I sat on this review for most of the day, unsure of what to make of this book. I think I’m gonna land on the side of “good” and give it a 4-star seal of approval.
I think a lot of people are coming into this looking at the subplot of crime involving a stripper and assume this is a Hustler$-esque pulp tale. It’s not that at all. Instead, it’s how people’s lives revolve around a popular stripper who has gone missing, including, but not limited to her co-working strippers. And it takes a very blue collar, matter-of-fact look at the life of strippers. It’s not glamorous; it’s gross, it’s blue collar (though few consider it) and, as the book shows, it’s fraught with peril.
The book throws dozens of POV characters, some work better than others, some just serve as annoying digressions. There were a few times when I was wondering where this book was going. But a rocketing plot this does not have. It’s not even really a slow burn, per se. It’s a character study with the crime story as the spine of the narrative.
And thus, it makes the characters feel more real. Although some are more interesting than others, and the uninteresting ones really weigh the book down, the narrative tension creeps through in this character-study-in-crime-drag because there are real stakes for the people involved in what’s going on. The resolution was imperfect and, as I said, some of the character arcs drag, but I choose to uplift the “quality” of this flawed-but-quality work.
