Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

After losing her day job, a troubled young artist finds herself living with her much-older lover, his inscrutable wife, and their adopted daughter in Leilani's electric debut.Edie meets Eric online: She's a 23-year-old black art school dropout with a mouse-infested apartment in Bushwick and an ill-fitting administrative job at a children's publishing imprint; he's a white archivist in an open marriage and twice her age. "The age discrepancy doesn't bother me," she explains, keenly aware of the dynamics of these types of exchanges, his stability and experience for the redemptive power of her youth. Of course, she has been curious about the wife, but it's only after Eric goes silent that she wanders into his unlocked house and comes face to face with Rebecca, who knows who she is and cooly invites her to stay for dinner. Afterward, Rebecca leaves her a voicemail: "I enjoyed meeting you, let's do that again." And so it begins. Newly fired from the publishing house for being "sexually inappropriate," Edie is working for a delivery app when she gets an order for lobster bisque and a bone saw delivered to a VA hospital. The customer is Rebecca. The bone saw is because she's a medical examiner. The reason Rebecca then takes Edie home with her…can't be reduced into straightforward facts. Edie's role in their household is perpetually tenuous and always unspoken: It is clear to her that has been brought in, in part, "on the absurd presumption" she'd know what to do with their traumatized daughter, Akila, "simply because we are both black." So she bonds with Akila. Sometimes, she cleans. She is neither Rebecca's friend nor her rival. Regular envelopes with money appear on her dresser in irregular amounts, a cross between an allowance and a paycheck. And all the while, the dynamics among the four of them keep shifting, an unstable ballet of race, sex, and power. Leilani's characters act in ways that often defy explanation, and that is part of what makes them so alive and so mesmerizing: Whose behavior, in real life, can be reduced to simple cause and effect?Sharp, strange, propellant-and a whole lot of fun.

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

After losing her day job, a troubled young artist finds herself living with her much-older lover, his inscrutable wife, and their adopted daughter in Leilani's electric debut.Edie meets Eric online: She's a 23-year-old black art school dropout with a mouse-infested apartment in Bushwick and an ill-fitting administrative job at a children's publishing imprint; he's a white archivist in an open marriage and twice her age. "The age discrepancy doesn't bother me," she explains, keenly aware of the dynamics of these types of exchanges, his stability and experience for the redemptive power of her youth. Of course, she has been curious about the wife, but it's only after Eric goes silent that she wanders into his unlocked house and comes face to face with Rebecca, who knows who she is and cooly invites her to stay for dinner. Afterward, Rebecca leaves her a voicemail: "I enjoyed meeting you, let's do that again." And so it begins. Newly fired from the publishing house for being "sexually inappropriate," Edie is working for a delivery app when she gets an order for lobster bisque and a bone saw delivered to a VA hospital. The customer is Rebecca. The bone saw is because she's a medical examiner. The reason Rebecca then takes Edie home with her…can't be reduced into straightforward facts. Edie's role in their household is perpetually tenuous and always unspoken: It is clear to her that has been brought in, in part, "on the absurd presumption" she'd know what to do with their traumatized daughter, Akila, "simply because we are both black." So she bonds with Akila. Sometimes, she cleans. She is neither Rebecca's friend nor her rival. Regular envelopes with money appear on her dresser in irregular amounts, a cross between an allowance and a paycheck. And all the while, the dynamics among the four of them keep shifting, an unstable ballet of race, sex, and power. Leilani's characters act in ways that often defy explanation, and that is part of what makes them so alive and so mesmerizing: Whose behavior, in real life, can be reduced to simple cause and effect?Sharp, strange, propellant-and a whole lot of fun.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Leilani debuts with a moving examination of a young black woman-s economic desperation and her relationship to violence. Edie is a 20-something low-level employee at a New York city publishing house. She paints on the side, but not often or well enough to comfortably call herself an artist, and she-s infatuated with Eric Walker, a married white man twice her age she met online, with whom she explores his thirst for aggressive domination (-I think I-d like to hit you,- he says; she lets him) and is caught breaking the rules of Eric-s open marriage (no going to his house). After Edie loses her job, Eric-s wife, Rebecca, invites her to stay with them in New Jersey. The arrangement functions partly to vex Eric and partly to support Akila, the Walkers- adopted black daughter. An inevitable betrayal cracks the household-s veneer of civility, and suddenly Edie must make new arrangements. She does so in earnest, but not before a horrific scene in which Edie and Akila are victims of police brutality. Edie-s ability to navigate the complicated relationships with the Walkers exhibits Leilani-s mastery of nuance, and the narration is perceptive, funny, and emotionally charged. Edie-s frank, self-possessed voice will keep a firm grip on readers all the way to the bitter end. (Aug.)