Excellent audiobook which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my review.

good book but nothing that stayed in my mind for longer than a week honestly. I can't remember names or places

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Your Driver Is Waiting is an incredible and powerful book that left me thinking about it long after I finished reading. The author's writing style is sharp, witty, and full of heart. The book is a spiky, blackly funny reboot of the classic Taxi Driver, in which Travis Bickle is a woman of color, left behind by the big city and out for revenge. The main character Damani is a ride-share driver, and her life revolves around caring for her mother and trying to make ends meet.

The story is set against the backdrop of a city that is alive with protests, fighting for people like Damani. The book tackles important themes such as race, class, and social justice, and does so with humor and heart. The author has done an excellent job of exploring the complexities of Damani's life, the challenges she faces, and the choices she makes.

I loved the way the author explored the relationship between Damani and Jolene, a white woman who is rich and seemingly perfect. The chemistry between the two is undeniable, and the author does an excellent job of exploring the complexities of their relationship, the issues of race and class that come with it, and the challenges they face.

The characters are well-developed, complex, and relatable. I appreciated the way the author portrayed Damani's struggles, her anger at a world that promised her more before spitting her out, and her desire for revenge. The book is brimming with heart, humor, and rage, and it announces the arrival of a fearless new voice.

Overall, Your Driver Is Waiting is a must-read for anyone looking for a powerful and thought-provoking book. The book will leave you thinking about it long after you finish reading, and it is a testament to the author's talent and skill. If you are interested in exploring themes of race, class, and social justice, and want to read a book that is both funny and heart-wrenching, then Your Driver Is Waiting is the perfect book for you.

The author reading her own book is always something nice. Made it feel like she was telling her story even though this was entirely fictional.
Now the story itself had its ups and downs. It's very timely depicting the struggle of brown people in the USA, talking about protests and activism, white saviorism and driving apps.
The love story felt cute and hopeful at first but I'm glad we didn't get a happy ending and instead this far too perfect annoying Jolene actually was far from perfect in the end.
The ending of the book was open in a way that felt unsatisfying to me. Life goes on but we don't know how. Will they lose their home? Will they end up on the street? Will it all kinda fix itself? It's real, probably what many brown people actually experience and therefore actually the right way to end this book. Me, a privileged white person, feeling unsatisfied with the ending and hoping for solutions and improvements is probably exactly the way a reader should feel to realize, that not everyone is as privileged, that life can be much harder and that the police isn't everyone's helper.

I have been anticipating this book for months and was so excited to be approved for the audiobook!

Damani was such a great character, and I loved the satire and drama that unfolds. The story touches on immigration and race in America as Damani, a Sri Lankan RideShare driver feels life taking its toll on her. The audiobook was so good and the narration transported me right into the story.

*many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the gifted audiobook

How do you go past a modern retelling of Taxi Driver set in the ride-share world? This is a smart, sexy, funny book with a LOT to say about modern American life. It's also a love story of sorts, with lustful longing, terrific betrayal and some late-night rendevouz that will change the way you look at your Uber. I really enjoyed it. The narrator is great, with the perfect amount of righteousness and ego, but also sadness and naïveté. A great weekend listen.

This was a well narrated audiobook. Very pleasing way to tell the story. The book started out very strong, but I lost interest a bit further on in the story. The MC is very unlikable, and even though I enjoy following a unlikable character, sometimes it got a bit much for me.

But overall I liked the story and the writing.

Your driver is waiting by Priya Guns

Thank you Netgalley for an arc for an unbiased review.

Damani is a driver, trying to make ends meet to look after her mother and herself. Life is a struggle, with Damani living in the background, the grind of her life being shown. Often showing biting, dry wit, within a dark aura.
Although the book doesn't have a necessarily fast pace, it's feels absolutely right for the narrative.

Damani finds her life then turned upside down by Jolene. Someone who Damani can't help but finding herself falling for.
This is when the book really takes it up a notch, as we see the social commentary between the white rich privilege Jolene enjoys to the way Damani's life has been. The juxposition at times is jarring, but through it all, love was a central theme in various guises.

Priya is the narrator of the audiobook and I thoroughly enjoyed the way she did it. The nuance was spot on, emotions conveyed as required.

As an audio book listener, this is one I will be adding to my library and recommending to others.

5/5 stars

I’m not sure how I feel about book the story did a good job of highlighting struggles that people, especially people colour, face working in a gig economy. It also how often the people who have the time and energy to protest and make a fuss over these issues are very performative and not directly impacted by the struggle. I found it very difficult to get into and at some point nearer the start of the story, I found the writing uncomfortable and stilted, but once the main relationship developed it began to flow better.

A zippy novella with an interesting premise. The best thing about it was the satire of political correctness and wokeness without meaningful action. About a dilution of protests that don't do anything but bolster the egos of protestors, and the schism between people who aren't impacted by institutional discriminations overtaking conversations and hearing the true needs from those who are.

A modern day take on taxi driver with Robert De Niro switched for a Sri Lankan gig economy car share Uber driver. I see many people missing the modern day take. It’s there if you look, a badass bisexual girl driving the night in a car tooled to the max, exhausted by the death of her father, the ailing mental health of her mother, the plight of all of her friends who like her work every damned minute to not quite keep their heads above water. Driving in the unnamed city is an escape and a chore. Until she meets Jolene. Jolene is an ally to everyone it seems. Til she isn’t.

Really enjoyed this. It’s a one sit novel. The writing is seamless. Damanic is fierce and broken and relatable. Narrated by the author herself. This is a stunner of a debut and I’ll be looking forward to seeing what Priya Guns does next!

Thank you to NetGalley and W.F Howes Ltd for the opportunity to listen to this audio book in return for an honest review.

I was excited to listen to this audiobook, because the main protagonist is a queer Sri Lankan woman, as am I. I quite liked this book, it was very immersive and I actually haven't watched Taxi Driver yet so I will be watching that soon.

Until this summer, Damani has been living on auto-pilot, like a background character in her own life. She spends the day driving other people around, trying to make enough money to care for her and her struggling Mother.

But then, she meets Jolene. Beautiful, bold, brave - she's the perfect woman and Damani can't deny the intense connection between them. But despite Jolene's passionate activism and her claim to have love for everyone, she's still a privileged, rich white woman. Damani just doesn't know if her feelings can ever bridge the divide between them, but she's trying.

Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before Jolene does something that sets the sparks they had on fire, and Damani is left trying to put out the explosion she burns.

"I'm not sure which is worse, being broke or being broken. Being both was definitely the worst, though."

A bold, blindingly powerful novel full of feminine rage, humour and a lot of heart. It's a searing social commentary about the things that divide and connect us in the human experience and the darker sides of humanity that still plague us. Talking about the expectations placed on people to achieve despite the impossibility of the current climate, about environmental danger, about workers rights, about burnout and ultimately about the utter farce that modern life can be sometimes.

Of course, as a Caucasian woman I can only try and understand Damani's experiences - I can't speak for this character, only speak up for them. And that is something discussed at length with bitingly dry wit - the difference between actually speaking up for someone, and speaking over them to drown out their voices. It contemplates how every person experiences privilege and discrimination differently - this book shows quite clearly that nothing is ever so simple, each person is the sum of many parts that make us who we are.

Damani is dryly funny, full of dark, sarcastic wit - almost an antagonistic kind of humour full of scepticism about everyone and everything. I felt her anger and rage, her painful exhaustion - this is delivered brilliantly as Damani speaks directly to the reader in her personal, frank and brutally honest tone that kept me intrigued about her. Every relationship - her loving friends, her tense relationship with her mother, and of course Jolene were perfectly crafted - Jolene was written so well that I almost fell deeply in lust with her too and I loved the way that while their romance was exceptional and intense, it didn't eclipse the story of this powerhouse novel.

The story moved slowly, letting us see deeper into Damani's mind and observe the turbulent, troubled world around her as it explodes into protests and anger - but still made time for plenty of high-octane, thrilling moments that balance out the quiet seething contemplation. At times, I couldn't quite understand the larger-than-life actions some of the characters did, but as we understand their desperation and despair it all begins to make sense. Eventually, the loud and the quiet merge together into a fever pitch as Damani reaches her limit and we wait to anxiously see where her end destination is.

Stylistically, this was so intriguing - Damani was a spectacular narrator, sharp and witty, almost nihilistic but understandably so - but then as Jolene enters the tale we see the dark tones shift into painful optimism, almost creating an alienating experience from the jarring change. Watching from the outside as Damani clearly became bewitched was uncomfortable, and I wanted to scream at her - but haven't you ever fallen for someone so deeply that things don't really make sense?

This is a love story, or a story about love anyway. About the complicated love between families in their darkest moments, about the love between real friends, about the love we share with strangers, about finding love in ourselves when the world just doesn't want you to.

Having Priya narrate this story herself was an amazing choice - her voice is crystal clear, balancing that professional reading voice with a conversational and personal tone, little bursts of dry sarcasm and personality that shine through in her words.

Brutal, bold and brilliant - Priya Guns is a voice that demands to be heard, and one you'll want to hear.