Book Review: Luster by Raven Leilani

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“Luster” by Raven Leilani is the PERFECT book for every 20-something out there. It truly encapsulates that – at once – confusing, exciting, and depressing decade.

“Luster” is a book full of sultry sweet heat and stickiness. The writing of this novel will have you enthralled. 

The story follows 20 something-year-old Edie who’s trying to sort through her life. Edie’s engaged in art, she finds herself fired by her job, all while she becomes sexually involved with a married man.

Slowly, Edie becomes entangled in this married man’s life in ways unexpected to her as she tries to figure her own life and career. 

This is a story about anger, survival, sex, race, class, and family. 

This book was incredibly well written. I could have finished it in a sitting but instead, since I loved it so much, I forced myself to digest it and drag it out every night for 3 weeks.

I love how intense emotions were represented through descriptors of the atmosphere and through the itemization of both the social-emotional surrounding. 

There is a very strong mastery of the senses; especially visual and smell sensory in this novel. I could spend ages dissecting every line and still be left breathless and astonished. I was flourished; it felt like I personally went through everything the main character did. 

“Luster” is simply an experience. It encapsulates so much: trauma, ancestry, race, poverty, art, survival, reconciliation, motherhood, marriage, and so forth. And yet, it doesn’t beat you on the head with any of its issues – it’s interwoven so cleverly that you feel the knot in your belly twist and twist.

Amazing. 

“I think of how keenly I’ve been wrong. I think of all the gods I have made out of feeble men.”

“I’m an open book,” I say, thinking of all the men who have found it illegible.” 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐