This is really bad guys, I’m sorry. There’s a few reasons I dnf’d it at 60 pages: there are really important plot beats that are glazed over, unconvincingly, while paragraphs talking about what every single space she enters looks like take up more word count, just for starters.

She’s having a drink then she’s having some pretty iffy sex and gets handed some bills, no idea how she feels about that really, and then suddenly right after meets a hooker with a heart of gold who just knows she’s going go be a sex worker too, but she was just walking home, no? And then sets up a friend to watch out for her with her first appointment and you have no idea what happens in that car, pretty much. Her physicality is not convincing at all, and it is again, really important just in so far as to be able to know what the heck is actually happening in the scene, which should have a lot of gravity, but doesn’t. Or even how she feels about it. Or if she’s on the pill. Or if they even had sex in the car. Like what the heck is going on. Aforementioned friend wants to “take care of her” and she’s all, all I got is blood, my good for nothing brother and all so no, and then when he leaves she’s all like hope my brother will be “my shadow”.

It’s really unconvincing and melodramatic, has terrible, terrible similes All. The. Time. A weird always-on prose work that just smooths out absolutely everything happening, even when it’s better prose than you’d expect. It robs its own style of any punch. The character dynamics and issues are convincing, but foregrounded in a way that feels really awkward for people living in the area to talk about, fairly often. Then it’s granular about the innocuous, making it really, really boring. Until something interesting happens, only to be treated like it’s less than the description of her brother in a booth trying to rhyme. It’s not good.

I’d recommend trying it on audio, it has to be better than on the page, If it’s got a good narrator.