As a 17-year-old high school dropout, Kiara is scraping by in East Oakland to support her older brother, chasing his dream of rap stardom, and the 9-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother. One night, Kiara stumbles into nightcrawling, a temporary job she takes to ease the financial pressure. Her life is further upended when her name surfaces in an internal investigation of a massive scandal involving the Oakland Police Department.

Nightcrawling is longlisted in The Booker Prize 2022 and is inspired by true events. It is an extremely heavy read, and I had to take several breaks throughout the book. As a debut author, Leila Mottley expertly demonstrates the experiences of being a poor black girl/woman with beautiful prose. It is heartbreaking to see a child like Kiara forced to carry the burden of an adult. The neglect, abuse, and injustice depicted in the book are tremendously disturbing but essential for readers to put into context the choices Kiara makes.

I thought the author's notes at the end of the book are especially beneficial in understanding why Kiara lets her brother pursue his rapper dreams while giving up her ambition and why Kiara takes care of her neighbor when she's already spread thin. Mottley writes, "Like many black girls, I was often told growing up to tend to and shield my brother, my dad, the black men around me: their safety, their bodies, their dreams. In this, I learned that my own safety, body, and dreams were secondary, that there was no one and nothing that could or would protect me." — such a powerful statement and one that will stay with me forever. Mottley's notes alone are essential, even if you don't read the book.

Nightcrawling is a gripping story that reflects the violence black women face regularly and the often unseens and neglected black children forced into adulthood; a heart-wrenching but poignant debut everyone should read.