UNKNOWN

Lou Kennedy wants out. Though he doesn’t admit this to anyone, and barely admits it to himself, there has to be a reason to stop the debauchery of his current life, he just hasn’t found it yet. That is until a drunken night out in New York City leads him to Marissa, the girl who just might inspire him to clean up his act. She’s a Spanish spark unlike any woman he’s ever met. But there’s a problem. At some point late in the night Lou’s bad habits get the better of him. He blacks out and wakes up in his ex-girlfriend’s bed with no recollection of how he got there and no evidence Marissa ever existed. No phone number. No photos. After furious online searching he can’t even find an Instagram handle.

Desperate, irrational, and questioning if the Marissa he met is real, Lou seeks out his mother’s Babalawo who says he has five days to find Marissa or he will lose her forever. In a bibulous jaunt through the streets of Hoboken and Manhattan, where family, friends, addiction, old flames, the spiritual, and the superstitious all play a part in hunting down the beautiful apparition that just might change Lou’s life forever, he faces a choice — find Marissa or succumb to a life of depravity, enroute to the brink of insanity.

"Hell or Hangover reads like coke-snorting early Bret Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski had a wild night in the city with some crazy Cuban cousins, dabbled in santería, and woke up hungover in suburban New Jersey. Alex Muka has written a voice-driven banger about a young man spiraling through shots of booze, lust, and existential angst in search of something real. It’s a romance, a reckoning, and a raucous coming-of-age novel full of guts, grime, and poetry. A bold debut from a writer with serious chops and a worldview all his own."
—Andrew Boryga, author of Victim

Alex Muka is a father, husband, and writer living in Red Bank, N.J. This is his debut novel.