Leila Mottley

** AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ** 'UNFORGETTABLE' GUARDIAN 'A SOUL-SEARCHING PORTRAIT OF SURVIVAL AND HOPE' OPRAH WINFREY 'MOTTLEY'S FLUID, INSTINCTIVE WRITING SOARS . . . A REMARKABLE DEBUT' SUNDAY TIMES 'GROUNDBREAKING . . . THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE OF THE BIG BOOKS OF 2022' STYLIST When there is no choice, all you have left to do is walk. Kiara Johnson does not know what it is to live as a normal seventeen-year-old. With her mother in a rehab facility and an older brother who devotes his time and money to a recording studio, she fends for herself – and for nine-year-old Trevor, whose own mother is prone to disappearing for days at a time. As the landlord of their apartment block threatens to raise their rent, Kiara finds herself walking the streets after dark, determined to survive in a world that refuses to protect her. Then one night Kiara is picked up by two police officers, and the gruesome deal she is offered in exchange for her freedom lands her at the centre of a media storm. If she agrees to testify in a grand jury trial, she could help expose the sickening corruption of a police department. But honesty comes at a price – one that could leave her family vulnerable to their retaliation, and endanger everyone she loves. Nightcrawling is an unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising. -------------------------------------- READERS CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF NIGHTCRAWLING 'Nightcrawling is a lyrical masterpiece' ***** 'This book ripped my heart out' ***** 'Unputdownable . . . From the first page I was hooked' ***** 'This is a heart-achingly necessary book which will carve a hole in your soul and stay with you forever' ***** 'It is rare to read a first novel so perfectly crafted' ***** 'This is an absolute must-read. Five stars out of five' ***** 'Completely gripping . . . This is going to be a huge bestseller' *****

‘An electrifying debut’

Nightcrawling

A dazzling novel about a young black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system--the debut of a blazingly original voice that "bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole" (Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There) Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are barely scraping by in a squalid 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. And 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. Full of edge, raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.

sarah perez

I think 190 might have a moon in place of his heart: waxing and waning, trying to decide if it is whole. Don't understand men like that-like Tony, like Marcus-but I can't seem to shake them. Wanna rest my head close to their moons and see if they beat too.

Camila found a way to survive and Marcus found something to live for even if it failed and, hell, Trevor even found his own thing, always galloping toward the nearest hoop. And I am still waiting to be hit by some universe-halting love that will turn me inside out and remove all the rotting parts of me. Or at least something to make life bearable that isn't another person who will leave.

There is a membrane of pride that surrounds the heart and I found that when that area got damaged, it was hard to figure out what took the hit.

Sometimes it was the heart; often it was only the cellophane.

eve 

„That was before I learned that life won't give you reasons for none of it, that sometimes fathers disappear and little girls don't make it to another birthday and mothers forget to be mothers.”

Ausrine Blazyte

It ain't my place to have a problem with somebody else's survival.

So many ways to walk a street and I am still just girl with skin.

Lindsay

Not that none of them are decent, just that decency has never provided enough to unbury their egos. I think it’s just how time works. A man’s crescent will always catch up with him. The way I seen Marcus’s moon chest recede so far I thought it was dark in there. The way I’m seeing it come out now, slowly, but I know it’ll be full again. That’s the only reason any of the cops would have tried to save me: they got their moon back.

Spent my whole life waiting to fall into something that would make my body wanna turn into its own instrument just so I could be a part of every song that jump- started a pop and lock, make everybody dance. Like when Daddy joined the Party and hid his biggest joy under his beret, tilted just right. Like when Mama stumbled into Daddy’s smile and knew all she had to do was lock it into her fist. Like Marcus and his microphone. Sometimes, when I paint, I think I feel that, but the painting is never enough, never erases all the other moments I can’t seem to find no peace.

Only thing worse than a man untamed is a man on the edge of it.

“Just ’cause it ain’t simple don’t mean it gotta be complicated.”

knowing he loves me enough to watch me survive, to give him my everything without worrying about him running.

Mama used to tell me that blood is everything, but I think we’re all out here unlearning that sentiment, scraping our knees and asking strangers to patch us back up. I don’t say goodbye to Shauna and she doesn’t even turn around to watch me leave, to head back out to a sky that sunk into deep blue while my brother asked me to do the one thing I know I shouldn’t, the one thing Shauna cared enough to warn me about: hollow myself out for another person who ain’t gonna give a shit when I’m empty.

It ain’t my place to have a problem with somebody else’s survival.

I look down, see a tent behind the basketball courts and an old man pissing by a tree, not bothering to look around and see who is watching. I aspire to be so reckless, so unassuming that I could take a piss in San Antonio Park at noon on a Thursday and not even look up.

So emotional and painful to read. For the main character, my face was set in a permanent grimace. The descriptions of the things that she went through, the pain she endured and the silent suffering she experienced was too much. It’s a great novel detailing police exploitation and brutality. 

surtified™

Jordan

This book is alright I guess, the authors writing is good when it comes to the dreamy, surreal descriptions, but lacks when it comes to solidifying the characters or story.

Trevor is described as a kid, then a kid whose almost a man with muscles and then he's tiny, and she's carrying him. He's 9, apparently. Just inconsistent descriptions.
Also Kiara is not a good character, I don't feel for her at all, she's alll dreamy and loving in her head then just a dick with one word or one sentence answers to everyone else. That makes sense with the Men she deals with on the streets and the cops. But with everyone else it doesn't at all.
Also, I have no idea how much time actually passes in this book, because of random jumps and lots of time spent in her head and memories, which is fine, except it doesn't add to her relationships with anyone in the current story, like she takes Trevor to the bus once, plays basketball with him and then suddenly he is like her entire world? That's ridiculous to me since the author didn't include anything building the relationship, just those two events and some unknown jump in time and boom she has a new kid.
But there is lots that feels left out or added after the fact, like we get 2 or 3 meets with Camilla then she isn't mentioned then near the end we get a meet that happened between the previous second and third meetings that seems to be wedged in and irrelevant.

I don't know, this whole book just let me down, the end is slow and unsatisfying. Not to mention it ends with Kiara in the exactly the same place it started, with no money, no job but now she has a kid to feed. Her brother just gets left in jail, so she still has no help.

Meh

This book was cruel and heart breaking and so beautifully written 

maddy loch

Sarah Sammis

The book is short and lyrical. It's also blunt and to the point. It paints the neighborhoods of Oakland as its own character. This an Oakland written by someone who knows the city and its strengths and weaknesses.

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2022/comm...

Marginalized	City	Cornfield	6600FF

poetic, vivid, painful, deeply heartbreaking. so many trigger warnings needed. some scenes felt unnecessary to include and could have been omitted without diminishing what the main character endures. overall, this book has a heartbeat that syncs your own to its tempo

Rebecca Lum

i felt so claustrophobic reading this because of how strong of a story it is. it is so vivid and powerful and heavy. and it is heartbreaking. 

Noemi Gonzalez

Despite the bleak circumstances of our main character's life, Leila Mottley presents rich writing giving soul to the people she writes about which is quite rare sometimes in books. 

In an interview, Mottley acknowledges the lack of dialogue Kiara has, furthering driving the point of her being voiceless. We are given an internal monologue that showcases the keen observation, youthful naivety, and Kiara's penchant to survive no matter what. 

Electric and gripping, painful and vivid, this is a fantastic book and debut. 

Jawahir M

Despite the bleak circumstances of our main character's life, Leila Mottley presents rich writing giving soul to the people she writes about which is quite rare sometimes in books. 

In an interview, Mottley acknowledges the lack of dialogue Kiara has, furthering driving the point of her being voiceless. We are given an internal monologue that showcases the keen observation, youthful naivety, and Kiara's penchant to survive no matter what. 

Electric and gripping, painful and vivid, this is a fantastic book and debut. 

makenna!!! 

“Stopped telling myself it’s just sex, just skin, because it has become so much more than that; there is the sex and then there is the terror, the fear, the marble whites of their eyes.”

the story leila mottley tackles in her debut novel is so intensely raw and unfortunately, so real: discussing the exploitation of black woman and the brutality that’s inflicted upon queer, transgender, and black sex workers at the hands of the police force.

woman of color have been receiving unfair treatment due to the corrupt blueprint of america’s justice system for centuries and only a rare handful seeing the light of courtroom to tell their stories, let alone their said stories making headlines in articles and newspapers. this novel follows, kiara, a young black woman struggling financially in east oakland and is left with no other option but to turn to sex work to support both herself and her older brother, as well as her nine-year old-neighbor, trevor.

mottley discusses how the system continues to fail survivors like kiara: black women who have been sexually exploited and abused at the hands of police officers who think they’re able to do what they want when they desire to a woman’s body and soul.

It’s difficult to know how to start this review as this is a Powerful book with an emotive storyline that is set around a True story although some things have been changed but as a debut book by Mottley its defiantly one that you need to give a chance. 

Our Main Character 17-year-old Kiara Johnson is struggling with her brother to make ends meet and keep it all together. Marcus: her brother is unable to hold down a job and is trying and failing to pursue a Job in the Music industry. Their Farther passed away when Ciara was 13 and their mother is in a. Halfway house. Kiara also feels responsible for the well-being of nine-year-year-old Trevor her neighbour Dee’s son who is often abandoned by his mother and left to fend for himself. When her landlord doubles her rent and she is unsuccessful in securing gainful employment elsewhere, an unfortunate turn of events sees her take to prostitution in a last-ditch effort to avoid eviction and starvation. 

For me this book was slow to start and took a while to get to the main plot line and then felt like there where less pages to complete the story in; having said that the story is powerful and leaves you with a lot of feelings that you don’t know where to put them or what to think or say. The depictions of social injustice, sexual abuse and exploitation are immensely disturbing, and I am not surprised that many have put this one aside midway. Kiara’s journey is a painful one, but she is a survivor, and we keep rooting for her. It’s not an easy book and the ending was the outcome I was expecting but was what was needed for the book and shows that Family and Friends can help lift you.

Ian Brakspear

It’s difficult to know how to start this review as this is a Powerful book with an emotive storyline that is set around a True story although some things have been changed but as a debut book by Mottley its defiantly one that you need to give a chance. 

 

Our Main Character 17-year-old Kiara Johnson is struggling with her brother to make ends meet and keep it all together. Marcus: her brother is unable to hold down a job and is trying and failing to pursue a Job in the Music industry. Their Farther passed away when Ciara was 13 and their mother is in a. Halfway house. Kiara also feels responsible for the well-being of nine-year-year-old Trevor her neighbour Dee’s son who is often abandoned by his mother and left to fend for himself. When her landlord doubles her rent and she is unsuccessful in securing gainful employment elsewhere, an unfortunate turn of events sees her take to prostitution in a last-ditch effort to avoid eviction and starvation. 

 

For me this book was slow to start and took a while to get to the main plot line and then felt like there where less pages to complete the story in; having said that the story is powerful and leaves you with a lot of feelings that you don’t know where to put them or what to think or say. The depictions of social injustice, sexual abuse and exploitation are immensely disturbing, and I am not surprised that many have put this one aside midway. Kiara’s journey is a painful one, but she is a survivor, and we keep rooting for her. It’s not an easy book and the ending was the outcome I was expecting but was what was needed for the book and shows that Family and Friends can help lift you.

faye

i love when poets cross over into prose, + mottley is no exception !! heart-wrenching navigation of race, gender, and power in the US. the metaphors did get a bit repetitive for me, but regardless a powerful read

Shona Tiger

This review first appeared in The Sunday Long read, Sept. 25, 2022 — Issue #357 (Bulldog Edition).

Kiara is seventeen, and desperate. The rent is due. Her father is dead; her mother’s in prison. Her brother has asked for time to pursue his dream of recording an album; while he does that, he’s not helping with any of the bills for their shared apartment. Kiara has tried to find a job, but has no resume, and little work experience. After a fateful evening at a strip club, she turns to sex work.

She gets caught up in a sex ring run by Oakland, CA police, who exploit her using a mix of threats and payments. After one of them commits suicide, Kiara is approached by officers who are conducting an internal investigation, but it becomes apparent that this is a cover-up. In the midst of even more threats from the officers who are abusing her, an officer in the same department decides to blow the whistle about the sex ring, upending Kiara’s life.

This is a complex novel depicting one potential aspect of Black girlhood. It aims to speak for those who are vulnerable, unheard, and mostly unseen. The author began writing it when she was seventeen, inspired by a 2015 case of sexual exploitation of a young woman by members of the Oakland Police Department, and others. The novel is understandably uneven in places, with ineffective flashbacks, and with the author’s style tending towards wordiness. However, Nightcrawling is undoubtedly a triumph, and an important novel.

My rating: 7/10.

Shareca

Nightcrawling
Leila Mottley
BR @margauxreadit 💫

♠️ pages: 271
♣️ genre: Black + fiction
📣 pace: medium
🔊 pov: kia/kiara
🔔 tw: sexual exploitation assault, and prostitution + death and drug abuse

There is an experience to be had when reading Mottley's Nightcrawling; it is a form of emotional attachment to your heart that cannot be compared to anything else. There is an expansive culture and a very reflective stream of consciousness, and it reminds me of my childhood; finding your next meal, your next dollar, your next ✨anything✨ when no one is there to answer your call due to their own darkness and survival. 😔

Kiara's stream of consciousness and her raw authenticity are blended in this novel centered around Oakland (one of my favorite places). As Kiara struggles to find her next meal (and her brothers, and semi-adopted next-door neighbors' son), Nightcrawling does an incredible job of developing her character and those around her. By becoming a "nightcrawler," she becomes entangled in this world of what it means to give away every aspect of oneself. By continually sacrificing herself and her skin, she becomes trapped within the system—a system much larger than she is. It is a system that has been rotting in her family since its origin.

As a means of survival, prostitution/nightcrawling/trafficking plays an important role, Kiara had no choice but to do the only thing she knew “how” to do after being sexually assaulted and being “paid” for it. Mottley presents sex as being a commodity that can be utilized as a means of manipulation by using money as a medium; my emotions were affected by it in so many ways—it was astounding. 😮‍💨

Despite its emotional imagery, Nightcrawling provides a clear understanding of what it means to ✨truly✨ sacrifice everything you have for the people you love. There is a sense of a culture that erupts from the page that is not only relatable but also vivid and thrilling. 🥹 It creates a sense of emerging oneself into Oakland and everything it aspires to be and all it is.

            I hate having to say that I struggled with this one.  This book was raved about by big names like Oprah and Good Morning America.  This author is the youngest to be featured in the Oprah book club, and critics across the book world seemed to have all the love in the world for this book. 

            I felt like I was dropped off in the middle of an already-existing story and I didn’t get all of the previous bits to help me fully understand what was going on.  It was hard to figure out how Kiara and Marcus had gotten to the place they were in when the book started.  Over the course of the novel,  we do get some additional information about their family situation, but I still don’t feel like it covered all that would have been nice to know. 

            Then it felt like the rest of the story was rushed.  Conversations seemed stilted, the story itself missing pieces.  I just couldn’t connect with Kiara like I would have liked to.  Marcus was a thoroughly unlikable character that seemed to have been an afterthought almost.  The relationships in Kiara’s life, with the exception of that poor kid, seemed underdeveloped.  Then that whole story surrounding the kid was baffling as well.  How did that last as long as it did? 

            In the end, I was left with more questions than answers, and that was just disappointing. 

Kristen Claiborn

            I hate having to say that I struggled with this one.  This book was raved about by big names like Oprah and Good Morning America.  This author is the youngest to be featured in the Oprah book club, and critics across the book world seemed to have all the love in the world for this book. 

            I felt like I was dropped off in the middle of an already-existing story and I didn’t get all of the previous bits to help me fully understand what was going on.  It was hard to figure out how Kiara and Marcus had gotten to the place they were in when the book started.  Over the course of the novel,  we do get some additional information about their family situation, but I still don’t feel like it covered all that would have been nice to know. 

            Then it felt like the rest of the story was rushed.  Conversations seemed stilted, the story itself missing pieces.  I just couldn’t connect with Kiara like I would have liked to.  Marcus was a thoroughly unlikable character that seemed to have been an afterthought almost.  The relationships in Kiara’s life, with the exception of that poor kid, seemed underdeveloped.  Then that whole story surrounding the kid was baffling as well.  How did that last as long as it did? 

            In the end, I was left with more questions than answers, and that was just disappointing. 

Sarai Johnson

I think everyone involved in the publication of this novel owes this young woman an apology for publishing what should have been a writing exercise in empathy and perspective. I wish this book was something she could talk about in interviews a decade from now when she publishes her magnum opus, not something that people are actually reading. 

This novel is impressive in the sense that most people, regardless of age, aren’t capable of completing a book. It is impressive that a teen was able to complete a work of this length with the (shallow) amount of complexity Nightcrawling contains. 

However, I believe Mottley’s agent(s) and editor(s) are exploiting her youth, her blackness, the political climate, and the women who are truly impacted by the crimes described in this text. 

This book is extraordinarily problematic in ways that any text produced by a teenager would be. I don’t even want to focus on the soapy overwriting, the absurd amount of similes, or the reckless mishandling of vernacular English, there are greater issues at hand. Perhaps I mistook this for literary fiction when it is actually urban or genre fiction.

The most glaring problem in my opinion: the main black male character is offensively infantilized and incompetent. This depiction of a black man could set us back decades. Plus the way the main character takes on this man’s responsibilities without much of a second thought is an embarrassing characterization of the “strong black woman.” 

Yes, it’s “real” but it’s always so much more complicated and nuanced than what is in the pages of this book. 

Further, I am troubled that this is “based on a true story.” The woman or women whose story this book is based on couldn’t have been consulted because there is no way an individual would consent to having their story told in this way. While the story itself doesn’t feel farfetched at all (I’m not at all shocked by the crimes), the characters in it are like caricatures of themselves. The tropes are so old, they’re disintegrating. 

Does the author know any poor black folks? A black man? A sex worker? Being black does not mean you are capable of or are entitled to tell any and all black stories. Blackness is more complex than that. And I think this story deserved more complexity and depth. 

This writer is talented. But her talent needs to be cultivated appropriately. 

The adults around her should have known better. 

I don’t want to imply that teens aren’t capable of writing meaningfully. They are! I’ve seen it myself! But as we’ve seen with many greats of any discipline, practice matters. To me, this calls into question whether what Toni Morrison or Tayari Jones or [insert another prolific writer here] was writing at 17 should have been published and would they be proud of it?

This was good practice for Mottley but shouldn’t have been published as it is.

Cindy Lieberman

A dark book about a young girl’s slide into prostitution as a way to keep her family afloat. An interview with the author at the end of the audiobook revealed the idea for the novel grew from a newspaper article, casting an even darker shadow on the events in the story.

A dazzling, unforgettable novel about a young black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system—a debut that announces a blazingly original voice. Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are barely scraping by in a squalid 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. And 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. Full of edge, raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.

A novel

Zoe Deckard

This book is fantastic. It humanizes women and girls who are sex workers and deal with the dangers related. I think it really does justice to those experiences despite being a fictional account. Moreover, it’s just an excellent piece of literature. 

Nightcrawling ‘An electrifying debut’

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