I believe fellow writers have to stick together. Today, that’s just what I’m doing. I want to introduce to you, La’Toya. She wrote a novel and I’m pleased to be able to critique it and write the below book review.
The author, La’Toya lives and works in London. She studied at the University of the Arts in London where she gained a BA (Hons) in Media & Cultural Studies. She has taken her passion for writing to the next level and transformed it into Assariyah, her debut novel.
Book Overview
Jones has a motto, “cash over everything.” She believes that cash is the single most important thing to her and no matter how low she has to go, even selling out her own friends, she’s going to get that cash. Even if it means becoming a highly priced prostitute. At first, these things work for her. She becomes a woman of the world. She’s able to see amazing places like Thailand, Paris, and the Bahamas. She meets movers and shakers in the US and in Europe. She has clothing , cars and money beyond her wildest dreams. However, this comes back to bite her. She is set up for a huge fail from grace which forces her to rethink her choices. Unfortunately, for most of her choices, it’s too late. This forces her to sit through the consequences and relive her own choices. She must deal with some things that will forever be a part of her life. These things will never change.
Book Review
This book is a fast read. La’Toya does a great job, in my opinion, keeping me in tuned with Assariyah and diving into her personality and personal thoughts. I did think the novel started a bit slow for my taste, however, it picked up nicely through the middle. I feel like I understand how and why Assariyah thinks money is so vital to her. She’s trying to secure her happiness while preventing the problems of her childhood and earlier life. Not to mention she just hates to be broke, like many of us. The twists and turns in the story seem organic and caught me off guard. None of which I’m going to display here in this review. I don’t wanna spoil it for anyone.
La’Toya also does an amazing job with the sexual scenes. These type of scenes can be tricky because it could easily turn a book into an erotic novel, which is fine, if that’s what the writer intended. However, this book and this reader wasn’t looking for that type of literary work. The author’s sex scenes are very classy. This book was extremely refreshing to read, especially because a Black person wrote it without all of the unnecessary stereotypes that are seen in most Black literature. Overall I give the book four out of five stars and I recommend it for Kindle.