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, privilege, and power. The line between friend and foe blurs, forcing Lyriq to confront the question: Is finding for these women worth the threat to her own life?

This tantalizing thriller will take you on a heart-pounding and page turning journey through the peaks and valleys of Atlanta’s underworld.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

This was a quick and engaging read, even if I grew confused several times. The confusion came from the author switching between using different names for some characters. Dancers have stage names and real names and sometimes nicknames, and Stone jumps between them without always making it clear who she’s referring to. It pulled me out of the story more than once, and I had to backtrack to figure out who was actually speaking or being discussed.

That said, the story itself is gritty and raw. When Damaris “Charm” Wilburn, a new dancer at Boom Town, doesn’t show up for her shift, former headliner Michah “Lyriq” Johanssen immediately suspects something is wrong because this has happened before. Her former headline partner and lover, Felice “Lucky” Carothers, vanished under similar circumstances, and Lyriq has never stopped wondering what happened to her. So when Charm goes missing, Lyriq decides she’s going to find them both.

What follows is Lyriq digging deeper into both disappearances and uncovering a tangled web of deceit, privilege, and power. The line between friend and foe blurs. People she thought she could trust turn out to be hiding things. And the deeper she digs, the more dangerous it gets. Lyriq is forced to confront a hard question. Is finding these women worth the threat to her own life?

The story is set in Atlanta’s underworld, and Stone doesn’t shy away from the truth or the harsh realities of that world. The danger, the exploitation is real and the violence is real. And the way society treats women who work in clubs like Boom Town is also real. Stone leans into all of it without sugarcoating anything.

What I appreciated most about this book is how Stone portrays the dancers. She shows them as fully fleshed out characters. Real people with lives, dreams, struggles, and agency. People often frown upon or snub their noses at sex workers and exotic dancers, but Stone respects who they are. She treats them as people working legitimate jobs to make a living. It’s unapologetic. It’s just the world these characters live in. And Stone makes it clear that their work doesn’t make them less worthy of safety, respect, or justice.

Lyriq is a compelling protagonist. She’s tough, she’s smart, and she’s not waiting for permission to act. She knows how the world sees her and women like her. She knows the police won’t prioritize finding missing dancers–especially Black dancers–so she takes it into her own hands. Watching her navigate the investigation while also dealing with her own grief over Lucky was one of the strongest parts of the book.

I will say, I felt the first half of the book was much stronger than the last half. The setup is great. The mystery pulls you in and the tension builds. But as the story moves toward its conclusion, some of that momentum fizzled for me. The reveals didn’t hit as hard as I hoped they would, and the pacing felt uneven. It’s not that the ending is bad, it just didn’t match the strength of the beginning.

Still, I enjoyed this one. It centers characters who are often ignored or dismissed, and it asks important questions and highlights the inequality in missing women cases. Black women are so much less likely to be highlighted than missing white women.

If you’re looking for a different type of thriller set in a world you don’t often see in mainstream fiction, and if you appreciate books that treat marginalized characters with dignity and complexity, this is worth your time. And if you’re okay with some unevenness in the second half, you’ll likely enjoy the ride.