Customer Reviews

Never As Good As the First Time

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Samai Collins has been a dutiful Christian for most of her life. Her world is turned upside down when she is in the middle of a divorce from her minister husband. Samai is also dealing with trying to find a job to support herself and her three children without any work skills. As she attempts to get her life on track, Samai is struggling with her own beliefs and the longing for a man's touch. When an old high-school crush Zane Blackmon comes back into Samai's life, he brings the wild excitement that she craves. But when Samai is suddenly led to a destructive path into the world of drugs, her life and the lives of her children are in danger. Will Samai be able to get her life back in order to save herself and her children?

Never As Good As The First Time is a riveting debut novel by Mari Walker. Walker expertly leads the reader into the complex world of Samai Collins. What made this novel stand out was that Samai was just a regular woman that got lured into drug addiction by her boyfriend. You will see the downward spiral of Samai's life as her drug addiction gets out of control. Walker accurately describes how much in denial that Samai is in once she reaches her lowest point. Readers will find themselves pulling for Samai to turn her life around. There are some scenes in this novel that will really tug at your heart-strings. Never As Good As The First Time is a heart-wrenching page-turner that is a perfect start to Mari Walker's writing career.

Reviewed by Radiah Hubbert
for Urban Reviews

The catchphrase, 'never as good as the first time,' aptly describes Samai Collins' sentiments about her crack cocaine abuse. Thanks to an old high school crush, Zane Blackmon, she discovers euphoria for the first time and afterward, she expends much of her energy seeking euphoria again. What's left of her time is semi-devoted to her three children.

Prior to all this, Samai was not happily married, nor is she the devoted Christian she thinks she is. Following an acrimonious divorce, she is ripe for the picking and eager to be picked. She is obsessed with her sexual desires and spinning her wheels, but going nowhere fast.

Mari Walker paints a vivid portrait of a life consumed by addiction in NEVER AS GOOD AS THE FIRST TIME, but I found it difficult to empathize with Samai. I would have liked to know more about what drove her to drugs, before skipping right to the post-drugs chaos. A little more character development would have made all the difference for me as I followed Samai down her slippery slope. Also, the quickie ending cheated me out of possibly caring about her plight. While I got that Samai needed help, I wasn't entirely convinced she really wanted it.

Reviewed by T. Shelly B.
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

I think this book was depressing to say the least. This is my frist novel by Mari Walker and I have to say I don't think I'll be reading any more of her books. I actually recommened this book to my book club, everyone who was able to finish it agreed that the book was depressing & sad.

From the church house to the crack house, Mari Walker's debut novel is the classic tale of "a good girl gone bad". The cover makes the book look like a love story, but that's not the case. The reader follows the main character, Samai Collins, as she gets drafted into the crack epidemic of the mid- to late-eighties.

Samai weds a minister of questionable values in her early twenties. She soon finds herself separated after six years of marriage, struggling to make sense of what went wrong and how to deal with her tenacious need for intimacy. The most important thing that Samai must do is find a job to financially support her three children.

A church member suggests seeking a job in the hardware store where he is employed. She gets the job, and her schedule includes long hours. Worst of all, she is required to work Sundays, thereby missing the one thing that has been keeping her stable - going to church. While at work Samai has a chance encounter with Zane, a person she had a high school crush on. He was bad in high school, and he's worse now. Samai catches Zane at a time where he is an occassional cocaine sniffer and not yet a hopeless junkie.

Although Samai and Zane are only separated from their spouses, Zane manages to convince Samai not only into adulterous sex but also drug use. Everything is telling Samai to leave Zane alone: the weird dreams, the fact that her two little boys blatantly dislike Zane, the fact that her involvement with Zane breaches the Christian values which are the foundation of her spiritual existence.

Curiosity develops into the utter destruction. What starts as a "bump" of cocaine with Zane turns into freebasing cocaine and naturally progresses into an unshakable crack habit. Samai gets her divorce, loses jobs left and right eventually winding up on public assistance.

"Never As Good As The First Time" is so interesting because it shows exactly how that relative, that friend, that business associate can go from heading in the right direction to crackhead in a few short months. Usually, the junkie is the nefarious supporting character in most urban lit novels. Author Mari Walker gives the reader a character that is simultaneously pitiful and despicable.

What did you like best about this book?

This book is about authentic as it gets when it comes to the story of a person who struggles with God and crack. Mari Walker skillfully sculpted Samai Collins. As she slips away from being involved in the church, she quickly becomes enveloped by the culture that comes along with being addicted to crack. The reader learns as Samai learns.

Samai's struggles and cravings are so realistic. Who knows that the steel wool put in the glass stem is called "chore" after a company that makes steel wool? Who knows that a crack dealer will put the stuff used to sooth a teething baby's gums on fake rocks to numb a crack-addict's lips and gums when they test a rock's authenticity? This aspect of the novel is researched on Mari Walker's part.

If this book was a movie, Zane would win the role of Best Supporting Actor. He is the gas to Samai's engine. I laughed out loud to one of his many stories early in the novel. I actually grumbled and put down the book when he popped back up on the scene after Samai swore off of him. In some ways, Never Good As The First Time is about Zane's deterioration from a pretty boy pusher to a run of the mill crackhead as much as it is about Samai's turmoil.

I also liked that fact that the story happened in the late eighties without hitting the reader over the head with it. References to watching Luther Vandross perform, saying "that's the bomb!", going to see Spike Lee's School Daze at the movies were sprinkled throughout "Never As Good As The First Time" just enough to frame a story about the arrival of crack.

What did you dislike about this book?

I didn't like the way this book ended. The last twenty pages didn't flow like the previous two hundred seventy. Too much action. I thought this story should have stuck with dealing with the issues of leaving behind crack for family instead of turning in an action packed adventure.

How can the author improve this book?

Besides the surprise ending, the book can be condensed. "Never As Good As The First Time" is almost three hundred pages. A couple of smoke sessions could have been left out and the theme would still be intact.

Joey Pinkney
Unbiased Book Reviewer
UrbanBookSource.com
JoeyPinkney.com

This book was beautiful. My heart went out to Samari and her children. I needed to read this book and I am happy I did. It reminded me that God is always there for his children even when we think he is not. I highly recommend this book.

I was so into this book I couldn't put it down.
A million compliments to the author!
Her writing was superb and the story line was perfect.

Next Book!!!

"Never As Good As The First Time is a fascinating novel that contains a harrowing story of one woman's deep decent in a debilitating addiction that utterly destroys life as she once knew."

"Samai Collins' life takes a drastic turn soon after her divorce. Her loneliness leads her in a relationship with a man from her past that ultimately jeopardizes her family and future." Samai becomes so heavily addicted to drugs that she neglects her three children, and begins to distance herself from her family, friends and her church. It is only when she finds herself crawling in the depths of her addiction after several attempts to refrain from using drugs that she is forced down a path that will either lead her to death or deliverance."

"Readers will no doubt have a hard time putting this intriguing book down."

I thought, by looking at the cover, that this was going to be a "romance, sex,and claw your way to the top" type of story. I was wrong. This story was not like that. This story had action, sex, conflict, intrigue, even humor! It was not the romance that I feared it would be. I found humor in the name of the woman that Samai called "Natalie Cole". I identified with the character because I also see people that I don't know their name but I name them by who they look like. I really liked the verbage that was used through out the story. I thought the way Samai expressed herself and spoke was so realistic. I loved the foreshadowing used about her daughter, Jadyn. I know that paved the way for something interesting in the future. I really enjoyed the characters, also. I am looking forward to Mari Walker's next novel. Thank you for a suprising and enjoyable read, Mari.