Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Luxúria

I was expecting a steamy romance with a little bit of family drama thrown in, but what I got was one of the most important books I've read in my life. It feels like Raven Leilani wrote this book for me.

Luster is about the profound loneliness of being a young black woman and how other people can often make us feel even more alone.

Please check out the trigger warnings before picking this up! There was a lot that I was not expecting.

Content Warnings

thevioletfoxbookshop's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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

4.0

Somewhere between poetry, an essay, a biography, contemporary, and erotic fiction, you'll find Luster by Raven Leilani.

On the surface, Luster is about a young black woman struggling as an artist in New York who ends up entering into the open marriage of a privileged white couple. But even more than that, it's a raw glimpse of one woman's life, struggles, her art, her sexual desires, career ambitions, passions, fears, thoughts, and feelings.

The main character is so honest, it's both terrifying and beautiful all at once. Luster is her confessional, where she readily shares things that most of us would be hesitant to admit to even ourselves. She is often contradictory in the way humans often are - lonely yet introverted, starving yet can't or won't eat, ambitious but struggles to find motivation, loves herself but is insecure, hates but desires men. Sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's painful to watch her try to navigate the contradictions within herself and in the world around her.

More than anything, I think Luster is about loneliness. The loneliness of what it's like to be a black woman in the United States, of being an artist, of being a parent, of being a child without their parent, of dealing with generational trauma, and of our modern world. Edie, like all of us, wants to be seen and understood, but the way that she, and we, connect with others are often unusual and unexpected.

This book was more feelings and vibes than plot, for me. It's like if you could vomit up all of your emotions that feel inexplicable and they settled into words on a page, but in the most beautiful and poetic way.

Content warnings include physical abuse, sexual content, racism, sexism, self-harm, suicide, miscarriage, abortion, drug addiction, police brutality.

Content Warnings

rae03's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense 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

3.5

Content Warnings

clocrim's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-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

3.0

Content Warnings

thequeenofsheba3's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

3.75

Content Warnings

elouisewills's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.5

An amazing book with a great story, but I'm not really one for excessive crudity and sexual anatomical description.

Content Warnings

sedgewren's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

The language and imagery in this book is stunning, with complex emotions rendered in breathtaking accuracy. If I had read the physical copy, I would have underlined the heck out of this book!

However, the plot often felt like it was crafted to serve the descriptions the author wanted to write, rather than the other way around - perhaps this was what was intended, because the main character's actions often felt like they weren't under her control (which added to the sense of her drifting along in life), but her actions were often very frustrating to me. This book is very much more about the intense character portrait rather than the plot!

Content Warnings

lavxna's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective 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

4.0

Content Warnings

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