Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Luster

Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Luster by Raven Leilani

40 reviews

jkreads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

It's been a while since I last felt FED by a book, but this one felt like a whole meal. The prose was so lush, it was such a pleasure to consume. I listened to the audiobook and the narration was great.

Raven Leilani has such an exquisite way of describing the mundane - something as ordinary and dare I say, cliche, as a twenty-something living in a crappy roach and mouse infested apartment in New York is recounted in a way that almost adds a layer of magic and whimsy to it.

Don't get me wrong, nothing about it is glamourised, it's bleakly realistic, but the language used is just so divine.

I'm not usually a litfic girlie, I tend to get bored, but I was HOOKED by Luster literally straight away. I anticipated that I would get bored halfway through like I usually do during anything that isn't a fantasy or a romance, but I was pleasantly surprised that Luster kept me hooked from start to finish. Everything about this book felt cliched or inevitable, which it leaned into, but it's really a testament to Leilani's writing that the story was so captivating because in my opinion this is not something that's easy to pull off. I can't wait to read more by this author in the future!

Content Warnings

al_davies_jones's review

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

kjofalltrades's review

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medium-paced

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

1.75

Content Warnings

jujuwithbooks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

alisonfaith426's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

Content Warnings

novella42's review

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

I noticed this book at my library because of its gorgeous cover, and I took it home because I am polyamorous and the blurb mentioned "an open marriage—with rules."

I just need to say... Please don't take this book's depiction of non-monogamy as representative of how to do an ethically open marriage. Holy hell. I feel at a loss to list all the ways Edie and Eric and Rebecca torture each other needlessly. It's a fascinating train wreck to watch, and I found myself looking at my own polycule with renewed gratitude and affection. Leilani doesn't let any of the characters off the hook, and if a lot of their behaviors seem inexplicable to you, well, you won't be alone.

As to the book itself, I appreciated the lyrical, almost psychadelic writing. (If you don't like pose poetry or stream-of-consciousness writing, maybe pass on this one.) Leilani revels in dark Millennial existential dread that kept shocking laughter out of me. She's fantastic at descriptive phrases that catch you off-guard with their originality. I marveled at some of them, their poetic pacing and expansive assumptions, so much I started collecting a list:

"I am suspended in a lurid hypnagogic loop."

"It is impossible to see another black woman on her way up, impossible to see that meticulous, polyglottal origami and not, as a black woman yourself, fall a little bit in love."

"A sudden and swiftly contained conniption."

"Hooked into peripheral intuition."

"The city's breakneck, multilingual carousel."

"Some inconceivable boss-level of concentrated loneliness."

"The bike lanes in Manhattan already terrifying at 11:00 a.m., filled with delivery boys and girls who jet into traffic with fried rice and no reason to live, along with the sentient abdominals who do this for fun."

"The lawn buzzed and alkaline, the vinegar in the wine and carnage in the dew, everywhere the perfume of things that want to live."

I can't imagine what it's like to narrate this as an audiobook, because the rhythm of the words is beautiful and also relentless. Leilani is skilled at pulling you deep into the bewildering internal labyrinth of mental illness and immersive, uncomfortable experiences.

If you carry any traumas, I recommend browsing the full list of content tags. I almost couldn't make it through the scenes with gore and body horror, though Edie's dissociative skills and the eye of an artist made it slightly more bearable. I'm glad I got it in hardcopy instead of audio, so I could skim over difficult dark passages. There were lots of those. I'm not sure why I kept reading, except that I was fascinated. It was hard to look away.

One last thing, a recommendation for anyone who likes disco. I genuinely think one reason I enjoyed this book as much as I did was that in the first 15 pages, Edie references her connection to Idris Muhammad's 1977 song "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This." On a whim, I made a Spotify station out of it and I have to say, it complimented the book and let me surrender to the undertow.

Beautiful writing about broken people living a surreal, twisted story.

Content Warnings