This book instantly grabbed my attention purely due to the cover. The bright Green and Orange really popped in my mind and wouldn’t leave until I read this for myself. Naturally, I went into this book not knowing anything and that really served me well this time around.
“To be happy means to be free and to be free means to be brave.”
Josh Silver, Fruit Fly
About The Book
Author: Josh Siliver
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Published Date: August 4th, 2026
Page Count: 384 Pages
Main Genre: Fiction
GoodReads Rating: 4.16
Format: Audio
“Go gay. Gay sells.”
Josh Silver, Fruit Fly
Synopsis
Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.
Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.
Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all.
But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story.
Synopsis from GoodReads
Rating
Review
When this audiobook first started, I wasn’t sure this would be my thing. I am very particular about my audiobook narrators and I wasn’t vibing at first, but I pushed through and I am so glad I did! The narrators really grew on me.
I am an Airbnb owner, so I primarily listen to my audiobooks while I clean before each guest, so it is very important to me that the book grips me and makes the time fly by. This plot really had me on the edge of my seat, dying to know what was going to come next.
This book was twisted and consistently made me sick. The topics were difficult to digest but were ultimately important to hear about.
There were two main topics here that really hit me hard. The first was the narcissistic and controlling husband. While this plot was more of a minor overall detail, I personally felt like it played a big role in the trajectory of the plot. If Mal was in a better relationship, would she have ended up doing the things she did throughout the book? Probably not. While Mal was not a great person, I do think she had potential to be better if her life had been placed on a different path.
The second main Topic that stood out to me was how addiction can affect your life but also the lives of the ones around you. Both characters have a history with addiction, but their journeys were very different. Mal had a chance to go to recovery and have people rally around her to try and assist her through her addictions; this is really showing her privilege. While Leo’s addiction really derailed his life, he is homeless and just trying to survive any way he can, but because of his situation, it shows how hard it is to get clean. He doesn’t have all of the same security that Mal had going through her addiction.
Leo’s character was so heartbreaking to follow even though he is not a very likeable character. He seems to never make a choice that you are hoping he would make that could actually turn his life around. You watch him suffer so much in this short period of time that we are following him, so it really hurts to see Mal take advantage of his life story without giving him a say. She literally could have given his life story some credit or even given him a portion of money from the book sales, but of course Leo gets shafted.
I thought this plot was really intriguing but also scary due to the fact that I can see similar things happening like this in everyday life, maybe not quite to this extreme though. Mal felt like she could easily slip into the LGBTQ community and gain experiences by becoming one of them. Her use of Slay and other queer terms was rarely ever met without skepticism because she wasn’t very compelling in her dialogue. The audacity of this woman was wild to me. There were so many other options to get firsthand experience in this genre of writing that would have been more ethical, so it astounds me that this was her first choice.
Overall, I enjoyed listening to this book. It was something I don’t read about often, which kept me entertained in a weird and twisted way. I would definitely pick up another book by this author.
“Those who can think, but cannot express what they think, place themselves at the level of those who cannot think –”
Josh Silver, Fruit Fly
QOTD: What are some of your favorite “weird girl” fiction books
