Book #48: Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An almost completely blind read for me; my first impression of this was that it reminded me of a couple of S.E. Hinton Books I read at school - "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish" - because it was about teenagers growing up without parents.
So, the main character and narrator, Kiara, and her brother Marcus, have lost their father; their mother is in a rehab centre, seemingly as a result of an incident that led to the death of their younger sister.
As I read further into the book, I was reminded of Angie Thomas' "The Hate You Give" with its themes of race and injustice.
Kiara and Marcus are struggling to pay for their cost of living; he is unwilling to get a job, and she ends up making a living by becoming a prostitute. She also often finds herself looking after a boy called Trevor, whose mother is constantly disappearing, often for several days.
The only real issue I had with this book was that its blurb told me too much about the plot, making it sound like it would be all about Kiara testifying about police corruption. This happened quite late on in the book, after the police started exploiting Kiara for sex.
Overall though, it was a really good book; very sad in places, and full of social commentary. It felt like something that could really happen, and not surprisingly, the police don't come off very well. I was constantly guessing what would happen next, and the conclusion ended up a little more open-ended and bittersweet than I had expected.
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