I found Allen Longstreet on social media as he was promoting the pre-release of this book, Under Belly. I reached out and told him I would love to read it and give it a review!
So let’s do it!
Here is the synopsis:
17-year-old Hiro Hara has been missing for over a decade. When he is found wandering alone outside a remote Nevadan mining town, his reappearance brings more questions than answers…because Hiro has no memory. He couldn’t even remember his own name.
After returning home to Los Angeles, Hiro struggles to adjust to life with his estranged family—his ornery grandmother, Obachan, and secretive older brother, Yuta, who often disappears late at night and doesn’t return until sunrise.
Hiro soon discovers that Yuta has spent countless years trying to infiltrate the inner circle of the corporate elite. All to prove his theory that there’s a cabal of wealthy men who kidnap children for reasons beyond his wildest imagination. But when Yuta successfully targets an executive at the mega-conglomerate O-Corp, he’s brought deeper into a clandestine world of debauchery that gets him closer to finding the people who kidnapped Hiro a decade prior...and closer to being able to serve them revenge.
Ooo, I just want to say I really enjoyed this novel. It takes place in a futuristic Los Angeles - my home base as a filmmaker and writer. From the opening scene all the way to the ending scene I found this book to be a page turner!
The setting for this story is both modernistic and dystopian; like, seeing how the world would be different and indistinguishable if the elite and powerful took over - much like today - but more intensely and where a major corporation - in this case O-Corp - controls everything and under the guise of making life easier, seems to make it more difficult - and worse of all - more lonely.
Not going to lie, it feels oddly reminiscent of where we are as a society now, which, even though this story takes place in the not-so-distant future, makes it feel very relevant.
I love Allen’s style of writing as well and I do hope to read more of his work in the future. I highly recommend this novel.