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Raven Leilani's Luster meets Halle Butler's The New Me, Soft Spots is a darkly funny and off-kilter coming-of-age novel following recent college graduate Robin Clarke after she runs away from her family, only to be forced to confront whether she should reconcile with her father when his health takes a sudden turn for the worst.
After miraculously securing a teaching job at a dysfunctional high school, loner Robin moves to South Bend, Indiana, where she's paired with an eerily perfect roommate: Naomi. Freshly estranged from her abusive parents, Robin obsesses over two absurd goals: to be the best teacher at the school, despite never having taught, and to become best friends with Naomi, who could not be more her opposite. Meanwhile back home, Robin's brother must decide between being loyal to his sister or their parents.
Just as Robin grows closer to her students and Naomi, she receives earth-shattering news from her brother. Desperate to cope, Robin redoubles her efforts to befriend Naomi, spiraling even deeper into obsession and self-sabotage. Everything comes to a head when one of Robin's many bad choices come back to bite her, and she must confront the limits of forgiveness, the weight of memory, and the true cost of estrangement.
"A beautiful debut from an incredible new voice." ―Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, New York Times bestselling author of Chain-Gang All-Stars.
"Leila Renee's immersive, inventive debut novel Soft Spots is dark but also very funny, sad but also life-affirming, scathing but also compassionate. Her characters are unfailingly complex and convincing. Soft Spots is a moving book, and Leila Renee is a fiercely intelligent, urgent, and promising new voice." ―Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward and Eat the Document.
This information about Soft Spots was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Leila Renee is originally from Milwaukee. She earned her MFA from Syracuse University and her stories have appeared in McSweeney's, The Kenyon Review, and more. She has received the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction and a Fulbright Award. She teaches at the University of St. Thomas and lives in Minneapolis.
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