A Review of Premee Mohamed's "And What Can We Offer You Tonight" (audiobook)

Premee Mohamed’s “And What Can We Offer You Tonight” is an ambitious, speculative-fiction novella. The main character, Jewel, is a prostitute in a very good house, but her situation goes horribly wrong when, first, one of her friends is murdered by a client. This friend then comes back to life to find revenge for her own murder. Then, another friend is mutilated by his own client. When Jewel and her dead friend go after the attacker, Jewel puts her own comfortable existence at risk. 

Novellas are hard to write because they often must cut corners on one element or another: lack of characterization, lack of exposition, lack of narrative drive... Limiting the world-building to mostly inside the brothel walls and using a first-person perspective helped with that. I would like more background regarding Jewel and the world in which she exists. How did she get where she was? Why did the world become what it is? What magic exists to bring people back from the dead?

The narrator, Elana Dunkelman, did a great job. She was a good fit for Jewel’s first-person narration. She made this audiobook a very fast, satisfying listen. I definitely recommend it. I received this book from NetGalley.