Nicolina is from the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of a money manager who’s currently in jail for insider trading. The family’s fortunes have thus fallen, and Nicolina takes a job with charity group the Red Crest; she eventually becomes “assistant director of operations for the entire Middle East.” Moving to New York City, she secures an entry-level job in finance and looks for cheaper housing outside Manhattan. The village of West Hillock is perfect for her—far better than East Hillock, the old-money side of town, which the half Indigenous Nicolina finds racist and snobby. Nicolina meets Julian, a polo player from Argentina; he seduces her into a sado-masochistic encounter, which Nicolina ends up loving. She also encounters Gatsby, a local tycoon. The origin of his wealth is unknown, and his backstory is the stuff of rumors, but money supersedes everything, especially in the borough of Hillock (“any honest citizen knows that full faith in the dollar trumps thoughts of any messianic savior seven days a week”). Upon meeting the mysterious gentleman, Nicolina is hooked, and possibly by more than his money. Gatsby has secrets and a dominating presence that Nicolina is unable to resist. Jones’ novel boasts strong writing and clearly defined characters, but it’s hard to characterize by genre—the S&M scenes seem too infrequent for the story to be comfortably classed as erotica. Gatsby, despite his rough upbringing, is depicted too blandly to register as an exciting literary creation. Nicolina, on the other hand, is a compelling, three-dimensional character; she’s a career-oriented, perceptive person shaped by her experiences, with a spirited Indigenous Latine mother and a white-collar criminal father. The author depicts the moneyed, amoral community in which she lives in a satisfyingly scathing manner, but somehow, the narrative never fully coheres—the heightened language is appropriate for a thriller or erotic romp, but this novel doesn’t quite fit either category.