It's Like Candy

📖 The Scoop

Hustlers and sex workers are caught up in the game on the streets of Jamaica, Queens, in this gritty urban drama by the author of Nasty Girls.

Beautiful River joins a stick-up crew, but she doesn’t know that Big Red and Twinkie have a secret that even she’s not in on. When she falls in love with Eric, one of her victims, all she wants is to find her baby sister, and settle down with her new love. But River soon becomes a prisoner of her dangerous world. And escaping it may cost her more than her life.

By the time she turns sixteen, Starr is working for a pimp and turning tricks daily. But when an assault by one of her “dates” lands her in the hospital, Starr meets a woman who wants to help her change her life. Starr’s heart is too hardened to believe in second chances, but soon she begins to long for more than selling her body just so she can survive. However, the game does not give up its players so easily.

Enter Eric’s cousin, Yung Slim, fresh out of jail after seven years. He’s looking to reclaim the streets and take care of some old grudges. When Yung Slim goes to battle, Eric—torn between his love for River, his ties to his cousin, and the lure of the streets—gets in too deep. When war breaks out on the battlefield of the streets, who will be left standing?

“Sex, violence and crime dominate Gray’s fifth novel, a wild trip through Jamaica, Queens, that reads not unlike a novelization of a Jay-Z album. . . . [Gray] keeps the story moving, and as the narratives converge, he pours on the luridness . . . The atmosphere is frighteningly seductive. Street lit fans will definitely want to take a look.” —Publishers Weekly

Genre: Fiction / African American & Black / Urban & Street Lit (fancy, right?)