Review by Booklist Review
Higgins' captivating debut is a disturbing, intimate look at the mind of a young woman struggling mightily to maintain a semblance of normalcy. Helen is an attorney leaning into self-harm ever since her parents were convicted of extreme neglect of Helen's grandmother. Now Helen suspects that they may have had something to do with her little brother's death years before. Her only kindness comes from her fans, for whom she livestreams her feet. Then she meets "the wives," Catherine and Katrina. Helen, unsure whether Catherine and Katrina would "know how to play my games"--which mostly consist of Helen wanting to be hurt or perceived as sick alternating with receiving care and comfort--tries to remain aloof. It soon becomes clear that the wives are extremely perceptive and more than willing to play Helen's games, especially when it comes to sex. Soon enough, their entanglement becomes emotional, and the wives are able to pull Helen into her truths. By turns heart-wrenching, upsetting, and racy, this is a unique take on trauma and broken relationships.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Higgins's striking and visceral debut, a 30-something woman copes with her childhood trauma by nursing a cough syrup addiction and fostering a masochistic relationship with a lesbian couple. Boston attorney Helen pursues serious Catherine and sensitive Katrina, a married couple she met online, hoping for love and acceptance and for them to "mother me meanly." Woven into the narrative are shards of Helen's fractured family history. Her parents are in prison for elder abuse of Helen's grandmother, having neglected her while she was in their care, and over the course of phone calls with her father, Helen begins to suspect that her parents may have been responsible for the death of her younger brother, Ryan, when they were children. She remembers being left alone with him for long stretches, the house being unheated in the winter, and Ryan getting sick. After some prodding, her father offers to provide more details in exchange for a character statement supporting his early release. Higgins expertly captures the longing and self-loathing that drive Helen's masochism: "Catherine tsked me and I thought I would be happy to hear that disappointment frequently." The results are as captivating as they are disturbing. Agent: Katie Grimm, Don Congdon Assoc. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A troubled woman, haunted by the abuses of her past, attempts to build a future that includes both punishment and forgiveness. Helen is in her 30s, working as a low-level attorney in Boston; she often uses the office as a set for her side project running "a private social media account where [she] stream[s her] feet for women." While the foot-fetishist camming site does occasionally lead to in-person meetups, at the novel's opening Helen is in the market for a longer-term arrangement with Catherine and Katrina--or "the wives"--a married couple she met through an app dedicated to erotic role-play. Helen requests that the wives "mother [her] meanly," and the symbiotic interplay they create among control, nurture, sexual pleasure, and pleasurable sexual pain fulfills the needs of all three partners. In many ways this seems like an ideal situation for Helen, whose online activities may be revealed to a decidedly un-kink-friendly IT department at work, but Helen's past trauma reflects on every part of her present life, including her ability to envision the future. While Helen was in college, her parents were convicted and jailed in a horrific case of elder abuse that left her grandmother near death. Helen visits her grandmother in the nursing home regularly, but she's also in contact with her father, who wants her to be a character witness to help him get parole. Torn between the desires to punish and please her father, Helen's self-destructive tendencies threaten to destabilize every relationship she has built, including the one she has established with herself. Helen and the wives are compelling characters whose desires--even at their most macabre--stem from relatable places. However, while the book as a whole creates a moving portrait of Helen's suffering and the potential for healing she finds in the "warm cruelty" of her chosen family, the overly technical depictions of the novel's many sexual encounters strip away a sense of authentic passion. The result is a stilted distance in the very scenes where the prose should rise to a fever pitch, robbing them of their power. Full of desire but somewhat lacking in passion. Nevertheless, a provocative read. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
