A review by pageglue
Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

dark funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I fucking loved this book! It’s a female-led horror-comedy that crosses a ‘Bachelor’ style reality show with a big foot story. It’s wild, and it was done SO well. I laughed a lot, but there were still a couple of scenes that were pretty disturbing. 

Like Alison Cochrun’s The Charm Offensive, this book criticises Bachelor-style reality shows and exposes how manipulative they are of the participants and viewers, but this book stood out to me because of the dignity it gave to the female contestants. They played the role of bitchy, jealous Bachelor contestants when the cameras were rolling, but their internal worlds and the conversations they were having off-screen showed they had a lot of depth and had much grander aspirations than just finding a man. I also really enjoyed the setting of a fictional town in Alaska that was home to a long-standing (largely female) queer community. It was very emblematic of the tension that exists for queer people between secrecy and privacy, and the various motivations behind each.

I highly recommend this smart, fun, strange book!