I think this may be the first book that I've read where I hated it at the beginning but by the end of the book, I absolutely LOVED it. I have been contemplating for a few days on how I want to write this review. Fair-warning; this book is not for everyone. I have seen a lot of mixed reviews on this book and I can understand why. Literary fiction is already hard enough to get into and understand but this book is dark, disturbing, and distant.

SYNOPSIS from Goodreads:
Luster sees a young black woman figuring her way into life as an artist and into love in this darkly comic novel. She meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage. In this world of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics, Edie finds herself unemployed and living with Eric. She becomes hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only black woman young Akila may know.

Edie is a hard character to like at first, the decisions she makes are WILD and I didn't understand her thought-process at first. She made decisions that would end up hurting her mentally. As I was reading this at work on my lunch break when I first started it, I had my mouth hanging WIDE open thinking 'WTF am I reading?!?!?!?' Especially at the part where this man she is having sex with, calls her a racial name during sex. WTF. I had to keep at home lol

AWKWARD is the perfect word for this book. I don't think I’ve ever felt so awkward while reading a book before until reading Luster. The relationship between Edie and Rebecca (Eric's wife) is interesting but awkward. Edie was just an awkward person all around, she would do things that make you feel so uncomfortable. The books are like dark and dirty thoughts that no one would actually dare to say out loud and that's what makes it so uncomfortable.

But the lessons that Edie learns, the character growth and development is purely amazing; the realizations that she has about her situation and life, in general, are hard lessons learned. Edie does some self-reflection; her past experiences when she was a child impacted her greatly and how she views life and herself.

Edie is an artist and I love how the author incorporated Edie's growth through her artwork. Her artwork was depressing and dark, she was finding out who she was through her work.

I also loved the relationship between Edie and Akila, I feel like they needed each other, Eric and Rebecca didn't have a clue on how to raise a black daughter but Edie was there to help and support Akila.

When I started this book, I was convinced it was going to be a DNF, but after the first few chapters, I started to understand Edie and why she was so distant and awkward. This book was phenomenal.