Clever and heartfelt. Definitely not an easy read but an important read. Feels fever dreamish at times and yet ant other times this book feels too blunt and clear. It’s a strange mix that works. The writing style is fantastic. A rare concept that actually works out. This book did help.

Sadly, this book was a miss for me. I really liked "Hell of a Book" and will admit that I began this one not realizing it was a sequel. And while I did read HOAB, it was a few years ago and I felt like this book needs the reader to have a solid understanding of that book's construct and characters to really enjoy this one.

It's solidly a story about an American black man's experience in Europe, peppered with reflections on guns and suicide and the poisons of American culture. I wish I liked it more than I did and hope others get more out of the book than I did.

Less important, but at some point, one of the writer characters acknowledges he can't write well from the female perspective (or the "dame" perspective, the term he continually uses for all women), and I think that's true for the author here too.

Many thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Two black authors - one on a European tour having won the national book award-the other in the bitter cold of a Minnesota winter to address a school that has just suffered a mass shooting.
At times funny and very sad, filled with dream-like sequences, and also with what I feel must be real events from the author’s life. In my opinion it offers a very prescient look at what America has become through the looking glass of tragic events that have or will happen. I did not find it an easy read but certainly a very good one.

People Like Us by Jason Mott feels like the kind of book you want to sit with, not just speed through. It’s not a direct sequel to Hell of a Book, but the two are in conversation—and honestly, I connected with this one even more. Mott’s style is so distinctive: the prose flows easily, but every page is layered with sharp, thoughtful ideas. It’s the rare combination of highly readable and deeply intelligent.

What really struck me is how People Like Us manages to be both clever and rich in content without ever feeling heavy-handed. It’s a novel that makes you think while also making you want to keep turning pages, and I loved the whole experience of reading it. I can't wait to read Jason Mott's next book and what he'll read next.

Jason Mott’s People Like Us is a vivid, genre-bending novel that weaves surreal absurdity with deep emotional resonance. Balancing two narratives; one surreal, the other painfully grounded; it explores identity, grief, fame, and violence through the eyes of Black writers navigating modern America.

The phrase “people like us” surfaces repeatedly, morphing in meaning; from Black Americans to all those marked by violence, longing, or exclusion raising questions about community, empathy, identity, and shared fate. Mott’s novel powerfully reflects the grip of gun culture. From hovering firearms to deaths no one can escape, the narratives probe trauma's lingering echo and its societal normalization.

Elements like time travel, sea monsters, and floating handguns thread through the novel, lending dream-like urgency to its social critique. This surreal style amplifies rather than diminishes the emotional truth, creating an analog to real-world horrors felt as deeply unreal.

Mott’s dark humor is sharp and unflinching. Whether it’s drinking liquor from an award trophy or absurdist handovers of identity, the novel balances its seriousness with brilliance and levity.

This is an electrifying, emotionally nuanced, and dangerously inventive novel. It gives voice to fears we collectively refuse to shake—grief, gun violence, dislocation, and the search for identity—through characters who feel at once acutely fictional and uncomfortably real.
The book’s surreal elements enhance rather than distract: they open up space for imagination and meaning beyond the literal, giving readers room to feel and reflect. It is satire delivered with wit, heart, and lyric energy.
If you're drawn to stories that root for healing amid tragedy or those that believe in the power of narrative to challenge, console, and transform; People Like Us will stay with you long after closing its final page.

@duttonbooks @prhaudio | #partner I loved Jason Mott’s 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬, the 2021 National Book Award winner. That’s not to say I didn’t feel a little off balance by it. In fact, I went back to look at my review and here’s a little of what I said: “It’s brilliant. It’s confusing. It’s funny. It’s thought-provoking. It’s sad.” and “I constantly wondered about what was really happening in the story AND about how all of it translates to the world we live in.” All that I can also say about his follow up novel, 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 𝗨𝗦.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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In this we have not one author, but two, who may or may not be the same person. Both are winners of “The Big One” and both have experienced violence in one form or another. They’re both carrying guns for their own safety. One, Soot, is ramping up to give a speech at a school that has just experienced gun violence. The other is on a European tour for his book that won him the award. This story is populated with characters you’d know from Hell of a Book and others that are brand new. We learn much about Soot’s background and about the other author’s mixed feelings toward what his success means and what it can and can’t do for him. Along the way the prevalence of gun violence in America is never far away.⁣⁣⁣ (Is it ever?😥)⁣
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This book was tense, funny, sarcastic, sad, scary, and deeply thought provoking. Like his last book, I listened to People Like Us and am glad of it. Having Ronald Peet and JD Jackson narrate this story gave me space to think about Mott’s words and to contemplate their meaning. That being said, I’m sure I didn’t catch all I could have. Mott has a way of simultaneously entertaining and keeping your mind spinning. I appreciate that, but I have to be real, it is work! If you liked Hell of a Book, you’ll also like this one. If you haven’t read Hell of a Book yet, why not!? I strongly recommend reading it before picking up People Like Us.⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I didn't realize when I requested to read a DRC of this book that it was a sequel to Hell of a Book, a book I have not read. As a result, I found it very difficult to get into and follow. My apologies to the author and Penguin Group/Dutton publishing house.

This book was hard to get into. At some points I was interested and at others I was completely lost on what was going on. I had high hopes.

2.75 ✨

I didn’t realize this was a sequel (?) and maybe that’s why I struggled with this story? At times, I was invested in the story but then I found myself not paying attention and constantly rereading passages.

I don’t think I can fully review this one without reading Hell of a Book first.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for my honest, yet limited review.

Charleston Gazette Mail, Saturday-Sunday, August 30-31, 2025.

“People Like Us” - Jason Mott, Penguins, August 2025, 237 pages.

As summer winds down you may be moved to switch from frothy beach reads or the latest spy thriller to something a bit more literary. To ease the transition between the two, consider “People Like Us.” This latest from from National Book Award winner Jason Mott is serious fiction with welcome touches of pure funny.

The book follows two male, Black writers. One, Soot, lives on his family’s land in North Carolina. He is visiting various places where there have been schoool shootings, to speak at the schools and to the communities. He is grieving the end of his marriage to Tasha and the loss of his daughter m, Mia, as she moves into adulthood.

The other writer is unnamed. He, like Mott, had just won The Big One (the NBA) and he’s on a speaking tour in Europe underwritten by a billionaire benefactor who had an incredibly interesting proposition for him. Oh, and a guy named Remus wants to kill him, but only after checking his teeth.

This is the first book by Mott that I have read, and it is chock-full of a bit of everything, even some magical realism (which I firmly believe is best left to writers named “Marquez,” for the most part.). Even still this book is fantastic.

It features a Scottish, Black chauffeur and an assistant who looks just like an imaginary friend called The Kid that the unnamed narrator had as a child. Plus an old girlfriend he discovers when she comes hurtling into his elevator, naked, while running from the wife of a doctor with whom she was having an affair, all in a hospital in Italy (the narrator was recovering from a stab wound.). Now, if that doesn’t at least pique your curiosity, I’m not sure I can do much else.

Did I mention his odd affinity for Nicolas Cage?

There is so much to love here, including a running gag that I won’t spoil, but that made me laugh every time.

Mott does an incredible job differentiating the voices of the two narrators; it almost reads as if two, distinct authors wrote the sections. Soot’s are quiet and somber, while the unnamed narrator’s are more lyrical - he had the cadences of a poet or a great hip-hop artist.

As one would expect, there is a fair amount of examination of what it means to be a Black man in Europe and in America, “…for the first time since I met him, he sounds all American. He sounds like Baltimore. He sounds like Atlanta. He sounds like Watts. He sounds like Brooklyn and the Source Awards and my dead grandmother’s chicken-and-rice recipe all rolled into one.”

And “people like us? What do we have? We don’t even have the South, which is the closest thing we’ll ever get to a homeland…I wonder what it feels like to be someplace in this world and not feel like an outsider.”

Mott’s prose is memorable, with lines like his description of Paris, “every brick looks like it’s made of old money,” and a character’s plaintive lament, “what do you do when your home doesn’t love you and all the other homes you tried to make a life in don’t love you either?”

The book will likely make my list as one of my favorites of 2025, which, as the unnamed narrator would say, is “gravy. Pure and total gravy.”

Two Black authors - one navigating grief and gun trauma, the other fleeing fame and threats - intersect in a surreal, emotionally charged America. Jason Mott’s *People Like Us* is a powerful and deeply human novel that stayed with me long after I turned the final page. From the very beginning, Mott’s prose pulled me in - it's elegant, unflinching, and full of heart. The characters felt real and raw. I was especially moved by how Mott explores themes of identity, belonging, and the often invisible lines that divide us. There’s a quiet urgency in the storytelling, a sense that every word matters. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for fiction that speaks truth with compassion.

See full review on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website:

Jason Mott’s metafictional saga continues with ‘People Like Us’

"Acclaimed North Carolina author Jason Mott made a memorable statement about racial violence in his 2021 National Book Award winner “Hell of a Book” when he introduced his character Soot — a little Black boy who turns invisible when he senses danger.

The story follows an unnamed narrator who is an Author on a book tour promoting his bestselling novel of the same title. As the Author intersects with characters inspired by different aspects of his personality, Mott’s metafictional tragicomedy weaves together a transportive and evocative treatise on generational trauma, gun violence and mental health..."

https://www.ajc.com/arts-entertainment/2025/08/jason-motts-metafictional-saga-continues-with-people-like-us/

This is truly one of the best books of the year. jason Mott who wrote One Hell of a Book has literally written one hel of book with People Like Us. It's a novel that is bothe topical for today's world and it's also a book about books, which is one of my favorite things to read. Story revolves around two black writers one super successful and one who isn't. Each chapter is this build up of one writer's exprience to the next writers which could't be more different. It's about making it to the top and that maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be and the writer who's on the bottom trying to make back to top. The issues of that author tackles are a plenty. Also could this be a memoir that is weaved into the narrative from the real author? This book is one that is also laugh out loud funny. I'm a firm believer in getting people to change their minds about things by using humor. This is literary fiction at it's absolute finest. It will be in everyone's year end best books of the year. Thank you to Dutton Books for the read.

Many thanks to the publisher for the ARC of this book. I really enjoyed the dual perspectives of the 2 different author narrators, and the insight into the author’s personal experiences was both touching and enlightening. I’m not African American, but I’m Asian American, and I could really resonate with parts of the book. The gun violence was sobering; it was fascinating that one of the characters moved to Europe in order to get away from some of the things going on here in the US. (I recently spoke with someone from France who said “We are so worried about all of you in the US”…rightly so, it seems!) This would be a great book for book clubs, as there is a lot of meat for discussion here.
A very well-written and thought provoking novel!

People Like Us by Jason Mott is a dazzling, genre-defying triumph that blends surrealism, emotional truth, and biting social commentary into a narrative that is both intimate and expansive. Following two Black writers one on a global book tour after winning a major literary prize, the other preparing to speak at a school reeling from a shooting Mott weaves their stories together with dreamlike flourishes, time travel, and moments of absurd humor that never undercut the gravity of the themes. The result is a novel that confronts gun violence, racism, grief, and identity with unflinching honesty and lyrical grace. Having read every book by Jason Mott, I can confidently say People Like Us is his most emotionally resonant and stylistically audacious work to date. While it echoes the surreal brilliance of Hell of a Book and the aching humanity of The Crossing, this novel pushes further inviting readers to sit with discomfort, laugh through pain, and find connection in the chaos. Mott’s prose is at once poetic and propulsive, and his characters especially Soot and the unnamed Author are rendered with such depth and vulnerability that they feel like old friends, even as they navigate extraordinary circumstances. What makes this novel truly unforgettable is its ability to hold contradiction: it’s wickedly funny and heartbreakingly sad, grounded in reality yet bursting with fantastical elements like sea monsters and floating handguns. Mott doesn’t just tell a story he creates an experience, one that lingers long after the final page. People Like Us is a celebration of storytelling itself, a reminder that fiction can illuminate truths we struggle to name. For longtime fans and newcomers alike, this is a masterwork that cements Jason Mott’s place among the most vital voices in contemporary literature.

Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Group Dutton, and Jason Mott for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I bought a copy of Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book when it won the National Book Award in 2021; I read it in June 2025 to discuss it with my book club. While People Like Us isn’t a sequel to Hell of a Book the two are closely connected.

People Like Us, told in alternating voices, starts each chapter with the narrator’s silhouette, follows two Black male authors. Mott is sharply and sometimes hilariously critical of race in America. One of the authors regularly gets mistaken for and pretends to be other Black authors, like Ta-Nehisi Coates. Motts also critiques America’s gun culture. One of the authors is at a speaking event at a university immediately after there was a mass shooting on campus. The other author goes on tour in Europe, bringing a handgun to protect himself.

People Like Us has some of the same oddity as Hell of a Book - a narrator that repeatedly sees a person who might not be real - and a few of the same characters. I found People Like Us less puzzling and more darkly funny with characters that I liked just a bit more than those in Hell of Book.

Gun violence is at the heart of Jason Mott's People Like Us, a follow up novel to Hell of a Book. While it isn't a sequel, it definitely feels as though the two books are connected. Sharp, smart, funny, tragic, and unpredictable, the book follows two black authors on book tour and paints a very bleak and unflinching look at America's obsession with guns. No one out there writes with a voice like Jason Mott's. This one will keep you thinking long after it's over...

Thank you to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Dutton for this ARC.

Phew. When you pick up a Jason Mott novel, you know you’re in for an experience—and this follow-up to Hell of a Book doesn’t disappoint.

Two Black writers from North Carolina are on book tours, yet their journeys couldn’t be more different. One, unnamed, travels to “Euroland” where he meets Frenchie, a billionaire eager to bankroll a life of privilege in France—so long as the unnamed author writes a few books and never returns to the U.S. But he’s also carrying a gun, haunted by Remus, a man who attacked him in America and vowed to kill him.

The second is Soot—the young boy from Hell of a Book who witnessed police murder his father. Now grown, he’s visiting a Minnesota college that has just endured a mass shooting. Known nationally as an authority on grief after writing about the suicide of his daughter Mia at sixteen, Soot’s storyline is grounded and harrowing.

While Soot’s narrative is less surreal, both arcs pack a heavy punch. Mott explores the lived reality of being Black in America under the constant shadow of gun violence. One character even remarks, "...leaving America just might be the new American Dream.”

Mott’s sharp, rapid-fire dialogue, ability to find humor amid tragedy, and unflinching portrayal of America’s obsession with guns make this a powerful read. For me, it didn’t land with quite the same shock and freshness as Hell of a Book—largely because the style and structure feel familiar—but even a “lesser” Mott is still head and shoulders above most other contemporary fiction.

This is a smart, funny, satirical, and deeply human novel. If Hell of a Book was your jam, this one is a must-read.

" . . . sometimes the right fistful of words can be a help to people like us."

Two writers on very different book tours encounter fans, drama, and disturbing experiences.

There is beautiful, mournful writing here, as the characters deal with grief, survivor's guilt, worries over gun violence, and their fear of being Black in America.

"There should be a word for laughter that you will never hear again. There should be a word for the laughter that people who never met them will never hear. There should be a word for you full heart beating even when your mother is dead and your father is dead and you have gone on and laughed the night away with friends or made love unto bliss or lifted your child into the air in laughter without them ever seeing or hearing your mother or father. There should be a word for loving a child. There should be a word for grieving over decades. There should be a word for surviving."

Lest you think this is a downer of a book, there are also plenty of laughs to be had. I snickered aloud every time one of the writers pretended to be Ta-Nehisi Coates or Colson Whitehead.

This was a fascinating, unusual read, and I look forward to Mott's next book.

I loved everything about the soon-to-be published (National Book Award Winner) Jason Mott's PEOPLE LIKE US.

There are two protagonists in this book - both black writers. One writer is on book tour in Minnesota while the other writer, also on book tour, in Europe. The writing is dark and funny and clever - a true delight to read - while there's also a foreboding feeling almost like a tap on the shoulder to the reader to pull them back into the writers' unsettling realities.

Throughout the book, I had a recurring thought of - what makes someone feel at home? Is it proximity to family? A feeling of comfort? Familiarity? Being accepted? Feeling safe?

This would be an excellent book discussion choice. I can't wait to read and hear what other people take away from this incredible read.