I highly recommend this book, and I highly recommend you read it right now. It is just a slender novel, but this book is packed with so much and the majority of it made me feel deeply uncomfortable. Edie is a 23-year-old Black woman living in roach-infested apartment in Bushwick and working at a publishing company when she meets Eric, a digital archivist who is white and more than double her age. They begin seeing each other, as he is in an open marriage, but it is not long before the stories of Edie, Eric, his wife Rebecca, and his adopted daughter, Akila are all wrapped up together tightly. My head was spinning from being depressed by Edie’s story to being completely enthralled by her story. Along the way, the reader is affronted by the way systems of race, class, and gender disadvantage some and prop others up. Leilani’s writing style might not be for everyone, but I found it fresh and intimate. — Julie Travers
