Review of Raven Leilani’s Luster Novel
B. Lorenzo Buckinchere
Apr 26, 2026
It’s the end of the month, and time once again for our monthly review series. Our muse for the month of April is Luster by Raven Leilani. But before we begin, here’s a disclaimer.
Disclaimer:
The following review contains spoilers. So I recommend reading the novel before reading this or any other review on the topic. Now without further ado, let’s begin.
Overview:
Luster is a 2020 American novel written by Raven Leilani. At 227 pages, it was Leilani’s debut novel, and was among the best received debut titles for that year.
Plot:
The main plot follows Edie, a twenty-something African-American woman who works at a publishing company in New York City. It is a dead-end job that she is able to keep by fulfilling sexual favors for her male colleagues, mostly White.
Jaded with her job, and with life in general, Edie begins an online affair with Eric, an older married man from New Jersey. Eventually, they meet in person, and he takes her on a date to the amusement park.
Despite Eric being married, Edie is smitten, often indulging in fantasies about their lives together, and how it will all end, that offers a striking peek into her psychology. This will become relevant later in the novel when Edie’s lust becomes more apparent.
Not long after, Edie is fired from her job after setting a boundary with one of her male colleagues. With very little savings to fall back on, she is soon evicted from her Brooklyn apartment.
One day, while out delivering food to the hospital in the rain, on her bike, Edie runs into Rebecca, Eric’s wife whom she had previously met when she found out where he lives and followed him to their home in suburban New Jersey.
Edie quickly discovers that Rebecca has a rather interesting job. She is a practicing mortician at the morgue of the hospital. Rebecca decides to take Edie home with her, much to Eric’s dismay, though he doesn’t really say much about it.
It turns out that Eric and Rebecca have an adopted daughter named Akila, who also happens to be African-American. As such, Rebecca subtly pays Edie with the expectation that she will act as Akila’s live-in governess, due to them being more relatable to each other. Oh yeah, there is one catch, however. Rebecca has told Edie to stay away from Eric.
Everytime Edie takes Akila to the mall, or to her karate classes, she finds a hundred dollar bill on the table when she gets home. Edie is not being rushed to find a job, and as such, she sees an opportunity in her newfound situation to do more of what comes naturally to her, which is canvas painting.
Edie loves to paint. As such, she often finds herself snapping photos of certain things around their home that she finds rather interesting. Most notably, one scene in particular where she snaps a photo of Eric and Rebecca having sex with their bedroom door left ajar, that she intends to sketch out in her sketchbook at a later time.
Eventually, the temptation for Eric and Edie to keep their hands off each other had proven to be too great.
As such, they end up sleeping together, and it isn’t long before Edie wound up pregnant by him, a plot twist that ended up giving way for the single most memorable quote in the entire book for me, “he makes you want, he makes you wicked, and as you sleep, he puts a baby inside your belly.”
If you think that quote was pertaining to Eric, think again.
It turns out that Eric and Rebecca are in an open marriage. But even so, Edie soon finds herself skating on thin ice with Rebecca when Rebecca found out that Edie has still been sleeping with Eric in secrecy, and was told to start searching for another job.
Unfortunately, Edie suffers a miscarriage as a victim of police brutality, that takes place on the lawn of her employer after the police were baffled as to how someone who fits her racial profile could live in a suburban home.
Not long after the miscarriage, Edie finds another apartment and moves back to New York with all the cash that she was able to save from being a governess.
The novel ends with Edie, in her new apartment, doing a sketch of a half-dressed Rebecca from a photo that Rebecca had allowed her to take.
Review:
Though it had a female lead, this book was very relatable to me due to the timeliness of when it entered my life. And now that the title has gotten your attention, I think it’s worth noting that the kind of lust in question is more so related to a lust for survival, passion, and drive, than it is about sexual lust.
The sex scenes in this novel are not as strongly erotic as one might expect, but the moral is far more valuable than the kind of thrills often found in erotica.
I also think that despite her shaky financial situation, Edie felt more confident about moving back into her own apartment when she realized that she can sue the police department in New Jersey, as well as the individual arresting officer for her miscarriage, and a hate crime. I hope she takes her story to the press.
I think it reflects a much wider anomaly within the social fabric of our society to think that this level of racism was still taking place as recent as 2020 in the land of the free.
It’s also hard for me to ignore that the assault scene on the lawn almost parallels Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd right down to the year in question, except that Edie actually survived her encounter with the police.
This tale is about finding the right balance between survival and following your passion. Not perfect, just right. Because survival is messy, and often involves doing things that are normally out of character.
It also makes a note of the fact that help may sometimes come from unexpected places. Not from some divine source, but simply from people helping people.
However, in the midst of the chaos that comes with daily survival, one must never neglect to persevere in their tireless commitment to making their true passion a reality against all odds.
I would just like to end by sharing that I first read Luster, this week back in 2024, during a very dark chapter of my life, and it has motivated me to keep writing throughout despair. With that said, there is literally no Buckinchere Collection without Luster.
I give this one a five out of five sketch canvas.
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