Boom Town
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl meets P-Valley in Nic Stone’s adult thriller debut about two missing erotic dancers from Atlanta’s most notorious gentlemen’s club and the woman committed to finding them.
When Damaris “Charm” Wilburn, a new daytime dancer, is missing for her shift at Boom Town, former headliner Michah “Lyriq” Johanssen suspects something more than a “no call, no show.” As Lyriq’s former headline partner and lover—Felice “Lucky” Carothers—also vanished under similar circumstances, Lyriq decides she’s going to find them.
Delving deeper into Charm and Lucky’s disappearances, Lyriq uncovers a tangled web of deceit, wealth, privilege, and power. The line between friend and foe blurs, forcing Lyriq to confront the question: is finding these women worth the threat to her own life?
A tantalizing thriller that takes you on a heart-pounding and page turning journey through the peaks and valleys of Atlanta’s underworld, Boom Town grapples with a troubling reality: only some missing women draw attention while others are too easily forgotten.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
YA bestseller Stone (Chaos Theory) makes an auspicious adult debut with this steamy, serpentine noir centered on Boom Town, Atlanta's hottest Black strip club. Dance manager Lyriq still hasn't gotten over the disappearance two years earlier of her lover and dance partner, Lucky. Then Charm, a 19-year-old stripper with an uncanny resemblance to Lucky, vanishes after catching the eye of white club regular Thomas Jefferson McIntyre. When Dejuan, whose mother was renting Charm a room, suggests that he might go to the police, Lyriq steps in to keep the cops away from the club, and swiftly discovers she's put herself in a world of danger. Stone convincingly conjures Boom Town's glitzy-gritty grind, and shows the wide range of women whose circumstances have made the pole seem their best and only option, from trafficking survivor Lyriq to the sharp-witted Lucky, who calculates that her education degree from Emory would get her a job paying only half as much as her dancing. Stone crafts a propulsive plot, though the book's hopscotching timelines get a touch too convoluted and a few of the climactic reveals strain credibility. Still, this is an arresting page-turner.
