This book is incredible!! The best book I’ve read this year. Marketed as a horror novel, the story highlights the realities of gentrification and the often unsuccessful survival of a minority community. It interlaces the stories/POVs of two neighbors, a young black female who lives in her mother’s house and a white male who recently purchased property accorded the street. The book also adds in a third narration that comes from a neighborhood app (Nextdoor app) to contextualize the two main characters’ point of view. The book touches on interracial relationships, violence that comes from gentrification, police brutality, Karens, class disparities, and building of communities. It is a refreshing twist and appropriation of the genre. Do yourself a favor and read this book!!!

My goodness

excellent

Captivated from the beginning. Full of twists and turns - an absolutely brilliant novel. Narration was fantastic!

audio book was very good. Not a disappointment at all.

Could not get past first 5 min as the frequency obscenities surpassed the opening sentences.

Awwwwesome!!!!

Stupid…unlikeable main character and dumb story.

Five hours of my life and a credit that I will not get back. I am certainly not wasting time finishing this book. This book is not horror or suspense, it is a great story of a neighbourhood with overlay of local black America history. Great charaterisations, sub-stories and narration. No distinct plot, no suspense. I should have read the review below more comprehensively, it is a good description of the book. That is not what I wanted and not what I enjoy. Serious consideration should be given to the Audio Book classifications of this book, it is inaccurate and misleading. It's a shame this book is receiving my book rating due to no error on its behalf. It is a good book, just not for me.

I feel that this novel is a missed opportunity by the author. She writes good prose, the story flows and raises important issues. For the first three-quarters of the book I learned a lot about what it must be like to be black and live in the U.S., but then the story just became fantastical. I've seen the reviews here who criticize the book for its bad language - this only occurs at the beginning of the book and one has to ask why Cole did this, it doesn't make sense. The ending (about an hour on audio) was a huge disappointment. Some people like this kind of book but I couldn't get over how the author had made the whole book seem trite. I couldn't wait for it to end and when it did, all I could ask myself was 'Why did she (Cole) do that?"

Terrible ...

Terrible language. We couldn’t listen to it!

Great premise for a book and quite educational about gentrification. However, I found the two main characters to be pretty unlikable, could not understand why they woukd be remotely attracted to each other. The male narrator may have furthered this reaction, I found his voices for different characters very offputting, especially the female characters. I bet this would make a great movie though.