I picked up Fading Away: Dark Bay by Gauis Konstantine out of pure annoyance. He had just roasted me in one of our long-running back-and-forth discussions about branding, reviews, and the role they play for authors. He is one of the first people I remember having serious conversations with when I finally stepped into the writing community. Back then, I didn’t even realize he wrote books—what I actually knew was that he reviewed them. Not just anywhere, but for Readers’ Favorite, a platform that sometimes feels like the pulse of publishing, a place where writers bring their most honest selves and hope the world, or at least one sharp-eyed reviewer, notices.
Both revered and sometimes debated, Readers’ Favorite acts like a crossroads for authors, a stage for stories from across genres and continents. Seeing his name attached to that platform gave his critiques gravity and maybe a little edge in our debates.
We have this habit of stretching discussions into winding threads, usually from opposite sides of the argument. That was our dance. But yesterday, the banter got under my skin, and in a moment of irritation, I grabbed his book.
It is not my usual genre, and it is far from the kind of subject that would normally pull me in. Yes, I love mafia stories in the same way I love Mario Puzo’s work, but the real mafia underground of New York in the 80s is not exactly what I usually reach for. It was 7:45 p.m. my time, and I needed a new book for the bedside table. I have my regular comfort reads, the kind I open for a chapter or two to help me sleep. An underground mafia story set in the 80s seemed perfect for that. Something dark, something distant, something I could drift into and then put down.
That was the plan, anyway.
The prologue set the tone right away. This was not going to be a happy story. This was going to be a difficult one. Chapter 1 opened like a faded film reel, something between Malèna and The Godfather Part II, where everything begins in dust and memory. A dusky little town. Donkeys roaming the streets. Roosters are tearing open the morning with their cries. The town was never named outright, and later I pieced together that it was somewhere in Europe — stitched, in my mind, to the country I believed the main character came from. None of it was handed to me directly. I had to gather it from the crumbs left along the way, and somehow that made the reading feel more intimate, as if I were not being told a story so much as let into one.
Gauis writes clearly and crisply. He does not lean on fancy words or dress the page in unnecessary flourishes. There were a few dated terms here and there, words that sounded like the ones I used to hear from my father and uncles when I was a child, but they came only in passing, like echoes from another room.
I was only supposed to read Chapter 1, maybe Chapter 2 if I felt generous, and then switch to Netflix.
Instead, as I read, I forgot that I was reading at all.
It felt like it was just me and the author in an old Italian café that turned into a bar at night. The air felt warm and dim. He poured whisky, neat. One for me, one for him. Then he lit a Marlboro. He did not offer me one. Then he began to tell the story. That is what reading this book felt like. Not text on a page. A voice. Gauis’s voice, not just his writing, carries the whole night forward.
It was an ordinary, extraordinary tale.
He does not drown you in detail. He gives you only enough to spark the mind, enough to let your imagination do its quiet work and bridge what he leaves unsaid. He is not the kind of writer who relies on giant, screaming plot twists. Instead, he slips in small, sharp ones. Nugget-sized turns that come when you least expect them and hit harder because of it.
From a nameless boy in an old town, the protagonist is carried into New York City. It is there I learned he was Mediterranean. From a child who barely spoke English and came from a broken childhood, he grew into something close to an independent entrepreneur in school, arranging underground stalls like weeds pushing through concrete. Cigarettes, porn magazines, whatever could be sold. He is a good-looking boy, frightened of girls, yet somehow brave enough to run errands for the underground mafia.
I have always been fascinated by mafia stories, and I have read enough of them to recognize the names, the atmosphere, the shadows moving behind the power. With each chapter, Gauis led me deeper into that world and introduced me to real mobs, real names, real weight. At times, I forgot this was fiction.
By the middle of the book, I realized my plan to stop at Chapter 2 had somehow carried me all the way to Chapter 21. It was already 9:50 p.m. I had been reading for two straight hours. Gauis’s voice was still there in the background, steady as smoke. New York in the 80s was so different from the New York of today, and he painted it with such realism that it felt less like a setting and more like a haunting. The city pulsed. The mob breathed. The dead and the living stood side by side right before my eyes.
And if you think for one second that this is just a “guy book,” all mobs and muscle and violence, you would be wrong.
Gauis changes course.
There are girls. There is desire. There is the ache of wanting and the confusion of youth. He meets women, sleeps with some of them, falls in love at one point, but does not tell her until it is too late. And in the middle of all that hard-edged world, one line broke through me and brought tears to my eyes:
“I kissed her as if she was life itself and the universe would end the second I stopped.”
That line stayed with me. It did not feel written for effect. It felt lived in. It felt like the kind of truth that slips out only when someone has no choice but to say it.
When I reached the end, I messaged Gauis and asked him why he ended it that way. He gave me his reason. I did not accept it.
That, to me, is the mark of a book that has done its work. You reach out to the author and ask why.
It was already 3:00 a.m. by then, and I could not sleep. My blood was awake. The adrenaline would not leave. It is always like this when I read a book or watch a film that truly gets under my skin. Something in me keeps pacing long after the final page, unwilling to let go.
So instead of analyzing the novel the way I usually would for this blog, instead of neatly pointing out its strengths, its best parts, or breaking down the writing style, I found myself doing something else.
I ended up telling my own story of reading it.
And maybe that says more about Fading Away: Dark Bay than any formal review ever could.
Fading Away: Dark Bay
By Gauis Konstantine
“What had I become? How did I go from peddling girly magazines and beer to murder without noticing it? Apparently, it was easy, and I did it with my eyes wide open, slowly at first, then all at once. All I ever really wanted was to be free to live my life and be happy. But now it was all gone.”
Set in 1980s New York, Fading Away: Dark Bay is a first person tale of a man who finds himself a key player of the Mafia’s pivotal moments.
Justine Castellon is a brand strategist with an innate ability to weave compelling narratives. She seamlessly blends her professional insight with her passion for literature. Her literary works include romantic drama novels—Four Seasons, The Last Snowfall, Gnight Sara / ‘Night Heck, and I Love You, Sunday Sunset. With her ability to tell stories that linger long after the last word, Justine leaves a mark not only in the world of branding but also in the hearts of her readers.
www.justcastellon.com
