels wholly original, but Luster is a nuanced and eloquent debut.

Many thanks for the ARC, and sorry it has taken me so long to review this!

An incredible book. I'm so looking forward to following her career! It's one I've been recommending to friends, and everyone else seems to have loved it, too.

I really enjoy a character focused book and this did not disappoint. Such amazing and well fleshed out characters. I loved Edie much more than I thought I would going into Luster.

Beautiful writing. I was hooked!
A perfect read for the summer holidays.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

This book deserves all the hype and more! A truly absorbing and thought provoking read - I can't wait to read more from this author in the future. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review.

I know I'm late to the game with this one but I devoured LUSTER over two commutes during the last week of the spring term and insisted my colleague buy it only 3 chapters in! LUSTER is the perfect counterbalance to the academic and educational reading I've been engaging with this year and general pandemic stress. For me? Deliciously messy, darkly humorous, with some gorgeous poetic moments and incisive Black girl recognition - 'the smugness of pink men in kente cloth' made me cackle out loud on Tooting Common at 7:30am!

That being said, my experience with LUSTER was also coloured by the (deserved) hype surrounding it. The reviews and descriptions I saw online led me to believe this was going to be about a young Black woman being messy with other young Black people. Not this old white man and his unhinged wife. The passive-agressive evaluation envelopes with varying amounts of money? $400? $5? I get that this is some people's story but I wanted more for Edie.

I'm still waiting for my carefree, late-coming-of-age story centred within Black life. I still haven't read a twenty-something Black girl making mistakes with other Black people (I said I haven't read it, not that it doesn't exist - point me in the right direction if you know what I'm looking for!) But make no mistake, I thoroughly enjoyed LUSTER and its honest depictions of seeking intimacy and the artistic process. I'd love to discuss this with the girls over some peach mojitos and sometimes nothing helps you unwind more than screaming at a character who makes wild and foolish decision after wild and foolish decision! I'm grateful to Raven Leilani for easing me into the half term break

Raven Leilani’s debut ‘Luster’ is the much talked about 2021 novel. The narrative is the inner monologue of Edith a young African - American women, who is struggling with poverty, racism and self destructive traits.

Leilani discusses various issues and topics such as adultery, sexuality, relationships between couples, strangers and a friendship with cultural understanding being its bond, trauma, depression, strength and the search for self love.

The story starts with a insight in Edith's work life and colleagues, Eric who is testing the waters of having an open marriage, flashes and glimpses of previous relationships, her friendship with Akila who she serves as a guide to life as a young black women, the tenuous nature of hers and Rebeccas interactions, judgemental neighbours annoying landlords and of course her own personal trials and tribulations.

One of my favourite parts of this book was the ending, I felt like it summarised the two characters beautifully.

The Stream of consciousness following events I felt was a very enjoyable read, as it contained some dark humour, throwaway observations that were hard to digest, and the type of honesty that people are scared and to vulnerable to show.

Thank you to publishers for the ARC.

This book was a slow burn for me, but nevertheless once I got into it, I was awed by the powerful muscular writing and what this book has to say about feminism, black women, sexuality, marriage, class and the intersectionality between of all of these.

It left me thinking hard about the micro-aggressions I'm blind to and the inequality that exists in the world.
I was also gripped by the concept of an open marriage and the relationship between Edie, Rebecca and and Eric. Both darkly comic and heartbreaking, I loved Edie's clear real voice. Pulling no punches, this is an author with a talent to watch out for.

It seems sort of unfair to other writers that a first book could be THIS good, but here we are. This was worth the wait and told such a powerful, addictive story. I couldn't put it down. I'm already counting down the days till the next Raven Leilani book. Congrats on an amazing start to your career. Five stars.

Leilani's debut novel is one of the most highly anticipated of 2021, so I was very excited to get into it. While I did enjoy Luster overall, I think I may have failed to connect to the writing style as much as many others seem to have, or maybe it was just less relatable for me, as I didn't really find the book to be funny. I thought it was brutally relatable, but I never laughed out loud. That being said, I appreciated how brutally real and messy the whole book felt - not a glamourised portrayal of an open relationship at all, which is an easy trap to fall into. I found the interactions between Rebecca and Edie very interesting, with their familiarity being more plausible and realistic than you might initially assume. In general, the curiosity of all the characters in their own ways is really important to the story. However, the dynamic changes and becomes quite extreme in the sharp change from distance to closeness and I felt this helped the book to pick itself back up in the second half.

5 stars.
I've seen this book everywhere and it more than lived up to the hype. Dark, twisted, fascinating, a book that will stay with me for a while.

Move over Sally Rooney this is a debut novel that stands head and shoulders above other books. !
I had a pile of proofs and was dipping into each one to sample them and see what I would read next. The moment I started reading Luster I was reading till 2 in the morning (very few books have me doing this)

It's the story of Edie who inhabits a cockroach- ridden flat and works as a children's editor at a publishing house having lost her way as an artist. Here she is the only black woman on the staff. She has had sex with most of the (male) staff and is constantly having to "monitor" her behaviour according to white "norms". This opening part of the book is told at a breathless pace.

Edie starts a relationship with Eric in which she is navigating through sexual politics as well as racial politics. Eric soon reveals a taste in sadistic behaviour alongside a contract his wife, Rebecca, has drawn up- rules for an "open" marriage.

Edie ends up being fired and tries a delivery job to survive. This allows wry satire as Edie encounters more racism.
She then encounters economic disaster as she is made homeless. Somehow she ends up swapping the city for living with Eric, Rebecca and their adopted daughter Akila who is black.

Each member of this strange suburban household seems to lead a separate life and Edie's interractions with them are complicated and ambiguous. Akila is initially hostile but they gradually bond over manga, and gaming, Edie then shows Akila how to do her hair but also confronts a maths tutor over his racist comments to Akila.

There is a glorious set piece at the end when they all attend a comic con event together.

Her relationship with Eric is off-on while she is in his home, there has been a shift in the dynamics. Their relationship is becoming more sado masochistic.

Probably the most interesting relationship is the relationship between Edie and Rebecca. Rebecca becomes interested in Edie's art and then starts taking Edie to the morgue where she works. Edie starts on a series of anatomical drawings. The bond between them is always unspoken, silent and Leilani leaves the readers to draw their own conclusions. . Through these three relationships, Edie is finding out more about herself.

This is a book about power and politics.: sexual, class and racial. In terms of the class politics there is the precarious existence on the breadline that Edie is first in. Her medical insurance is also precarious and she has bowel problems. She also need medical facilities later in the book but it is Rebecca who provides these. She exists for a while as a delivery driver on what we would call a zero hours contract. The encounters she has in this job expose the different layers of American society- not so classless as we are led to believe. There are blocks to Edie realising her potential professionally all around.

The sexual politics seem to be about transactions in which Edie initiates the sex and so imagines she has the power within that transaction. Leilani said in an interview with Gwendolyn Smith for the I newspaper "in a world invested in annihilating you, you might as well become an active participant in that annihilation"

Maybe also the casual sex is a way for Edie to obliterate the trauma she has experienced (her Mum's suicide) It also questions the sexual politics in which women who explore their sexual identity are judged.

The racial politics are multi layered from the overt racism at the hands of the police to the more insidious forms of racism that are often institutional or that people are unaware of in themselves. (readers included)

This makes this book sound serious and polemical when in fact it is also VERY funny and a wonderfully entertaining read. Absolutely loved it.

One of the best books I read in 2020 - I love Raven Leilani's style of writing which is sharp and honest, and really captures a picture of flawed characters. An amazing read, dark, caustic and funny.

Luster by Raven Leilani

The debut novel from Raven Leilani, Luster follows a young black women in her 20s who becomes involved with an older white man in his 40s.

It is an edgy and compulsive read that keeps you on the edge of being unsettled and off balance throughout. There were definitely moments where I was like "WHAAAAAT", and I entirely understand when other reviewers have said you'll want to laugh and cringe all at the same time.

Luster is part of the burgeoning new genre of "millenial lit" with its realism and troubled main female protagonist. I thought it was an ambitious and interesting novel as it touched on the realities of race, sexualisation, office politics, work success, poverty, addiction, marriage and motherhood.

I found the relationship between Eric's wife Rebecca and the main female protagonist to be the most compulsive sections of the book. Their relations didn't unfold in any way that I expected and often felt bizarre. There was a certain hollowness I also felt in these moments and it was very unsettling.

Luster is a very open-ended book and I have so many unanswered questions by the end. This definitely kept me hooked from start to end. I can see why the book is getting lots of hype for sure, it's probably not a book I'll return to but I think a really solid debut for sure.

Thanks to @netgalley and @picador for the e-copy (ad-pr product). Out today ✨

Luster is a beautifully written, raw and at times uncomfortable read about Edie, a vivacious and bright woman in her twenties who is living in New York. She begins to date Eric, a middle-aged white man who is married but in an open relationship. What follows is a messy, challenging and often uncomfortable read about navigating relationships and life in general as a young black woman.

I have to say I found Edie a tricky character to warm to – she is by her nature quite stand-offish and reserved in some ways, and I wanted to shout at her that becoming so entangled with Eric and his family was not a good move! There were definitely parts that I didn’t like and it’s hard to convey why, but I think some of the novel I just found quite hard to read.

However, I found myself racing through this novel- it’s fairly short but regardless of the length, I still finished it in record time. The writing is not only beautiful but very readable (although some of the novel feels quite abstract, so I had to read some parts twice to make sure I’d read it correctly).

If you connect with Edie – or even if you don’t, as I didn’t hugely – this is a novel that’s easy to get completely sucked into.

I adored Luster. It was fresh, relatable and very much of its time. Could. It recommend picking this one up enough!

This debut has been receiving rave reviews, but I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. Leilani does have a way with words; a way that is brutally honest, raw and powerful in places, but in others just felt like shock value for the sake of it and left me a little cold.

This is the story of Edie, a young twenty-something black woman living in New York. Edie has a decent job at a publishing firm, but she doesn’t really care about it – art is her real passion. She has a reputation as the ‘office slut’ (her words, not mine) and moves from meaningless affair to meaningless affair, seemingly using sex to fill a void of loneliness. She definitely has some self-worth issues.

“I think to myself, you are a desirable woman. You are not a dozen gerbils in a skin casing.” (What, now?!)

And then she meets Eric online. Eric is older and married, but he explains his is an open marriage and the two build a connection online before meeting in real life.

For me, the story started off strong. Following Edie’s life and the tentative first date with Eric, there’s something quite honest and tender about the author’s depiction of the couple. They’re both putting up their own type of mask and choosing the parts of themselves they want to show, even though Eric tells her he wants her to be herself.

“I know he doesn’t mean it. He wants me to be myself like a leopard might be herself in a city zoo. Inert, waiting to be fed. Not out in the wild, with tendon in her teeth.”

But it does get pretty weird.

Some of the characters’ actions in this book felt frankly bizarre to me. I didn’t understand or like a lot of them. Eric’s wife, Rebecca, is a particular puzzle. On meeting Edie – who she knows is her husband’s mistress – she promptly invites her to their anniversary dinner party and follows up with an invitation to watch her cut a cadaver’s head open. Then, when Edie loses her job, Rebecca invites her to move in. Of course, why not? Basically, all of the characters are incredibly messed up and completely alone in their own way, even though they wind up living together under one roof.

The most likeable of this bunch is the youngest – Eric and Rebecca’s adopted daughter, Akila. A twelve-year-old black girl dropped into a well-to-do, suburban white neighbourhood, she’s grateful when Edie joins their household. As someone of the same race and closer in age, she feels connected to Edie and I enjoyed the dynamic of this pairing.

The author offers some frank insights on sex, relationships and race in this modern, though-provoking story. The writing has a kind of witty, dry humour, but there’s also a cold, detached feeling which meant I struggled to connect at times. Sometimes, it’s a little too edgy for me and, at others, I found myself a little bored. But, it’s a quick, witty, no-hold-barred read which manages to be eye-opening, without ever feeling too deep.

I loved this novel. It was multi layered, shocking in parts and dark, but ultimately full of hope. Raven Leilani is a skillful writer, who is both brutal and funny, which is hard to pull off. I know everyone is talking about it - they should be. I couldn't put it down.