3.25
Westside is a very unique story. I have an array of emotions across the scale towards this book, but overall, I liked it.
Gilda Carr is a detective who specializes in "tiny mysteries." She has been tasked by her newest client to find her lost match to a pair of white gloves, and to Gilda it just seems like any other case. Though Gilda doesn't know that this tiny mystery will lead her into a giant conspiracy filled with violence and death, and the worst part is that this all connects to her father's mysterious death.
Westside is truly one of the best world building novels in my opinion. I felt as if I was an inhabitant in this dystopian version of New York, half overrun wasteland and half thriving city. The cultures between the two distinct sects of the Eastside and Westside were an interesting dynamic I enjoyed constantly. I, weirdly enough, liked to focus on the guards manning the wall between the two sects. It's a small detail you'd think, but it held some intense weight for specific scenes where Gilda was trying to survive.
My favorite part of Westside was the atmosphere and storytelling revolving around the city's bootlegging and booze wars. It's inspired partly, I'd say, by New York's own prohibition era in the early 1900's, and it filled all my desires between the gangs and conflict amongst competitors.
The initial half of the story completely overtook me, and I was turning the pages so fast I could hardly believe it. The dialogue was crisp and blunt, which is a style I don't read often but was refreshing nonetheless, but somewhere after the halfway mark the story slowed down. I started to feel bored for a decent portion for the story, and that is sadly never a good thing for me. It slowed my reading process and led my interest to drop. Also I got confused quite a bit in the second half because the characters can sometimes blend together, and the story just kept adding more and more incidents. Again, I was getting quite confused, so it became a bit overwhelming for me. I couldn't follow the plot well, so I felt disconnected. I think if I read the story a second time those confusing bits would make more sense to me, but on the first time through I was left scratching my head a lot.
Anyway, I'd definitely say the bootlegging atmosphere and world building are where Westside shines the brightest.
Thank you Harper Voyager for sending me an ARC to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.