R E K. (bigstone) - , reviewed on 10/7/2021 + 1440 more book reviews

Raw! Emotional! Smooth!

Raw! Nola Cespides is a bright young journalist with the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the key character of this story. After college, she was able to move herself and her motherfrom a poor area called Desire which was all they could afford. It had been a struggle to pay rent and buy food in that neighborhood. A reporter who wants to work on the city desk, her chance comes when the editor assigns a story about sexual predators who live across the city. It can make her career.

Emotional! Get to know Nola's emotional ups and downs. She works hard, lives hard and loves hard but avoids serious attachments. She mostly enjoys the encounters until one man pulls a knife and she must use her gun to escape. Caustic situations with other news people and sometimes her friends are followed by nightmares that wake her roommate and leave Nola sobbing.

Smooth! Nola spends Sundays with her mother, going to church and having dinner with her. She is calm and professional conducting informative sessions with those she must interview. Knowing some of these can be dangerous she slides carefully in and out of conversations.

The author's style and writing is moves the story flawlessly from descriptions of Katrina and how it affected the city and its inhabitants to encounters with her gay male roommate, girlfriends and her mother. Descriptions of the city add much to the tale. She visits famous dining and tourist spots with friends and the twelve-year-old to whom she is big sister for two hours each week. There is so much here that connects with the reader. It's scary, fascinating, and filled with surprises. Brilliantly done!

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