Reviews with content warning for Racism - Patricia Wants to Cuddle

the positives:
this is a quick, snappy read with an engaging writing style that is easy to read. i zipped through it in one night and it really gripped me. the horror elements, shall we say, really had me tense. i particularly liked the concept of these “airheaded” dating reality show contestants behind the scenes, and the conversations that both they and the producers/filmmakers had on the side too.

right from the start, the way renee describes amanda had me wondering if something more would happen there. and i was surprised how much i became invested in mike and casey’s situationship.

i also really enjoyed the media elements of the book - blog posts, forum threads, etc., which made reading this book almost feel like reading a documentary - between the rotating perspectives, the plot revolving around reality tv, the mystery/suspense element, etc. in general i’d say this book has good bones - characters that i could become invested in, good writing style, dry and witty humor, and an interesting plot concept.

the negatives:
for me, this book missed in a couple of key ways. for one, it does feel quite short to read, and over the course of the book, i don’t have any true feeling of any of the characters developing in any material sense, or finding a satisfying plot resolution. i was interested in all of the main characters - both the contestants, producers, and jeremy - and wanted to better understand their motivations, but they fall a bit flat.

renee is supposed to be our main protagonist, it seems, but she is essentially written as emotionally numb for 90% of the book, before pivoting to a semi-delusional worship for lady sasquatch. not that i’m opposed to emotionally numb characters, but why did she feel and act the way she did? why did she agree to go on the show in the first place if she finds it so worthless and tokenizing? it feels like the only thing i knew about her was that she is black and an english major, and bisexual. but who is she?? the fact that she is so tight lipped throughout the story plus her emotionally numb narration make it hard to discern her true motivations and feelings aside from just generally despising the reality show.

i wish that there was a bit more development of the characters - i would have liked to see how the spat between casey and matt played out. i originally thought the book would end with renee and one of the contestants falling in love and running away to the palm springs resort.

i also would have really liked to see the aftermath of amanda and renee’s kiss. that felt like such a promising moment, especially with jeremy attacking renee about it afterwards. then the horror of renee finding amanda’s body diverts the plot back to sasquatch.

and in some of the final scenes, i was baffled by renee not just refusing to attack sasquatch, but directing sasquatch to kill jeremy? i know she thought he was a stupid fuck (and he was), but he died gruesomely and she did not react at all.

final thoughts:
it’s a quick, “fun”, gripping read about The Bachelor if it was even sleazier, but there were a lot of unresolved plot points that left me a bit baffled and wrong-footed by the end. the final leg of the book is frankly a bit bizarre. while i do like the concept of

Ms. Sasquatch and her team of loyal lesbian guardians

, i think i would have enjoyed this book more if any of the arguments, relationships, or character tensions were resolved satisfyingly by the end of the book.

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cmboyke's review

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dark funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was the perfect thrill ride to pull me out of my reading slump. Once I started, it was difficult not to read the rest.

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averyt121's review

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adventurous dark funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No

4.0

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eliya's review

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adventurous dark funny mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I had a whole review written out yesterday and I didn’t save it and now it’s gone 😪
It took me about a month to read this pretty short book lol. 13 hours of reading time.

Loved the “weird” nature of the book, combining two loved genres, the snide remarks the characters make about each other. There are some good quotes from this book that I’ll be listing below. I don’t think you’re supposed to like any character and I definitely didn’t lol. Loved the physical descriptions the author used to describe feelings.

Did not love the writing style. The author focused a lot on scene dressing and filled most of the book with painful, needless details and empty attempts to develop internal dialogue between the different characters.

I think Casey was spot-on- Amanda and Vanessa were the same character, one just had two moms and talked mostly about how that shaped her vs the other one who wanted to fuck Jeremy so much. Lilah Mae was a caricature of the toxic Christian trope & Renee… I’m conflicted about Renee. She was a curmudgeon the whole book, understandably so, but I don't find valor in just being a hater.

In the author’s note, the author talks about how it took courage to write this “weird” book, but it truly was not weird enough.

I had a lot of hopes for this book, but all in all, it was: boring, boring, cringy and unbelievable, funny, boring, until 80% through, then it was really exciting!! Where was that the whole rest of the book?

Favorite quotes out of context -

“For Alexa, the knife in my heart”
“But that was the point, wasn’t it? To be reminded.”
“Some pretzel bags are prettier than others…”
"But she's trying to stop searching for herself in the eyes of others"
"Standing over her like a gangly teenager about to ask his mom for lunch money"
"He tasted minty and yet somehow still disgusting, like Altoids that had been scraped off of the floor of the car."
"She imagines what it would be like to have a brain unburdened by intelligence--and then Vanessa's..."
"Casey didn't finish; she wasn't expecting to"
"It seems like the sort of place where you could actually just live life, instead of researching the best way to live your life on the internet."

"Leafless trees poking out through the cracks between them, like arms worn down to their sinews reaching up to be fed."
"Nothing but silence and sky. It feels like the end of the world."

" 'Maybe you would have rather gone home with Amanda?! ... You kissed her way better than you ever kissed me!' 'That's because you taste like unwashed asshole, Jeremy' "
"...barely notice it at first, is a fresh human head, detached from a body that is nowhere to be found. Her hair tied in a ponytail, her expression frozen in shock, a layer of blood caking on pale skin. 'Hi, Amanda,' Renee says, looking down at the head. Amanda doesn't speak back, because she's a disembodied head. Alas, poor Amanda."

New words:
Indefatigable - Persisting tirelessly.
Eponymous -

(of a person) giving their name to something.
"the eponymous hero of the novel"
- (of a thing) named after a particular person.
- "Roseanne's eponymous hit TV series"

Adroit - clever or skillful in using the hands or mind. "he was adroit at tax avoidance"

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_p0ssum_'s review

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fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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ncindc's review

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dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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itsheyfay's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

this was a fun lead-up, but the end really lost me i can’t lie.

I was promised Bigfoot lesbian extravaganza & just got some sort of

sad, predatory cult tenuously tied to outdoorsy lesbians?

the sparse Bigfoot teases amounted to an explosion (for lack of a better word) of very stilted action towards the end, and Renee made… so little sense. maybe this is what people mean when they say “cult leaders would love you” about a person but she was just a cardboard cut out of a character until suddenly she’s worshipping Bigfoot with boobs? her motivations made no sense and none of her actions seemed to match the others. her coming to a bi realization seemed promising, until it was completely lost in the Bigfoot worship?

I’m not sure if it was supposed to be funny but this book is actually really bleak in a not fun way. A bunch of (superficial) people, mostly young women, die brutal, awful deaths & it’s kinda just like… anyways, here’s lesbians who kill for Bigfoot, no elaboration!!!!! if this was going for “queer revenge plot”, it definitely got lost on the way there and landed in “sickos that happen to be lesbians obsessed with ape lady for some reason target young women tourists”. horror for horrors sake is fine ig but that’s not what i walked into this expecting.

also I’m just not a fan of “mean/superficial people die” media. rapists, racists, murderers, bigots, fine, but these are just girls with DEEP internal misogyny that go at other girls for insta followers… was this supposed to be some sort of overblown “karma”? some potshot at ~what they represent~? I really don’t know what to take from this. It kinda just feels like relatively innocent women were fed to a monster and the cult recruited another sicko to help. hooray? the production company making money off their deaths was maybe the only part of this that felt like realistic commentary, the rest is just ?????

Jeremy was a sleaze so not much pity there but frankly the host was just a sad drunk? Casey was a nerd stuck in high school mode & thought herself better than the contestants while being equally mercenary & obsessed with “getting ahead” of other women, but at least she was interesting. hated her guts but killing her off so soon was a complete waste. she had final girl potential if that was even a thing in this book. Mike getting framed was. unnecessary? the execution of this just felt like a low budget scary movie, the deaths were overly gruesome yet entirely devoid of meaning. they all died & Renee became an accomplice for… what? you can’t even say love bc frankly she didn’t seem to have that emotion. belonging maybe? even that feels too warm for her cold character. she faked this huge crush on Amanda even to herself, just to be completely unimpaired by her death? I am at such a loss to describe how nonsensical this book became

Don’t even get me started on the random love letters. I would find them lovely in a Lose The Time War way if they added literally anything to the book, but they don’t… am I supposed to go “Aw star-crossed lesbians with a happy ending” when said happy ending is killing young women? again this book just baffles me

Also the blogs from the missing sister???? cool at first but ultimately ?????

I picked this up in hopes of reading some Halloween month gayness & instead im just like. none of this made sense, these people are all terrible, & the worst ones didn’t even die. boo tomatoes

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