Hood Rat
A Novel
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
In the heart of Harlem, four women fight to survive the gritty streets and find love in a world that threatens to tear them apart.
Yoshi is young, fine, and larcenous. She lives her life playing on men's hearts as well as their pockets, but learns the hard way that all that glitters isn't gold.
Billy, a former high school basketball star, has been looking for love. Then she meets someone new and her whole world is turned upside down, leaving her forever changed.
Reese is an around-the-way chick, trying to keep up with the Joneses. Her promiscuity leads to an unexpected pregnancy from a one-night stand, forcing her to break an age-old family cycle and stand on her own.
Rhonda is twenty-something with three kids by three different men, riding the system all the way to the bank. Her games soon turn ugly when one of her "sponsors" decides to seek revenge.
In this gritty urban fiction novel, national bestselling author K'wan weaves a dramatic tale of four friends as they navigate the perils of street life, love, and betrayal in Hood Rat, a scandalous story that will leave Harlem forever changed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
K'wan's latest (after Eve) is a meandering trip across Harlem with plenty of pit stops for vice and violence. Yoshi is a stripper who prostitutes herself for extra cash; Rhonda is a promiscuous and abusive mother of three; Reese is a scabrous, demanding kept woman; and Billy is an attractive, sporty woman with a healthy distrust of the men who live in their Harlem 'hood. All of the women get sucked into drama involving neighborhood rappers, drug dealings, abortion, fistfights, catfights, shootings, rape, AIDS or good, old-fashioned drunkenness. There's a bevy of minor characters, each involved in intersecting subplots, though these don't so much coalesce as run their course. The most interesting story involves Paul, a man who's trying to go straight and become an artist, and who's also dating a respectable lawyer named Marlene, but things are destined to end badly. None of the characters rises above stereotype and the plotting is mechanical, but the big draw here is the electric prose, which is imbued with profane, comic lyricism.
