Listen free for 30 days
-
Luster
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £9.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Seven Days in June
- By: Tia Williams
- Narrated by: Mela Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eva Mercy is a single mother and best-selling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up unexpectedly in New York. When Shane and Eva meet at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but also the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love.
-
-
People say it’s black joy but it’s black truth
- By KBee on 15-08-21
-
Boy Parts
- By: Eliza Clark
- Narrated by: Eliza Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention....
-
-
Fantastic
- By Jay on 27-03-21
-
Who's Loving You
- Love in Full Colour
- By: Sareeta Domingo - editor
- Narrated by: Sareeta Domingo, Kelechi Okafor, Varaidzo, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who's Loving You? is a celebration of love in all its guises written by women of colour, with 10 original short stories from bold new voices, literary prize-winners and national treasures.
-
-
Wonderful stories, wonderfully written and read
- By dtt on 02-06-21
-
Animal
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Emma Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I drove myself out of New York City, where a man shot himself in front of me. He was a gluttonous man and when his blood came out it looked like the blood of a pig. That’s a cruel thing to think, I know. He did it in a restaurant where I was having dinner with another man, another married man. Do you see how this is going? But I wasn’t always that way.
-
-
keep going
- By Samantha on 13-07-21
-
Nervous Conditions
- By: Tsitsi Dangarembga
- Narrated by: Chipo Chung
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, 13-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a nation that is also emerging.
-
-
Moving & thought provoking.
- By Dunbur on 02-07-21
-
The Heart's Invisible Furies
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
-
-
Phenomenal
- By Kerri on 19-02-17
-
Seven Days in June
- By: Tia Williams
- Narrated by: Mela Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eva Mercy is a single mother and best-selling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up unexpectedly in New York. When Shane and Eva meet at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but also the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love.
-
-
People say it’s black joy but it’s black truth
- By KBee on 15-08-21
-
Boy Parts
- By: Eliza Clark
- Narrated by: Eliza Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention....
-
-
Fantastic
- By Jay on 27-03-21
-
Who's Loving You
- Love in Full Colour
- By: Sareeta Domingo - editor
- Narrated by: Sareeta Domingo, Kelechi Okafor, Varaidzo, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who's Loving You? is a celebration of love in all its guises written by women of colour, with 10 original short stories from bold new voices, literary prize-winners and national treasures.
-
-
Wonderful stories, wonderfully written and read
- By dtt on 02-06-21
-
Animal
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Emma Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I drove myself out of New York City, where a man shot himself in front of me. He was a gluttonous man and when his blood came out it looked like the blood of a pig. That’s a cruel thing to think, I know. He did it in a restaurant where I was having dinner with another man, another married man. Do you see how this is going? But I wasn’t always that way.
-
-
keep going
- By Samantha on 13-07-21
-
Nervous Conditions
- By: Tsitsi Dangarembga
- Narrated by: Chipo Chung
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, 13-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a nation that is also emerging.
-
-
Moving & thought provoking.
- By Dunbur on 02-07-21
-
The Heart's Invisible Furies
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
-
-
Phenomenal
- By Kerri on 19-02-17
-
The Mermaid of Black Conch
- By: Monique Roffey
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukue, Vivienne Acheampong
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
March 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch, at the start of the rainy season. A fisherman sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch but attracts a sea-dweller he doesn't expect. Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, has been swimming the Caribbean Sea for centuries. And she is entranced by this man David and his song.
-
-
An unusual but engaging love story
- By bookylady on 05-02-21
-
Take a Hint, Dani Brown
- By: Talia Hibbert
- Narrated by: Ione Butler
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown and an occasional roll in the hay to relive all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits.... When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues her from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it's an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and ex-rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral.
-
-
An super-cute, adult romance
- By M. S. on 23-11-20
-
Milkman
- By: Anna Burns
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.
-
-
Very, Very Good
- By David M on 20-10-18
-
The Thing Around Your Neck
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Orange Prize-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, come 12 dazzling stories in which she turns her penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the West. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's prodigious storytelling powers.
-
-
Gripping short stories but terrible performance
- By Aisha O on 13-09-18
-
Stay with Me
- By: Ayobami Adebayo
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Yejide is hoping for a miracle, for a child. When her in-laws insist upon a new wife, it is too much for Yejide to bear. It will lead to jealousy, betrayal and despair. Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of '80s Nigeria, Stay with Me sings with the voices, colours, joys and fears of its surroundings. Ayobami Adebayo weaves a devastating story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the wretchedness of grief and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood.
-
-
Beautiful realism
- By Linn on 13-03-17
-
Everything I Never Told You
- By: Celeste Ng
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee - a girl who inherited her mother's bright-blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt, and Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to hold someone accountable. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who may be the only one who knows what really happened.
-
-
Superb!
- By Deb Murphy on 22-04-16
-
With the Fire on High
- By: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since she got pregnant, 17-year-old Emoni's life has been about making the tough decisions - doing what has to be done for her young daughter and her grandmother. Keeping her head down at school, trying not to get caught up with new boy Malachi. The one place she can let everything go is in the kitchen, where she has magical hands - whipping up extraordinary food beloved by everyone. Emoni wants to be a chef more than anything, but she knows it's pointless to pursue the impossible. There are rules she has to play by.
-
-
Another great book by Acevedo
- By Alana_thebooknerd on 22-08-20
-
The Mercies
- By: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Narrated by: Jessie Buckley
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1617. The sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm. A young woman, Maren, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant. Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet has been summoned to bring the women of the island to heel. With him travels his young wife, Ursa. In her new home, and in Maren, Ursa encounters something she has never seen before: independent women. But where Ursa finds happiness, even love, Absalom sees only a place flooded with a terrible evil, one he must root out at all costs....
-
-
Transported back 400 years to Vardo
- By Michelle on 04-04-20
-
The Power
- By: Naomi Alderman
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Naomi Alderman, Thomas Judd, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. She'd put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.' Suddenly - tomorrow or the day after - girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death.
-
-
Visceral, Stirring and Inspirational
- By Raine on 29-12-16
-
Such a Fun Age
- By: Kiley Reid
- Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for ‘kidnapping’ the white child she’s actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix’s desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other and the messy dynamics of privilege.
-
-
doesn't live up to the hype
- By Tsundoko and Tea on 10-01-20
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? Our narrator has many of the advantages of life: young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend.
-
-
Miserable.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-01-20
-
Detransition, Baby
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Renata Friedman
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart, and three years on, Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
-
-
A very honest depictions of modern adult life.
- By R . K on 11-02-21
Summary
Razor sharp, provocatively thrilling and surprisingly tender, Luster by Raven Leilani is a painfully funny debut.
Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize 2021
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Fiction Debut of the Year
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021
Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. And then she meets Eric, a white, middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young Black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric’s home and family.
A Best Book of the Year: Guardian, New York Times, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Literary Hub, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Time, Good Housekeeping, InStyle, NPR, O Magazine, Buzzfeed, Electric Literature, Town & Country, Wired, New Statesman, Vox, Shelf Awareness, i-D, BookPage and more.
One of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2020
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Critic reviews
"A taut, sharp, funny book about being young now. It’s brutal - and brilliant." (Zadie Smith, author of Swing Time)
"Remarkable, the most delicious novel I’ve read." (Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie)
"Ridiculously good.... I will follow this author anywhere she wants to take me." (Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties)
More from the same
What listeners say about Luster
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- papapownall
- 31-01-21
Rampant and pithy
This debut novel by Raven Leilani has been heavily hyped. It tells the story of a young black women called Edie who loves disco music and enters a strange relationship with an older married white man, with the permission of his wife. At times darkly comedic and at times excruciatingly cringeworthy, this is full on stuff with no holding back. Subjects such as race and class are tackled head on, but the strength of this story is the insight it gives into the complex lives of the characters who are believable and compelling. It is rampant and pithy stuff and I loved it.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- K. J. Kelly
- 30-01-21
Unsettling, convincing, shocking
Hard to pin down, a very modernistic-feeling tale.
Edie. Office worker. Twenty-three. No qualms about sleeping with men, pandering to their whims, searching for something that clicks. With dreams of focusing on her art.
This is her story, a relatively brief account of the months after she meets a man twice her age, married but openly so. We see a very honest Edie describe and live through the early stages of getting to know Eric, before she unexpectedly becomes more entangled with his family.
Leilani gives us a slightly dark peek at the contemporary world of young women, single and unafraid, open to new experiences and searching for that direction that offers them future happiness. And an escape from boredom and mundanity.
The characters aren't wholly likeable, I found it difficult to watch Edie acquiescing to the demands of various men, not exactly submissively but not from a position of power either.
Such an unusual spin on the theme of affairs, of entanglements and wives and marriages. It's a story set in our time, of our time. Eric pales in comparison to his wife as a character of interest - how she interacts with Edie is much more interesting in my opinion.
This isn't a long book, it's a fairly slow story where a lot is thought and explored. It might make readers uncomfortable but it did feel like a hidden story from the world we inhabit that is probably going on under our noses. Is this really what life for the young is?
I don't know how I feel about that. Is it a freer life? A more joyless one?
It makes a wonderful audiobook, the intense closeness of some of the scenes narrated for us by Edie as we listen along, the first person immediacy only increasing some of the dark tension. It is an uncomplicated Audible choice, one with a straight structure that won't confuse.
This will repeat on you, Edie and her life, her choices, the strange situation she finds herself in. One for discussion and consideration.
With thanks to Nudge Books for providing a sample Audible copy.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jojo
- 07-02-21
A gutting staggering debut.
Leilani's perceptive acuity and linguistic exactitude dissects as she creates, each scene rich with revelation.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tinag
- 27-03-21
looked promising but got bored and didn't like end
looked good to start but I got bored and I didn't like the ending either
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- I O'Regan
- 29-12-21
enjoyable but not bowled over
perhaps I've read too many books with lackadaisical protagonists recently so found this a little bit tiresome. I can definitely connect with that feeling as a similar age to the character; the jadedness of millennials is a bit too on the nose. I'd still recommend reading it, some beautiful and haunting descriptions
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 03-02-21
truly outstanding
the way raven uses words is so captivating you are taken on a beautiful journey. having now finished the book I feel empty!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- carmen
- 13-06-22
Absolutely no star
I wish there was an option for zero stars for reviews, this book would take that. Dull and pretentious this book has no plot.
The main character is unconvincing and unlikable, the rest fade away. Nothing happens.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeeds
- 27-05-22
Beautiful writing but somewhat depressing
The opening chapters of this book feel fresh and intriguing. The writing is very good and there are some beautiful and at times visceral descriptions. However it had a bleakness to it that I found a little hard going and by the end I felt kind of depressed by Edie’s life, her outlook and her situation. Perhaps this was intentional - life can be miserable and depressing - but I longed for a moment of lightness or hope. I thought the narrator was good.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Afreen Ahmed
- 04-05-22
Not for me
there were some interesting aspects but overall I found it quite a depressing read
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- VAust
- 30-04-22
Excellent novel
I loved this book. It reminded me of Writers and Lovers, in tone and content.
The recording is a little jarring in the way it’s been edited, but the narrator has the perfect voice and I enjoyed it despite the odd changes in volume and pace where different recordings have clearly been stitched together.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Martin Ladd
- 05-04-21
A great listen
The story was often confronting and the protagonist’s life choices questionable, but this is an entertaining book. It deals with big issues in an understated and insightful way. Raven Leilani’s writing is superlative. A writer to look out for. Credit is also due to Ariel Blake for an authentic and captivating performance that never intrudes on the story.