Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - Luster

Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Luster by Raven Leilani

50 reviews

deeb_reads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny medium-paced

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

4.0

If you have ever been in your twenties, you probably have known someone like Edie. This person is intelligent and talented, but for some reasons (often related to past traumas) they somehow always manage to self-sabotage or run out of luck. It can be frustrating and awful when it happens in real life, but they'll always have a hell of a story, and our thankfully fictional Edie certainly delivers.

Leilani manages to trace the intricacies of her characters and their interactions with each other-- which is great, because not much else happens in the book. (If you're not really into character driven books, you probably won't like this one.) Edie, Rebecca, Eric, and Akila all feel fully fleshed out, with their occasionally hostile, occasionally tender interactions providing the meat of the story. Even small-seeming interactions tell you something about the characters and their relationships to one another.

"She has terrible handwriting, doesn't she?" he says... He smiles, this small cruelty hanging in the air between us. And though I can tell he feels a little bad about having said it, he seems relieved when I join in. (32)

Although Edie is introduced to the Walkers through Eric, her interactions with his wife Rebecca and their adopted daughter Akila are my favorite parts of the book. Rebecca and Edie share a tense relationship that eventually warms to reluctant camaraderie, and Edie does her best to help try to guide Akila through the rockiness of adolescence made worse by her isolation as a Black girl in a white suburb. Any one of these characters could have been one note-- Eric as a midlife crisis schmuck, Rebecca as a jealous wife, Akila as a precocious child who merely serves to provide wisdom to the adults, Edie as a "misunderstood," traumatized artist. Yet Leilani serves to make them awkward and flawed, but overall well-intentioned.

Edie will likely be polarizing to readers, who might be frustrated watching her make questionable decisions and suffer the consequences

(ex. get fired from her office job for impulsively hooking up with a long list of coworkers)

or be turned off by her cynical and kind of out of pocket behavior. I personally loved her narration and thought that she felt raw and very real. She's certainly been through her share of traumas and is scraping by on the economic margins in a very expensive city, and this background makes her choices seem more realistic. As a narrator, she's sharply observant, raw, and often pretty funny.

Like most white people who eat beans in the woods undeterred by the fresh fecal evidence of hungry bears, Eric finds his mortality and soft meaty body a petty, incidental thing. I, on the other hand, am acutely aware of all the ways I might die. (11)

I also loved Leilani's writing style, which is poetic and really evocative of both sensory details and interior emotions. However, I can understand why a decent number of other reviewers didn't like it-- if you like a more subdued writing style it will probably strike you as overwrought. At times, the writing style did bother me, generally just during the occasional flow-of-consciousness run on sentence. For me, though, it hits more than it misses.

In the city, there is a smell. Hell's Kitchen, a rotting, fungal fruit. Midtown, smelling of mildew and old pecorino. I forgot that this is what happens in New York when it rains... (200)

Besides complex characters and well-crafted writing, Leilani provides insightful commentary on race, sex, love, and artistry. Why young women "[make] gods out of feeble men." How intergenerational trauma and racialized poverty affect families and continue vicious cycles. Why people make self-destructive decisions when it comes to sex and relationships. The story addresses these issues and weaves them seamlessly into the narrative, with Edie connecting her own story to that of generations of everyday triumphs and tragedies and her relationships with Rebecca, Eric, and Akila fleshing out these themes.

Overall, very enjoyable writing, humor, and commentary, though definitely might be a bit polarizing depending on your taste in problematic narrators and purple prose.

Content Warnings

its_hanya's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-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

3.0

It took me a minute to get into the book fully, but once I got aquainted with the writing style, I enjoyed the strange yet incredible scenes the writer cooked up. Exploring dark themes such as loneliness, desire and racism in a detached and sometimes funny style, Edie our narrator paints a powerful picture.

Content Warnings

norcalchris's review against another edition

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dark funny 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

4.75

Some of the most impressive and daring writing I’ve ever experienced. Darkly funny at times, vaguely sinister, and shines an unflattering light on the rotten ugly within and around us.

Will be an obvious reread in the future and a study piece on writing style and voice.

I’m not giving it quite 5 stars because I had no problem putting it down halfway through and reading a full other book before I picked it back up and at times the long streams of consciousness became exhausting. Regardless, will be one of the best books I read this year and glad I bought a physical copy.

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sork's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense 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

2.5

the premise and the writing style r good but the actual execution of the plot had me lost. I get Edie wanted to be apart of a family and I feel like a lot of the focus on the mundane was meant to like deepen like the intimacy of being apart of Eric's family or wtv but NGL it made the book really boring and I feel like a lot of points that were focused on ultimately were for nothing so much vivid description and for what. I think it was all tied together nicely but the fact that I feel like the same points could have been made which sufficiently less book takes away from the punch of it.

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jkreads's review against another edition

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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's review against another edition

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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

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kjofalltrades's review against another edition

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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

yosistachrista's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

dixiecarroll's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted reflective fast-paced

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

5.0

Sharp, smart, emotional, and more. This is worth the hype (not seen on Goodreads clearly lol). Very quick read and is exactly what I wanted to see from Such a Fun Age, with Edie and Rebecca’s relationship, specifically. I laughed out loud a few times and then held back some heavy emotions at others. Ultimately, well worth your time because it’s finish-able in one sitting.

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