I saw Luster on Buzzfeed's most anticipated books of 2020 and knew I had to get it. The concept of an open marriage is intriguing to me and I wanted to read a little more about it.

I enjoyed this book and the complexities of the relationships in it!

The author of this debut novel has a sharp and well-formed voice that is a pleasure to read and is certainly one to watch in the future. However, I found myself bogged down in this book by the relentless depressive voice -- even as she's living through a pretty unlikely series of events, Edie's outlook doesn't transform much. She's funny and a sharp observer but lives at a remove from herself and everyone else until an occurrence near the end of the book that inspires her to make more art and finally lightens up the tone; my experience was that it was a bit of a slog to get to that point, and then I appreciated the end of the book.
Thanks NetGalley for the e-ARC.

I am in awe. This debut novel is complex, hilarious, beautiful, and difficult, while being gorgeously written with every sentence. It’s hard for me to review this book as I feel anything I say or adjectives I apply won’t do it justice, but overall, I am simply so glad I read it. Raven Leilani an excellent writer (and artist!), crafting a wholly original and moving story about a young black woman discovering herself amidst complicated circumstances (to put it simply). The narrator, Edie, is one of my favorite characters in recent memory. This book joins Real Life by Brandon Taylor as one of my favorite reads of the year (and they are both debuts!). I hope you all read this incredible novel upon release in August.

Leilani’s "Luster" is a hypnotic and cathartic debut novel, its predominant theme being the pursuit of passion and purpose in an era inured to uncertainty.

This book was exactly what I needed. The voice is completely immersive. Fresh, honest, ugly, and beautiful. In the end, I wondered if more could've happened plot-wise, but then i realized, the voice is so strong and the style is so brutal and unique, it didn't have to rely as much on plot twists as other books do. What an incredible first novel. Just incredible. My jaw was dropping. Smart, heavy-hitting, and just real.

A great story well written and very original and unique. Would definitely recommend and read more from this author

Sharp and well written, this debut showcases a talented writer. Edie's story is a familiar one brought up to date with the mores of today. I have to say, however, that I'm not the right audience for this book and was unable to generate much sympathy for the character.

This book was just an okay read for me.

The main character and her actions were just ridiculous and she didn't seem to be smart at all based on her actions.

I don't think I would recommend this book.

Right off the bat, for all intents and purposes, Luster is a more eloquent version of Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie. Both feature young Black women with complicated families, who both happen to work in publishing and are dangerously close to getting fired and continually enter risque sexual relationships because they’re struggling with a sense of self. Where these novels differ is in the execution and presentation of their lead.

Queenie was one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had reading a book because I could not wrap my head around her stupidity. This isn’t to say I didn’t like the book - seeing a Black woman being portrayed as an emotionally unstable anxious wreck is actually quite revolutionary given the stereotype of “the strong Black Woman” - but god if Queenie didn’t work on my nerves.

In the case of Luster, we have a protagonist who we’re told has gone through a series of bad hookups but we don’t see it. It’s easier not to judge Edie for sleeping with her entire office because we never see it play out, we don’t know how she came to make those decisions, we don’t know what the immediate aftermath was - all we know is that these encounters happen and that she has to deal with the consequences.

I’d even argue that the information is presented in such a way that even though you know and understand why this thing happens to her, you’re still sympathetic and worried about where she’s able to go from there.

Now, without leaning too heavily into spoilers about the open marriage, I will say that while I was confused, I eventually came to accept that this was a necessary decision on Edie’s end. I can’t say at what point the arrangement becomes more functional than sexual, but there is an undercurrent of eroticism for the entirety of the novel that undoubtedly plays a part in why Edie does what she does.

She wants to have sex. She wants to make art. She wants to connect to other Black women and girls around her but also needs to survive.

In a novel that could’ve easily - and started out - heavily fetishizating the desires of a young Black woman, there is actually a lot of melancholy and solace in the uncertainty of living through your early twenties and wanting to be more than you currently are.

I know that I compared this book to Queenie - and make no mistake - Luster is basically in conversation with that novel from beginning to end HOWEVER, having had time to sit with this book and think on it, this is really a modern day Giovanni’s Room.

Luster is definitely a recommendation from me with ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of five.

Sadly this book did nothing for me. I committed to reading the book for an honest review. I did indeed finish it. It just feels flat and not one I cared for anyone. Humor was a filler and tried far too hard to be bigger than it was.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review

I really wanted to like this one- the themes are great but the execution did not come together. There are much better books exploring these concerns out there. 2.5 rounded up

Dnf based on the flow and other reviews. The description pulled me in and it failed to meet expectations.

Luster follows Edie (Edith), a young black woman who lives in New York and works in publishing. She is broke and hardly makes enough for rent and other necessities. She doesn't shy away from new men and sex and some of her bad sex-decisions at the workplace cost her job. She then finds herself in the middle of a suburban white couple’s open marriage.

I LOVED the book. It is a joy to find a book that pays such attention to crafting characters. You can predict how the book is going to end. But I would still recommend it for the way it makes you feel. It is morose, sad, witty in a dark way and the kind that you do not want to leave. I was heavily invested in the characters. I was keen to follow the three of them to see how it is all going to end. The white couple have adopted a black child and the novel also explores how the marriage and the parenthood in general plays out for the child.

Raven Leilani surprises us with twists, unpredictability in her characters, hurried pacing at times and sudden shifts. Each character is mysterious in its own way. Is the husband happy in the marriage? The wife, with a job that deals with cadavers, calls it a form of art. Edie, an artist herself, tries to find the muse to paint.

A brill debut. I will be thinking of this for a long time
Rating: 4.5/5

I have to admit, I noped myself out of Luster just over the halfway mark. There was something about the style of writing that just felt forced. This is the only book in which I've felt that the language was too wordy, while at the same time, lacking content. It seems a contradiction in terms, but it's the best description I can come up with for the experience of reading this book. There were very long sentences that held very little of meaning, and short, punctuated sentences that ineffectively tried to say too much, or said nothing at all. The attempts at description felt flat and forced. Add to this the fact that the book seemed just a series of humiliations with nothing to temper it, it made Luster a really tough, and unrewarding read.

I feel like Luster is another installment in a series of books that I'm gonna call Dysfunctional Women Being Dysfunctional—which theoretically, I'm all for, but in actuality I've been disappointed by more often than not, this novel included.

Luster is Leilani's debut book, and there are definitely glimmers of sharp, wry writing to be found here. One of my favourites: "In the time we have been talking, my imagination has run wild. Based on his liberal use of the semicolon, I just assumed this date would go well." (lol)

That being said, I can't really say that I enjoyed this novel.

This is a novel that is immensely bogged down by its own moroseness. The main character, Edie, undergoes humiliation after humiliation with no break and nothing even close to resembling happy to temper that humiliation. I think the novel articulates its own spirit when Edie thinks,
"...the debris around the drain not enough to deter me from lying down in the tub and being dramatic, humiliation being such that it sometimes requires a private performance, which I give myself, and emerge from the shower in the next stage of hurt feelings."

And that's exactly it: reading this novel feels like reading a performance of humiliation ("performance" in the sense that it's a presentation of humiliation, not in the sense that that humiliation is performative or "fake," somehow). And the writing compounds this performance to the novel's detriment. Leilani's writing is simultaneously too verbose and too clipped, both over- and underwritten: at times she elaborates on moments that don't need to be elaborated on, and at others she breezes through monumental emotional moments as if they were nothing. It felt like the novel was working at cross-purposes from what I wanted.

Of course, what all of this means is, this book was written in a style that wasn't to my taste. And I think that there's definitely people for whom this book's style will work. If you liked Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Miranda Popkey's Topics of Conversation, or Naoise Dolan's upcoming Exciting Times, you'll like Luster. I will also point out the fact that Luster is an ownvoices novel told from the perspective of a black woman, whereas all those books I just mentioned are from white women's perspectives.

This review is based on an ARC of Luster which I received courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

3.25 Stars? I want to rate it higher but in hindsight Luster wasn't something that changed or moved me much. Raven Leilani is undoubtedly a great writer with an enchanting, lyrical approach to prose. This flow-of-conscious style articulates perfectly Edith's slice-of-life story, and emphasizes the feeling of being lost in your twenties. Whether the reader can relate personally to Edith or not, the author sets up a kinship in her choice of prose, an intimacy that cannot be shaken or denied.

I loved the grimy, melancholy, unassuming mood of this story. I loved that the author relied more on descriptors that dialogues to tell the story. I love that I never once questioned the author's merits--whether she was trying too hard or being too fancy with the prose. Luster is just right.

So, although I could not relate to the character personally, Leilani breeds empathy with her words and makes Luster enjoyable and touching, a unique tale with just the right touches laced throughout to make it haunting.

I stayed up all night to read this scintillating novel. A young black female artist is lured into an illicit affair that begins online. The characters were completely relevant and engaging. A must read of 2020!

Luster is a striking novel about the myriad ways it is possible to screw up in your twenties and still survive. All of the four main characters are lost in different ways, and end up coexisting in a weird not-quite equilibrium. Edie, the main character is 23. Edie is quite promiscuous and self-destructive. She is holding a great deal of vulnerability about her lack of relational stability. When she starts an affair with Eric, Edie ends up entangled with Eric's wife and adopted daughter. They become a sort of messed-up temporary family. You know it will end in tears but you cannot look away. Four stars.

Raven Leilani's debut novel is a spectacular examination of loneliness and the wish to belong. 23-year-old Edie is adrift: After making some inappropriate sexual choices, she loses her admin job in the publishing industry and finds herself with nowhere to go - until the wife of her married lover takes her in. Edie now witnesses their unhappy marriage first-hand, and she slowly becomes the only confidante of their adoptive daughter Akila who, until then, hardly knew any other black people.

The awkward, surreal scenario brings out the alienation of each character: There is volatile Eric, the husband and digital archivist, who is twice as old as Edie, drowns his unhappiness and insecurity in alcohol and takes her to an amusement park for their first date; there is Rebecca, the wife, who works in a hospital morgue where she archives the stories of dead bodies and who tries to approach her problems logically, but can hardly suppress her rage; there is aptly named Akila (which means "intelligent"), the black teenager who has been passed from family to family and who has already registered way too much for her age ("both hypervisible and invisible: black and alone"); and then of course we have Edie, an orphan haunted by intergenerational trauma who tries to archive and make sense of her life through art: She is an aspiring painter trying to capture her impressions on the canvas and in photographs, but there is no one who encourages her to seriously pursue her talent. For Edie, art is an archive of herself: "I've made my own hunger into a practice, made everyone who passes through my life subject to a close and inappropriate reading that occasionally finds its way, often insufficently, into paint." (And, apparently, also into this novel.)

What makes this book so special is Edie's narrative voice: Leilani lets us experience everything through her main character's eyes, and Edie's perceptions are witty and often hilarious, but the heaviness brought about by experiences of racism, sexism, and loneliness always shines through. Both Eric and Rebecca frequently treat her cruelly, turning her into weapon to hurt each other, thus objectifying her and exploiting her trauma.

There is a constant sadness about Edie, and her willingness to oblige others is born out of a lack of self-love, of an exhaustion that grinds her down: Edie is depressed and tired of the constant fight to survive: "(...) there will always be a part of me that is ready to die." But there is also a part of Edie that is willing resist: She loves Artemisia Gentileschi's painting "Judith Slaying Holofernes", in which the 17-year-old-artist painted herself killing her mentor after he had raped her. The way Edie clings to "her" Captain Planet mug in the family house is indicative for her search to find something she can call her own.

It is masterful how Leilani spins a web between these characters and develops dynamics and interactions that always point back to their profound lack of attachment. The scenes she depicts are mostly realistic, sometimes absurd and always disturbing. In numerous narrative vignettes, we learn about Edie's backstory, and sometimes, the people she encounters open a window into their past by sharing some very telling details with her. I was glued to this fascinating, hypnotizing text, its particular tone and unusual vibe.

Raven Leilani (who is also a painter) is a daring author with a very recognizable style, and I hope this novel will get nominated for some awards, because she deserves attention. Oh: And extra points for the scene depicting a job interview at a clown school which reads like a nod to Jesse Ball's Census.