Welcome to the book tour for Rain City Lights by Marissa Harrison! Read on for more details!
Rain City Lights
Publication Date: October 1st, 2021 (Hardcover Edition)
Genre: NA/ NA Mystery
Coming of age and mystery blend in this stark, yet atmospheric tale of love and loss. A young woman is pushed onto the streets where she learns the harsh realities of what it means to survive, to serve justice, and to fight for the man she loves. As they navigate their way through Seattle’s Underground, Monti & Sasha will break and warm your heart!
In the summer of 1981, a serial killer preys on black, teenage prostitutes working Seattle’s arterial highways. But the eyes of youth are blind to danger, and Montgomery “Monti” Jackson is distracted by her own problems. She’ll be starting high school soon, and the return of her mother’s boyfriend heightens the tension in her fractured household.
To add to her worries, Monti fears she may be in love with her best friend Sasha. But as close as they’d once been, now they couldn’t feel further apart. Sasha is a burnout punk rocker, and has befriended the neighborhood drug dealer. And when an eviction notice is posted on Monti’s door, a strange dynamic forms between them.
One night, an altercation leaves her family penniless. So Monti turns to the very streets where a killer stalks and ensnares young women, beginning her journey towards understanding one, simple truth – sometimes your only choices in life are to love and survive.
Rain City Lights is a gritty, urban love story that explores how poverty, addiction and abuse is passed from one generation to the next.
Trigger Warnings: Adult content and some violence
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Monti struggles with her mother who is a sick prostitute and her abusive stepfather, but her next-door neighbor Sasha provides her some reprieve from her crazy home life. He is her best friend since childhood and they’ve been inseparable for years. Even though she may have some feelings for him, she would never ruin her friendship with him that way. She also doesn’t think she is worthy of a relationship with As her mother deteriorates more and more, Monti knows she will have to take action so they can keep her house. How will she manage to make enough money to cover rent and simultaneously go to school? Rain City Lights is a story that goes throughout Monti and Sasha’s youth, as well as their young adulthood.
This book was a deep story about real, broken people and their real, broken lives. It shows how people are driven to various addictions or prostitution based on the experiences of their lives. It shows how the Jim Crow racism of the 50s and 60s poisoned people long past the point that the Civil Rights Act was passed. I found myself flying through the book over the course of two days, I just couldn’t put it down.
Monti was such an enjoyable character. She was determined to see the best in people even as they failed her again and again. She is faced with decisions that no one should have to make as a teenager because of the parents that failed her. I was rooting for her as a teenager and rooting for her even more once I saw her as an adult. She definitely shows where the system is failing young teens of color, and how some continued to push through in spite of it.
I struggled to connect with Sasha, but he had an important role in the story also. He showed what happens when you have parents who seem “normal” to the outside but who still struggle with untreated/undiagnosed mental illness. You can struggle with at-home abuse more severely if the parents seem like good parents on the outside. Any person in the neighborhood knew that Monti’s mom was a prostitute and assumed she was a bad parent. They assumed Sasha’s dad was a good dad because he went to church and was a veteran. He definitely had more character growth in the second half of the book.
I felt like the book was super strong until the time skip occurred around halfway through the story. I still loved the rest of the novel, but I found myself losing track of the characters and losing the plot a bit. I still enjoyed my time with the story, but I did take a star/book off for that. Once all the pieces started to come together I was flying through the rest of the pages.
I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books.
Prologue
Christmas Eve, 1972
The rain pelt so hard it sprang up from the porch like bullets. The detective removed his hat, water dripping down his face, hiding tears but for his red-rimmed eyes. He couldn’t help crying, after what he had seen and for the scene before him. The Christmas tree lit with multi-colored lights and draped with silver tinsel. The cookies on the mantle. Frank Sinatra crooning “Jingle Bells” from the record player. And a small boy wearing red pajamas. These were the reasons the detective wiped his nose like a baby, and steeled himself to bear the bad news.
* * *
Mikael Sasha Coen already knew why the detective had come. Someone once said he could smile with only his big, blue eyes. He tried this by focusing his eyes hard into the sadness that seemed to hunch the detective’s shoulders. He curved the corners of his mouth upward just a little. It was enough to make the detective smile back.
“He should leave the room,” the detective said.
Daan shook his head. “The sooner he gets used to hearing bad news, the better.” The detective scratched his sideburn.
“Mr. Coen, I’m so sorry to say this, tonight of all nights. But there’s been an accident. Your wife’s car went over the Ballard Bridge. She didn’t make it.”
Daan Coen keeled over and keened, a sound more piercing than nails dragged against a chalkboard. The detective described what happened. The grates were slick. His wife had been speeding to beat the drawbridge, raised to let a party yacht into the Fremont canal. She skidded and lost control. Daan sobbed and asked the Lord why. But Mikael thought he knew that, too.
After a moment, Daan asked,
“But wouldn’t she have seen the warning lights? Wouldn’t the gate have dropped? I don’t understand how this could happen.”
The detective pursed his lips. He spoke in the way adults sometimes did that made Mikael feel as if he’d been naughty.
“Not here,” the detective said.
Mikael watched from the porch as Daan left to identify the body. He’d promised to stay with one of the neighbors that lived in the apartment units of The Bridgewater. As Mikael turned, he heard a chattering sound, and it drew his attention to the stoop next door. A young girl sat with her head
pushed between her knees, her body rocking back and forth and her arms enclosing her shivering shins.
“What’re you doing? It’s raining,” he said.
“No shit,” she muttered. “I’m locked out.”
“Why?” He bit his lip. “Also, you shouldn’t talk like that. My dad says bad words send people to hell.”
The girl didn’t answer. When she looked up, he saw the gray eyes of a feral cat ready to scram into the city gutters.
Mikael walked inside and turned up the music. He took the cookies from the mantle and went back to the porch, holding them in the rain, in view of the girl.
“Want a cookie?”
“I’m fine. My mom is coming soon.”
“You want to help me open my presents?”
The girl shrugged and stared at her knees.
Mikael sighed and stomped back to the Christmas tree. He moved the gifts from beneath the tree, one by one, into his bedroom. He knew the girl would come out of the rain soon. No kid could resist Christmas presents. On each trip to the tree he passed a photo of his mother. It was the kind with two faces, one of the smiling front and the other a profile. The two-faced photo was ghoulish, and each time he passed it became harder to look at because of the goosebumps that tickled his arm. He didn’t want to open presents in front of the ghost that had once been his mother.
Mikael waited on his bedroom floor. The music blared from the living room, but over the smooth, velvet voice of Sinatra came the soft pattering of uncertain footsteps.
“I’m in here,” Mikael called.
The girl appeared in the open doorway of his bedroom.
“Hi,” Mikael said.
Her eyes were glued to the presents.
“Where are your parents?” she asked.
“My mom is dead. My dad went to see her.”
“What happened?”
“A car accident.”
He sniffled and pushed the presents towards her.
“Here. You can have them all.”
He handed her a football wrapped in gold paper, something he never wanted. Mikael’s father wanted it for him, in the same way Daan wanted other things. Be a good, Christian man. Don’t cry. Stand up straight. Don’t tell lies.
The girl tore the paper from the gift, filling the silence with the sound of shredding paper. Her eyes sparkled. She tossed the football in her hands as if it was something she was made to do.
“My name is Montgomery. But you should call me Monti. I’m seven.”
“My name is Mikael.” He paused, thinking of his Norwegian grandfather for whom he was named, a strict Lutheran who built the walls that enclosed them now. It was a name his father wanted for him.
“But you should call me Sasha. I’m seven and a half.”
Monti shoved an entire cookie into her mouth. She smiled, showing the crumbs stuck between the gap in her front teeth.
“Why aren’t you sad?”
“I was sad yesterday,” he said. “My mom said goodbye yesterday.”
She took another cookie and ogled the rest of the gifts.
“I can’t take your presents.”
“Yes you can. I don’t want them.”
She sputtered cookie crumbs from her mouth.
“Why the hell not! I’d kill for this many toys.”
“They’re from my dad. And he’s the reason my mom’s gone.” He picked another gift and laid it in her lap. “Also, you shouldn’t swear.”
She nodded, as though everything he’d said made perfect sense. He felt very brave next to her, so he whispered through clenched teeth,
“I hate my dad.”
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About the Author
Marissa Harrison is the author of her debut novel, Rain City Lights. She began her career by reading as many books as she could get her hands on, and would fondly wander the aisles of her neighborhood Target to pick the hottest reads for her enjoyment and education. She caught the bus from her job in Downtown Seattle to take classes and workshops offered around the city, and eventually completed her first novel during the early morning hours while watching the trains roll by from her apartment window. She is an avid reader of mysteries, true crime, and heart-wrenching love stories, and explores these themes in her own writing.
In her spare time Marissa enjoys running, hiking, dramatic miniseries’ and a great glass of wine. She lives in Seattle with her husband and four guinea pigs.
Marissa Harrison | Twitter | Instagram
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