Urban fiction is a genre I’ve always wanted to explore. Going in, I was expecting this book to be about hustling and doing what it takes to make it big on the streets– but this book takes a slightly different perspective. It focuses on three women searching for stability and success decades after their lives intersected with the high-powered Brooklyn drug game.
Ivy has spent 16 years supporting her incarcerated husband Mikey and raising their sons, but she’s ready to start over in Staten Island along with Deja, who became a suburban mom instead of holding down her wrongfully convicted boyfriend. Ivy’s sister-in-law, Coco, is a top executive whose education and success are owed to Mikey but she is ready to strike out on her own.
The book is compulsively readable and you get sucked into the melodrama. The character’s backgrounds feel real and complicated. I don’t know if this is a function of the genre, but I found the book does reiterate plot points and character relationships quite often. It was a little jarring
You also never have to worry about trying to figure out what a character is thinking because this book seamlessly shifts POVs in the middle of scenes in a way I don’t think I’ve read before.
My favorite character was Deja’s sister Nikki–an Instagram model and professional party girl. She brings a lot of humor and provides plenty of unfiltered advice to the characters. She doesn’t have a storyline but is played up as a main character in the marketing for some reason ? I’m curious if she will get her own book.
The last 20% of this book focuses on police brutality and the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. The shift was sudden but I think the plot line was well done.
I can’t wait to read more urban fiction and maybe dive into Tracy Brown’s backlist.
Brown was getting her feeling out about 2016 in this book. Tr*mp supporters get dragged (one literally) left and right in this book.
This book is also not the Lifetime movie of the same name. I’m sure the publishers must have been annoyed by that.