Smart, surprising, and laced with a distinctly dark edge, Muriel Avenue Sluts is a provocative and ambitious story of suspense, revenge, love and family ties—all in the most unexpected of places.Seventeen-year-old Julia Turnbow’s mother gets paid to have sex; that’s just how it is. When Jules turns eighteen, she plans to follow in her mother’s footsteps and join the exclusive world of … join the exclusive world of Philadelphia’s infamous Muriel Avenue Sluts. But before all that happens, she has just one wish—to fall in love.
Just when things seem to be going her way, Jules’s world is knocked off its bearings. Her best friend Anna reveals that she’s being abused by one of Muriel Avenue’s gentleman clients. After a routine haircut and shave, Anna’s abuser falls to his death from a second-story balcony—and Jules is just one of two people who knows exactly what happened.
To complicate matters, Jules dives head first into a friendship with the daughter of the dead man. Greta’s a train wreck: she’s charming, unpredictable, and has one too many questions about Muriel Avenue. Then, Jules puts all of Muriel Avenue at risk with an ill-timed slip of the tongue and she finds herself wanted by the FBI. Running from everything she’s ever cared about; all Jules wants is to get back to the people she loves.
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This review is for the audiobook version.
Let me say that the narrator is perfect for this book. It’s not hard to picture Jules thanks to Ms. Farmer. She also makes it hard to listen to. This is not a story where a young girl is growing up and ready to spread her wings. Ms. Hasbrouck has written a sad story. It’s hard to picture any of these characters being happy. I’m glad that I listened to the book because I’m afraid that I would probably have passed on reading the book.
The sadness starts with the title. It’s hard to believe that a word with only five letter could make you sad but how can any woman be proud of that word. Who wants to be known as one or feel that they can’t be anything else. Adding to the sadness was how Ms. Farmer read the story to us – you can hear the emotion in her voice. We have kids that are just trying to grow up in a very adult world. To be honest the story got so dark and sad that I had to stop listening and go on to listen to anything that made me smile and laugh. Am I sorry that I listened to Jules story? No. In some way this seems too real and may exist somewhere outside my safe little world. Parts just seemed so realistic and you end up wishing that Jules life could have been different.
I voluntarily reviewed an Audiobook copy of this book.
“Muriel Avenue Sluts” is a coming of age story that takes on all the sexual awakening and loss of innocence themes you would expect, yet layers on top of them abuse, crime drama and vigilante justice themes. The main character, Jules, is on the edge of eighteen, loves her best friend Anna and is considering her future as a slut (her birthright, should she choose it) when she learns that Anna has been repeatedly raped by one of her mother’s johns. She accidentally-on-purpose kills him in a non-premeditated crime and becomes the unwitting target of Greta, another abuse victim who suspects Jules as the murder and sees in Jules a patsy who she can use to carry out more vigilante crimes. Jules does become an accessory to the murder orchestrated by Greta and realizes only too late that she’s been set up. Concurrently, Jules continues less extreme vigilante justice against a third sexual abuser she fears that Greta has designs to kill.
All of this is set against the fascinating backdrop of Muriel Avenue, both a place and an institution, where a group of immaculately-trained “sluts” maintain appointments with a small group of high-powered clients. Unlike whores (who presumably sleep with anyone who has money), each slut practices a legitimate trade (e.g., massage, acupressure, hair styling) and a waiting list of wannabes clients vies to earn regular slots that will get them the described services and much, much more. Consequently, each slut has long-term and sometimes meaningful relationships with a small handful of johns, and the Madam, Barbara, has built what she thinks is a safe, consensual community. The sluts may have children, choose the fathers, and in Jules’ case, we become aware that her own father (whose identity eventually comes out) was a john who has been a client for at least twenty years.
I can’t say enough wonderful things about this book. Its towering strength is its handling of tropes that other authors write about predictably or royally screw up. The abuse parts are powerful and ring true without being overdramatized or oversimplified. I love the fact that it highlights a female-owned, female-run sex ring in a way that acknowledges that these exist and have a legitimacy and value that they are seldom given credit for.
I also love this book for its amazing balance. Some bad things happen at Muriel Avenue, but they’re the kinds of things that can happen anywhere (and do happen elsewhere in the book), and it was fantastic to see the author portray this realistically. The sexual awakening also felt authentic. Jules’ puppy love with a clean-cut boy her age is contrasted with her exploratory attraction to Greta (who she makes out with) and her real-deal attraction to Vivienne, the newest slut to move to the avenue. In fact, my only gripe about this book is that the juiciest subplot (Jules’ fate with Vivienne) is left unresolved, which is the only think about this book that was unsatisfying to me.