Nothing matters, the sky is burning, love isn’t real.

PLOT SUMMARY:

The American dream is dead, and Los Angeles is burning. Hopeless and anesthetized, four lost souls contend with the darkest elements of the human experience in a desperate attempt to quench their thirst for meaning and connection in a world without a future. For Arden Coover, a spun-out acid junkie with the ink still drying on a useless philosophy degree from Berkeley, it’s in the potential salvation offered by a new relationship rife with promise but fraught with uncertainty. His fresh-out-of-high-school sister, Tess, is struggling to accept that her best option in life may lie in a convenient but loveless marriage to a rich, narcissistic novelist. Ryland Richter, an alcoholic insurance executive with too much money and too few scruples, seeks toxic solace in the arms of a dangerously unhinged subordinate. And Baxter Kent, a stoned surfer who’s addicted to AI pornography and afraid of women, tries to make things work with a prototypal sex robot that’s incapable of even the most rudimentary forms of communication.

GRADE: A

REVIEW:

If you like ensemble multiple POV books where characters eventually come in contact ala Bret Easton Ellis Rules of Attraction, then you will enjoy this book that takes the reader on a dark journey in a Los Angeles that’s burning. The characters reek with cynicism, but deep down they’re all searching to feel something – but they’ve become so desithetized that they’re unable to feel anything at all. Each character is trying to figure out a meaning for their life, whether it’s Arden who has just graduated from college and finds himself aimless, Tess who dates a famous author but feels as though people only like her for her beauty, Ryland who’s obsessed with his job and gets involved with an unhinged young woman, and Baxter who would like to have a relationship but porn addiction has made him unable to enjoy the company or sex of real women, and gets involved with a sex robot. Throughout this twisty, dark journey, each character witnesses a strange man following them, while the city burns around them. What does it mean? Are they all doomed? Those are the questions you’ll be asking yourself when reading this novel, and also realizing that many of these characters feel familiar because you either know someone like them, or you’ve been that person before (or still are) – which then brings you to wonder if you’re on the brink of self-destruction as these beautiful but tragic characters.

No answers are really offered, and maybe, like a burning Los Angeles, that’s crumbling like your dreams, you realize that life offers very few answers, and then you die.

Readers who enjoy self-absorbed, inherently flawed, and broken characters living luxurious lives, then this is for you – and if you like dark novels that only get darker and darker pushing you to the absolute abyss.

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