Reviews with content warning for Racism - Nightcrawling

Beautiful and sad and just a tiny bit hopeful. It’s obvious Mottley is a poet; the language throughout the book is lyrical and vivid. Sometimes this comes as a bit of a distraction from the story, however. This is really my only criticism. Not from personal experience but from the author’s skill, I connected so deeply with Kiara. I don’t want to give anything away, so I won’t say much about how the story goes except that it is heartbreaking and feels realistic in all of the most uncomfortable ways.

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emmalinallap's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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writingcaia's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Very powerful, touching, and heartbreaking - a tale that tells of the injustice, the blindness, the erasure of Black and Brown women.
This is the story of a girl that has to grow up too fast when her widowed mother goes to jail and she has to take care of her older brother that wants to pursue a doomed to failure music career and a little boy who lives next door whose mother is an addict and never around. But, how? She’s only seventeen, she can’t find a job. Desperate she takes the darkest plunge and starts walking the streets breaking her feet and her soul, giving herself to the worst of men. In her Nightcrawling she meets an older woman with a pimp and she considers it but then she’s almost arrested and the police start using her. And, the rest you need to find out.
It’s a devastating story of how doing your best can mean the worst for you, when trying to come clean can devastate your life, but it’s also about love for others, supporting the weakest, being there for your loved ones, and doing the right thing, even when it’s wrong, even when it can cost you.
The writing is beautiful but did feel weird and repetitive at times, taking you a bit from the story, but that’s the only flaw I found.
The friendship between our girl and bff, the love between her and the little boy she takes care of, it really made my heart swell, even if amidst such tragic and life threatening events.
It’s definitely a must read debut if the theme interests you.

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okiecozyreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

In the author’s note, Leila Mottley writes that when she was a teenager a story broke how members of the Oakland Police Dept and several others participated in the sexual exploitation of a young woman and tried to cover it up. She says she was 17 and “contemplating what it meant to be vulnerable, unprotected and unseen.”

Kiera and her brother Marcus are living in an East Oakland run-down apartment complex while the rent keeps going up astronomically. Marcus is trying to make it as a music star and Kiara is just trying to make rent, even if it involves relationships with men who take advantage of her by Nightcrawling.

Such a tough read but she definitely tells the story of these women for these women.

“I am telling her how these streets open us up and remove the part of us most worth keeping: the child left in us.” P267

“Number one rule about entering somewhere you not supposed to enter us don't never guestion none of it. Don't ask nothing and don't act like you don't know what you doing because that'll land you right where you don't wanna be.” P235

“That was before I learned that life won't give you reasons for none of it, that sometimes fathers disappear and little girls don't make it to another birthday and mothers forget to be mothers." P81

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