Hell of a Book follows a Black author on a book tour for a novel that may or may not exist, while news coverage of a police shooting of a young Black boy plays continuously in the background. Jason Mott's novel interweaves three narrative strands: the author's encounters with a possibly imaginary child called The Kid; flashbacks to a Black boy named Soot growing up in a small Southern town with parents who taught him to be invisible for his own survival; and surreal episodes in which the boundaries between fiction and reality dissolve. Mott, whose debut novel Ashes explored the return of the dead, brings magical realist techniques to an examination of American racism, asking how Black Americans can affirm their existence in a society that makes invisibility a survival strategy. The book never clarifies whether the author protagonist is writing the novel we're reading, whether The Kid is real or imagined, or how the various storylines connect. This deliberate ambiguity becomes thematically central—in a culture that refuses to see Black lives, all claims to existence become uncertain. The novel challenges readers while delivering moments of devastating emotional power.