Breakfall

February 13, 2023
Slor’s underwhelming sophomore effort (after 2021’s At the End of the World, Turn Left) mixes repetitive sex scenes with slivers of plot. Jujitsu enthusiast Mina Banksy, a 32-year-old divorced mother of a two-year-old who has “become a monster,” finds erotic pleasure in receiving choke holds from her muscular, sweating sparring partners at the gym. This propensity for rough play and a heady whiff of testosterone has led to an affair with Matthew, a cop and fellow gym mate, and to her divorce from her husband, Dima. It subsequently leads to sex with Dylan, “a nice guy for a former drug-dealing thief,” and that association brings the police knocking at the door of her Chicago home. After the police depart, she calls Matthew for advice, and they rekindle their relationship. Eventually, she stumbles by chance on Dylan’s body by a dumpster in the alley of the halfway house where he lived. Then Dima disappears. There’s no detective work, and things just happen when Mina pauses from her musings about her sex life. This works better as erotica than a whodunit.

March 1, 2023
A woman is forced to confront the consequences of many bad choices over the course of nine months. When two policemen show up on her doorstep asking about a white Chevy van registered under her name, Mina Bansky knows this is just the fallout from one more bad decision in her life. She agreed to register the van for a friend named Dylan, a former felon, mostly because he "had a PhD in philosophy and the bluest eyes she had ever seen." Newly divorced and the mother of a busy toddler, she doesn't have time to dwell on this complication. She does, however, call her former lover, Matthew, who is also a cop, only to find that he had left town with his family, trying to work it out, but is now back in Chicago. Through flashbacks to the previous June and July, it's revealed that Mina and Matthew met at their neighborhood jujitsu gym and proceeded to have a flaming affair until their spouses found out about the betrayal. Then, in the present time, trying to deal with the temptation of Matthew's proximity, Mina finds her life becoming even more complicated when Dylan's body turns up several days later. Maybe her ex-husband, who might have connections to the Russian mob, killed him? Or maybe it was because Dylan was running drugs in the van? Regardless, this little bit of mystery takes a back seat to endless cycles of Mina-and-Matthew fighting and Mina-and-Matthew sex. The novel moves back and forth from the previous summer to the present, but no matter the time period, the conflicts--and the horniness--remain the same. Mina's got a backbone, and she refuses to apologize for wanting what she wants even as she feels shame for cheating on her husband; there is strength in her imperfection. There's no accounting for taste, or pheromones, but she deserves better. A plucky heroine, a kind-of mystery, and a lot of sexual hijinks keep it interesting.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 14, 2023
Mina Bansky, writer and mother, is still dealing with the consequences of her infidelity and subsequent divorce. Even her beloved Jiu Jitsu class at the gym down the street can no longer lift her spirits. When two Chicago detectives show up looking for Dylan, a friend from Mina's gym, and the van she let him register in her name, Mina's life soon becomes even more chaotic. Dylan's disappearance makes everyone at the gym a suspect, further distancing Mina from her old life. While intended to be part thriller, part romance, in reality Breakfall focuses mainly on Mina's inner turmoil, her sexual desire, lack of control, and the self imposed destruction of her life, with just a sprinkle of mystery. While Dylan's disappearance happens early on, it's not until the very end that the reader learns what happened; the wrap up taking place in just a few pages. The story would have been stronger if it had worked out Mina's issues. The novel doesn't really work as a thriller, but, Slor's writing style is absorbing and suggests better books may be in the offing from her.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.