200 MONAS

With the help of a mysterious drug dealer, a bereaved biochemistry student tries to sell a stash of 200 pills—and also pass her finals—before she’s scheduled to fly to San Francisco at the end of the week for a pharmaceutical internship.

Four weeks before her final exams at Westheimer University in Central Texas, Harvey Moon Keening—called Arvy—lost her mother in a car crash that might have been an accident but that Arvy suspects was the result of what she and her mother called “the funk.” Now Arvy has four tests to take, her aunt’s incontinent foster dog to care for, and a Ziploc bag of 200 pills she thinks are molly to get rid of—the remnant of her “witchy” mother’s “light drug dealing” mostly to women “who had lost a grip on their truer selves.” As it turns out, however, the 200 pills are not molly, but Mona, an “experimental pharmaceutical made for women, by women, meant to treat extreme cases of sexual dysfunction and clitoral atrophy.” Mona, in other words, gives its users overwhelming orgasms, plus a host of side effects including vomiting, blackouts, and waves of existential dread. Arvy has less than 36 hours to sell the pills or somehow come up with $10,000 for Francis Pete, her mother’s charming-but-also-terrifying former “business associate.” Sharp-witted and vulnerable—she brings her mother’s ashes with her everywhere—Arvy is a delightful narrator of this high-stakes adventure. Including her increasingly serious flirtation with Wolf, the college’s drug dealer, and the discovery of a cultish sorority for young women willing to pledge celibacy so they can “convert sexual energy into productive energy” and “use it for a greater purpose,” the adventure is much like Mona itself: a propulsive romp haunted by an ever-present darkness.

A wild, fun, and moving page-turner.