A colorful but somewhat unconvincing novel of impulse and delusion.
A woman with obsessive tendencies becomes the object of someone else’s obsession in Goldberg’s thriller.
Lexi Mazur is a pharmaceutical rep with a pill addiction and a fondness for vodka. She’s just been dumped by her boyfriend, Steve, who’d gotten wise to the fact that she’s been spying on him to make sure he hasn’t been cheating. Now she has little to do in her spare time other than sit around her Queens apartment with her cat, Sammi, and watch reality television shows. Her new favorite is Socialites, which follows a group of rich “frenemies” as they navigate New York City high society. She quickly becomes engrossed by the show’s star, Magnolia Artois, in whom Lexi sees some combination of role model and kindred spirit. She starts to stalk Magnolia on social media, commenting on all her posts, and then starts showing up in person at the show’s filming locations. Magnolia doesn’t react to Lexi’s fandom the way that Lexi wants her to, however, which forces the single-minded woman to escalate things a bit. Then something unexpected happens: Lexi attracts a stalker of her own. “I heard a rustling.…A shadow materialized, stalked away with a scraping sound against the dirt.” At first, Lexi is strangely turned on by it, but then the watcher becomes increasingly intrusive—and threatening, as when she receives a profanity-laden phone call from a restricted number: “I WILL GUT YOU….I’LL SCATTER YOUR BODY PARTS ALL OVER NEW YORK CITY.” But who could it be? Steve? Jeremy, the ex-boyfriend whom she alienated with her extreme behavior? Pria, her longtime best friend, whom Lexi suspects has a secret crush on her? Or is it Magnolia herself?
As Lexi continues in a pill-fueled haze, the lines between stalker and stalked, friend and frenemy, and reality and reality TV become increasingly blurred. Goldberg’s prose, as narrated by the protagonist, is snarky and slightly frenetic in tone: “I found solace when I got home in a pint of ice cream with broken up my blue heavens and a vodka chaser,” begins one chapter, referencing the blue pills that Lexi pops constantly. Another starts off, “Even though I wanted to head home and ooze into the couch watching reality TV, I needed to sell some drugs.” Parts of the novel are quite engrossing. The book is darkly comic, satirizing a number of contemporary institutions—big pharma, reality TV, social media celebrity—while pulling the reader into more transgressive territory involving sex, addiction, violence, and mental illness. However, the author seems to ultimately have very little to say about any of these topics. Also, almost nothing about the story feels terribly believable; its events are slightly too heightened, and Lexi’s thoughts seem slightly too well-organized considering her chaotic lifestyle. The subject matter is so serious on its face—and often in the story, which is not purely a comedy—that Lexi’s characterization feels gratuitous, akin to the shows she loves, which often seem to be messy-for-messy’s-sake.
A colorful but somewhat unconvincing novel of impulse and delusion.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
