About the book

What we are reading in October: Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

Trigger Warnings: Nightcrawling is not cheerful. It is however, an Oprah Book Club choice, it was long listed for the booker prize and it has a 4.03 vote on goodreads with over 30,000 votes – it’s an incredibly important debut novel written by a (19 years old at the time) author and poet, Leila Mottley. At this time, we do wish to share with you a number of trigger warnings which include sexual assault, abuse, child neglect and violence. What’s even more important than reading incredible books, is looking after yourself and if you’re not in a space to read a book with the above trigger warning we invite you to skip this month and come back next month, where our Chick Lit title is guaranteed to be a much lighter read.

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent–which has more than doubled–and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.

One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.

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