This book was a challenge to get into. I found myself needing to rely on immersive reading — just to stay grounded in the story. The author’s descriptions were incredibly rich and deeply creative, especially in how the main character viewed the world. But at times, that depth became overwhelming and hard to follow. It felt like the narrative drifted into a poetic stream of consciousness, which made it easy to get lost.

I really wanted to like this. There were moments where I caught the deeper meaning and appreciated the emotional weight behind the words. But just as often, I felt like the story jumped around too much, and I had to refocus just to figure out what was happening. It wasn’t a terrible read by any means—but it might just be that this author’s style isn’t for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC of this book. 📖

A mix of a New York nightlife novel and tale of American race, kind of milkshake of Brett Easton Ellis and Paul Beatty. Smith a young black and gay child of privilege is arrested for cocaine possession at the start of the novel, and we see how the mysterious death of his friend and roommate Ellie led him to this point. The book follows him through nightclubs as he tries to stay clean and find the truth of his friends death. Franklin is an impressive writer and every couple of pages he unloads a prose fastball which knocks the reader backwards. He is added himself to my list of writers to follow for sure.

At the onset of the novel, Smith is arrested for cocaine possession after a night of partying in the Hamptons. We soon learn that though Smith has always been drawn to the peril and possibilities of a decadent nightlife, the somewhat mysterious death of his best friend and roommate, Elle, has intensified his reliance on this sort of escape. While the arrest sets the story into motion, the book resists the tropes you might expect and offers instead a commentary on societal compression and a character study of a cerebral young man attempting to understand his own desires and motivations. Perfect for fans of Sally Rooney and Raven Leilani, I found this book meandering, but intoxicating.

This is a brilliant debut novel! This book will have you thinking about these characters long after you finish it. I feel privileged and honored to have been able to read this.

4⭐️ The writing in this book is phenomenal! The sights, sounds, smells of NYC are written so well it brings you right into the nightlife!

Davey “Smith” is a young, black, gay, college graduate from a very successful family, that sinks into trouble with a possession arrest and job loss. When his best friend Elle is found dead his life takes a downward spiral he finds it hard to recover from.
The characters of Smith, his friends and family are interesting and well developed. The city of NY is a character itself.

I wish the story of Elle’s murder would have been featured more in the plot. The finding of the killer was very anticlimactic. I think I was expecting more of a mystery/thriller. This book is very character driven and the main focus is Smith’s struggle and journey of downfall and redemption, his family’s expectations and dreams for him. Great debut novel!

Thank you NetGalley and S&S/Summit Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Rob Franklin is a poetic and creative story teller. The pacing took some getting used to, as the writing is highly reflective and descriptive. At times the plot took a backseat. Highly fleshed out characters and researched time period made that worth while.

I love a character driven mystery novel so this was right up my alley! Such a great mix of the two generes with diversity and wonderful writing.

This one wasn't for me. The premise was enticing and I was looking forward to reading this but I found the verbose, meandering style bogged down the pace to such a degree that I really couldn't get into the character. Others obviously liked it, so it is obviously me.

Thanks to NetGalley and S&S/Summit Books for an advanced reader copy.

Thank you Summit Books for my gifted copy!

Great Black Hope was depth and pure poetry. I thought this would be a faster paced thriller, but it was a brilliant character study on being a Black man in the small and privileged world of the Elite. I truly would have taken a highlighter to nearly every passage in this book, because I found it all so jarring, raw and thought provoking - truly my favorite kind of book. Rob Franklin is a voice to continue to watch out for, because wow.

I just finished this glorious book and I am thrilled that I get the chance to tell everyone I know to read this book. It is an extraordinary achievement. Beautifully written, thoughtful, insightful, harrowing, and a joy to live within its pages.

Every character is carefully constructed and described - their lives and foibles leap off the page. In the middle section of the book, I felt a bit unmoored - a bit lost - but then, I realized its purpose and was thrilled by the result. The last third comes sweeping in and it all comes together in an extraordinary way.

I am being very careful about not giving away too much, because every new development in the story thrilled and excited me -- and I hope it does that for all the readers yet to pick up this book.

Rob Franklin is an extraordinary talent and I look forward to reading whatever he writes next. Highly recommend.

As someone obsessed with diagramming sentences, I can confidently say that Rob Franklin's "Great Black Hope" is a literary marvel. The author, a poet, crafts sentences of Proustian length and beauty. I found myself highlighting passages again and again. And the semicolon usage? Masterful.

Beyond the stunning prose, the narrative itself is a compelling read with a nice, twisty plot. The setting is mostly New York's nightlife, making the book an updated modern-day "Bright Lights, Big City." We follow Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, as his life unravels after a cocaine possession arrest and he begins a mandated recovery program with some hilarious useless zoom therapy and dutiful drug testing. At the same time, Smith is dealing with the gut-punch of the unexplained death of his beloved roommate. An investigation is on-going: was the cause of death drugs or murder? Elle, who happens to be the daughter of a legendary soul signer. So the tabloids are unrelenting covering the unfolding drama. Race, class, media, drugs, and justice—the book deals with all these hot topics deftly and vividly.

I’m not sure that this one was for me. I understand why folks enjoyed it so much and I can appreciate it as a work of literature but I couldn’t get through it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this one. I’m always looking to push my reading boundaries and explore stories outside my own demographic, but Great Black Hope left me feeling a bit disconnected.

📝 Why It Didn’t Quite Land:
🌆 Bougie New Yorker Vibes – I have to admit, the world of high-status, effortlessly cool New Yorkers is one I just don’t understand, and that disconnect made it hard for me to invest in Smith’s story. The main character’s detached, almost apathetic approach to his life made it tough for me to care about his journey.
🔀 Scattered Subplots – The book introduces a lot of interesting threads, but few of them felt fully resolved. It’s like the plot kept reaching for something meaningful but never quite got there.
🗣️ Snobby Tone – The writing itself was fine, but it occasionally slipped into a tone that felt a bit too self-consciously clever, pulling me out of the story. It felt more like an exercise in style than a truly engaging narrative.

🔎 Final Take: While I can appreciate the author’s attempt to capture the messy, often chaotic lives of young, ambitious New Yorkers, this just wasn’t a world I wanted to return to. I’m glad I gave it a shot, but it ultimately left me a little cold.

💬 Have you read Great Black Hope? Did you connect with Smith’s story, or did it leave you feeling adrift too?

#BookReview #GreatBlackHope #NetGalley #ARCReview #LiteraryFiction #MixedFeelings #NewYorkNovels

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this novel. Based on the blurbs, I was expecting something much different than what I read. This is not a murder mystery or a story of the descent of a young man who has been arrested. There was no central plot to the story at all. It read like a memoir of a privileged young queer black man in NYC (and briefly in Atlanta) during a tumultuous year in which his friend is murdered and he is arrested for cocaine possession in the Hamptons. This period and milieu is beautifully rendered, and the writing is superb. In this gilded age, it seems that, after the top 10 university and all the accolades, all there is to do is work at nonsense start-ups and find the right mix of highs. The characters are very distant and, as a result, their struggles seem superficial. The commentary on race is belied by the experiences of both the main character and the woman who was killed. Instead, the story seems to be making the point that money cures all ills if you stay within your class.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange fo ra honest review.

Unfortuantely the book moved too slow for my liking. The writing itself was good but just took me too long to get through.

I really enjoyed this book--thank you NetGalley and Summit publishers! I'm not even sure how to describe this book--maybe a modern day Catcher in the Rye about a young Black man in New York who is dealing with a lot of things--parental expectations, being the 'Black' guy at work, the death (murder?) of a friend, an unfortunate arrest and its aftermath and I'm sure I'm missing something. There's a cast of characters that each see David Smith as a particular trope, and navigating these perceptions is the focus of the book. it's so well written and sad and hopeful all at the same time.

A young gay man, Smith, who lives in New York among friends, is caught using drugs. As he works on getting his record expunged, he is also actively trying to understand what happened to his well-loved roommate Elle. She has been found murdered after last being seen at a wild nightclub.

Through his interactions with friends and family we get a sense of his life and how he feels about it. In his family, though loved, he has not taken to his parents’ way of thinking about his future. Like him, many of his friends have come from privilege, yet none are really whole. To Smith it seems like his group has gone from rich to decadent, using drugs not as a relief from pain but to escape intimacy.

Smith’s musings give us a vivid picture of what happens when drug usage becomes a problem. What it takes to name oneself as an addict and how that works out is wonderfully portrayed in this story.

Great Black Hope is a thoughtful, messy exploration of identity, grief, and survival in the space between privilege and marginalization. Through the character of Smith—a queer Black Stanford alum whose life begins to unravel after a drug arrest—the novel examines the friction between class protection and racial vulnerability in a system that sees only part of who he is.

The book shines in its portrayal of the emotional disorientation that follows trauma. Smith’s grief over his friend Elle’s death is deeply felt, and his spiral into the city’s nightlife and legal entanglements is both chaotic and realistic.

While the plot occasionally loses focus, and some supporting characters are more evocative than fully realized, Smith’s inner conflict keeps the story grounded. His journey feels authentic, even if the path forward is uneven.

Overall, Great Black Hope doesn’t always hit its mark, but it offers a compelling look at how grief, race, class, and queerness intersect in modern America—and what it means to try to find hope amid all that complexity.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy of The Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin.
While the synopsis for this book sounded amazing, the writing style was not for me. I found myself bored and struggling to make to the end. While I 100% agree that this is a “me” problem, I just don’t think I was the right audience for this one.

"The Great Black Hope" is the debut novel by Rob Franklin, exploring themes of race, class, and identity. Similar to the works of James Baldwin, Franklin addresses these historical and contemporary issues through the perspective of a queer Black man.

The story's protagonist, Smith, grapples with the complexities of privilege, the criminal justice system, and the impact of his close friend and roommate Elle's death. Together, they represent "The Great Black Hope," symbolizing the expectations of success and upward mobility for the Black community, much like their parents before them. However, the immense pressure they face leads to self-sabotage, resulting in a hedonistic and nihilistic lifestyle as they navigate a depressed, drug-fueled haze among New York City's elite.

Franklin's writing is characterized by smart and elegant prose that encourages readers to reflect on contemporary issues and consider both the spoken and unspoken rules, as well as legal and social norms. Fans of Baldwin, Kaveh Akbar, Aria Aber, Percival Everett, Danzy Senna, and Hanif Abdurraqib may find this emotionally resonant and socially insightful book compelling. Special thanks to S&S/Summit Books and NetGalley for providing this ARC.