✨Book Review✨ Luster by Raven Leilani

✨Book Review✨

Luster by Raven Leilani

(releasing 8.4.20 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

When I read The Bell Jar as a young twenty-something I clung to it with such a fervor because I finally saw myself in the pages, even though it was written almost 50 years before. Over the years since, I’ve tried reading other novels that claim to capture the modern, young adult’s search for identity. I was widely disappointed, finding the characters to simply be moody and entitled. I believed I had simply aged out of identifying with the younger generation. Then Luster came along and I alternately can’t stop talking about it and am tongue-tied because it’s Just. So. Good! THIS was the book I needed as a young woman!

This debut novel is not “soft around the edges” so as to make it palatable and mainstream. It is raw, bold, and makes no apologies. I keep asking myself “How? How? How did she just do that?! How did Raven Leilani just pack all those huge themes into 227 pages and not a single sentence felt forced?! How? How? How?” I want to offer up a million quotes, turns of phrase, and sharp prose but I don’t want to take a single piece of the experience away from a reader.

This is the best book I’ve read this year! Please please please, if you have ever sought my advice on what to read I beg you to preorder this novel!