My Selling Pitch:
Imagine talking LA politics with a man who oh so genuinely believes Euphoria season 3 is a triumph. Now let him write an unreliable narrator “feminist” thriller. Exactly.

Spiritually on my do not read list, but I think it’s important to read perspectives you don’t agree with, so you better understand what you do believe in, and this book’s great for that.

Pre-reading: I liked the Eileen movie, and this is satire by its writer, so I'm excited to check this out. porn.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on) Thick of it: The audacity of men describing women’s breasts.

God, I love Clueless.

This is so aggressively male writer, and I’m not having a good time. The flower was asking for it???? Like my guy

I’m at DNF. Like this has to be satire of men writing, but it’s actually racist and misogynistic and insufferable.

Her mouth felt like colonialists is a crazy thing to write.

I feel like some man said I can totally write My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I’ll just set it in LA starring Cher. (Lmao so he is her ex-husband and everything makes sense.)

Can her dad smell her pussy. Oh, I’m so over this.

I don’t think all men want that. It’s okay if he wants that, but he doesn’t speak for all men.

Why are Hilary Clinton, Mariah Carey, and Jennifer Aniston of all people catching strays for not being beautiful enough in this book? I. Hate. It. Here.

I bet this author lovessss Euphoria.

This is doing the American Psycho thing with the brands.

I really hate when books inadvertently suggest people are gay or trans because they were raped as a kid.

I went back and restarted because it had been a minute, and the book is much better if you read it. The audiobook is missing a LOT of tone and rhythm. The formatting doesn't help because it's stream of consciousness colliding with reality and the audiobook doesn't differentiate them and the absent paragraph breaks or italics don’t help that either.

I think this book’s genuinely good writing is getting overshadowed by the author’s weird fetish. There's the all girls with daddy issues want to fuck their dad mindset, and like women want attention from men or they'll die, and genuinely asking whether they should just trade sex to get the emotional connection they want because how could it be a fair trade otherwise, and it's ticking me off. It’s very I have a female main character so I’m a feminist, see! but then her introduction is a shot of her toes, and you know exactly what kind of man he is.

It's so West Coast, and I'm so firmly East Coast. I don’t feel bad for rich, sunbaked zombies who create their own problems. Gimme cold and bitter any day.

It's just coming off that he’s jealous of women because they get the attention from men that he wants. And it's like my brother in christ, pull your head out of your ass. Think beyond your prostate, I’m begging.

Just- How does it not sound tone deaf to you, as a male writer, to have a female character wonder about how she can best demonstrate the new female gaze? It's not your gaze! You fundamentally will not understand it.

The pretentious narrative reminds me a lot of A Certain Hunger’s voice.

Into a bullhorn, fuck your religion. At least he’s getting that right.

You know, the second I compliment him, he’s back doing some male author shit™. Thanks for clarifying you weren’t talking about fucking the horse. Literally no one was thinking that.

Hello Lana Del Rey

She better not be snipping nipples off to make a bouquet. (I truly don’t know what we were doing with the murders in this book.)

All the fashion name drops keep reminding me of American Psycho.

Maybe I’m too sober for this book. I don’t do drugs. They hold no appeal for me. I don’t understand them.

I'm so sick of books including child sexual trauma and having their characters wonder if that's why they're gay. Like that’s not even suggesting poisonous right wing rhetoric anymore, that’s outright reinforcing it.

I would like to dnf again. But Samantha maybe it’s just the character’s warped mindset! Why is THIS the character you wanna portray so repetitively? Do you think the most interesting thing you can do is have a character ruminate on right wing rhetoric and suggest that it’s correct? Do you think it makes you cool and edgy? Do you think it makes you a fearless writer? You sound like a twat.

But then this book is so frustrating because I do like the phrase ‘he wanted to be like someone with their finger on God’s abs.’ That’s banger. That’s great.

The last thing the world needs is more men who think they're gods.

All I can do is heavy sigh about this book. It’s 9 in the morning. This is another one of his female characters who exists only to assist men and is addicted to plastic surgery. And her big claim is that a person creates his own reality, so any history he thinks he knows about the world is something he himself has dreamed up, so it’s actually a moral failing on his part for suggesting that rape and incest exist because he’s the one creating them by believing in them. And I’m just really frustrated at the victim blaming and the language in this book, and I’ve wanted to DNF it multiple times now. I won’t. I’m a literary masochist. But you’re gonna have to listen to me keep bitching about it.

This shit’s racist and offensive and not an interesting thought experiment. It's very white man got high and thinks everything he's ever thought is a valuable insight and gift to humanity, and I’m fucking tired.

The worst people in the world are obsessed with the ortolans. Eating an entire bird is weird as shit, and it’s weird as shit that you’re fixated on it. It works excellently in Hannibal. It doesn’t belong here.

He can’t even keep the voice consistent across characters because he had to do his little teehee, I wasn’t talking about fucking the horse, and now his therapist is saying lol, I wasn’t talking about the bird. I was talking about the people. Like no fucking shit. It’s the door to the microwave meme. I’m sure you can argue that the voice inconsistencies are lending credence to his reality is fake and other people are just shades of you that you’ve invented so of course they have your voice, but I think it’s actually just bad writing.

You need such a broad education to get all the references in this book.

This entire book is just the Sabrina Carpenter “I promise the mushrooms aren’t changing your life” line.

Mr. Rogers catching strays a second time!

Women don't owe you shit.

While I love these particular fashion descriptions, I think a lot of this is a West Coast problem. It's very Selena and Benny.

Hold on tight, spider monkey. (I need to be shot.)

Dude, the diction is so jarring because they’re pulling out every SAT word you can possibly think of and then they’re like lol suck his rod! (Not a negative, just an observation.)

You know, I love a live laugh lobotomy joke, but I don’t like when men make them.

I hate it here. Dr. Seuss literal shit.

I need it to stop talking about shit in such graphic detail, or I’m gonna vom. This is disgusting.

I do not think of the 80s as particularly masculine. I think of the 80s as loud, but I guess loudness translates more to masculinity traditionally.

Olivie Blake’s Girl Dinner and Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend gets the bitches/dogs feminist argument. This man doesn't. He hasn't graduated past the resentment that women can profit off their looks, and you can HEAR it in his writing even when he thinks he's being feminist.

Jealous of the East Coast AND YOU SHOULD BE.

Look, you can't hit people, but I don’t think it’s crazy for him to not want his daughter on drugs???

She's giving us details about the murders that she couldnt know unless she saw them, so I’m so curious as to how she's connected. I genuinely have no guess as to whodunnit. Other than maybe his brother but that wouldn't make sense.

It's not sexy. You're warped.

Why is he so preoccupied with the dad fucking his daughter? Men can interact with women without it being sexual. Maybe he can't but normal people can!

I just don’t think any woman is worried about becoming a eunech.

Hello Bateman.

Oooo. To be fair. I did not see the conduit being Susie’s mom. That was a good twist.

Responsible women do care which candidate wins.

I'm so tired of the bodily functions.

I mean that is exactly the voice of this novel, and I hate it.

Don’t disrespect corgis like that.

I know it’s only a few years removed, but the political criticisms still feel outdated.

Saying Skid Row is like Coachella is such an irresponsible romanticization of a tragedy.

I do love The Secret History.

Detritus sin

It’s the last place rich people don’t own to can we (rich people) buy them? I don’t like this book at all.

I do like that the book acknowledges your outrage and has the balls to call your bluff. Like what are you actually gonna do about it? Read more? That was good. I liked that.

There’s so much poop in this book.

I’m getting pretty annoyed that this book is going so over the top with the lizard people conspiracies when it’s also name dropping Epstein. That’s not conspiracy. That all happened. I’m sure you can argue that it’s to illustrate how politicians do distract from the facts at hand with something so outlandish that the common people just write everything off, but I think it’s in poor taste.

Unfortunately, I have not figured out dick. I don’t know what I’m supposed to have realized about Susie or the story as a whole. I hope the book makes it more explicit. I’m not getting it. (It doesn't!)

Yeah, so I don’t get it at all. I don’t know who the killer is. I don’t know who killed Dick. I don’t know where her mother was.

He just reads like the most performative male who genuinely believes you can’t create art or say you’ve experienced life if you’ve never gotten high. Not everyone needs a pharmaceutical crutch to activate their imagination. And just so much of this reads misogynistic, but not in a women are beneath me way. You just sound fucking jealous. Come to terms with your gender identity or your sexuality and leave them out of it. No one relevant cares if you’re a man or a woman or something in between. It’s the least interesting thing about you.

Homie wants to be American Psycho so bad. Homie wants to be Tarantino so bad. This reads like Euphoria season three. It’s that bad.

Post-reading: I love how bad lit fic always feels like an inescapable dinner party conversation with the worst person you know. The book’s a swing and a miss, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have style. It oozes presence, it wants a drag out dog fight, it’s lecherous. It’s gonna make you want a shower. If you have functioning feminist critical thought, you’re gonna clock this wannabe immediately. Equal opportunity for female sociopathy, but I know exactly what kind of man you are when you open with a teenaged toe wiggle. And that sour taste is unfortunately never gonna leave your mouth even as the narrative scrambles to unravel into something resembling intrigue. But if you scratch at it, you’ll quickly realize it’s borrowed schticks from writers who have been there done that. Homeboy wants to be Brett Easton Ellis so bad! You can’t dump in empty fashion references and Phil Collins if your satire is the equivalent of an ennui nibble! The whole thing is anesthetized! And I can hear you, Samantha, isn’t that the point? Shouldn’t a drugged fever dream feel that hazy? And it should, if that was one consistent narrative voice of the novel. But this is supposed to be a multi POV. Characters should have different voices from each other, and they don’t. A malicious Cher, a protester turned professor, and a nonbinary street kid shouldn’t sound identical to each other. They don’t have the same educations or backgrounds yet they speak with the same vocabularies, interests, and political agendas. It’s not a psychological horror flair to illustrate this book’s cultish manifesto that reality is constructed and every person encountered is an NPC, even when you pass it through the lens of this is Susie’s story and can we really believe her? I think the author’s just as full of shit as she is. Literally! I’ve never read so much about pooping and farting in my life.

The political commentary felt like a temper tantrum rather than a valuable critique. I think it’s incredibly telling when you’re preoccupied with tearing down the appearance of female celebrities as if that’s fair recompense for bad policy, meanwhile, their male counterparts get cheeky nicknames. Incest isn’t a shortcut to provocative writing. If anything, it’s cheap, lazy, and overused. I think it’s a klaxon blare of written by a man because what 19-year-old do you know that’s pondering her ‘cheap carnation nipples’ poolside and in the next breath worrying if daddy, her real daddy, can smell her pussy?

One thing this book does do well is feel distinctly West Coast. She is viciously envious of NYC and New England, and you know, as she should be. Gimmie frosty educated winters over vapid, sun baked pavement any day.

It’s such a misogynistic book, but it’s almost a backhanded compliment. The commentary reads as jealous of women, of their bodies, and their sexuality, and their perceived power over men. Which like, hoo baby, get a grip! Make peace with your prostate. There’s plenty of boyfriends to go around for everyone. I think the gender identity confusion is too fetishized to be insightful. Everything’s about getting laid and neglectful of other aspects of dysphoria.

It’s just such a weird choice to me to want to write an unhinged woman so you can showcase the artistic female gaze when you’re a man. Because you just won’t get it. You fundamentally cannot get it. That’s the point. An approximation is never gonna read as authentic which is thematically LA, but I’m an east coast reader and that’s pretty much the antithesis of what I wanna see in fiction. Create something so believable I forget that it’s fake, or lean in, and this book fails to do either.

The thriller plotline kept me reading even after the book had disgusted me past the point of no return, but it just fizzles out. I truly, truly don’t think I’m a stupid reader, but this book’s too ambiguous to make sense or satisfy. I still don’t know who the main killer was, I don’t know where her mom got off to, and I don’t know who killed Dick, and when that’s the goddamn title of your novel- Like how can you not view that as a fundamental failing? Not every book is for every reader, but the average audience member better be able to finish your book with an understanding of the core message or something’s wrong!

I hated it. I don’t get. I don’t think you will either, but I hesitate to say you shouldn’t read it. I think it’s really important to read perspectives and beliefs that are different from your own. I think it helps you cement and better articulate what you do believe in. I think it’s part of being an educated, critical consumer. If you love art, you wanna talk about what makes it good vs what makes it bad, and I don’t think you’re picking up satirical political lit fic on a whim. You’re already not a casual reader by merit of the genre itself. You want to think, and this book will definitely get you doing that, I just wish it were in a more positive way.

Also, not the book’s fault at all, but I think the audiobook performance for this is horrendous. It misses so much tonal inflection that it was distorting the book into word salad nonsense. I turned it off and restarted and had a much better time reading in my head

Who should read this: Social satire fans American Psycho fans LA as a vibe readers Political commentary fans

Ideal reading time: Election season

Do I want to reread this: On my own, no, but I’d be down to dissect it with a book club

Would I buy this: Nope

Similar books:

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• A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers-lit fic, satire, revenge thriller, queer
• American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis-lit fic, psychological horror, satire, social commentary, queer
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Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.