Hot Singles in Your Area

by Jordan Shiveley

A blistering body-horror following two imperfect strangers ensnared by a sinister media powerhouse.

Noah desperately needs a new job that involves less blood and piss than his current one. So, when he spots an ad for a newspaper with ‘No experience preferred’, he puts on his good shirt and marches down to their average-looking office to unknowingly sign his life away.

Malachia is the only human left in the City of Silence and she spends her time wandering its empty, bone-filled streets. Until one day she finds a lone figure hunched over a typewriter, his fingers enmeshed with the keys. Could he be the answer to finding her lost love?

Propelled by their pursuits for rent money and truth, Noah and Malachia are pushed to their limits in this tightly-plotted satire of occupational hazards and conglomerate powers.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Audiobook, Adult, LGBT, Lesbian

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 4, 2025

Reviews

[Gem ~ZeroShelfControl~ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher in return for an honest review. This review is based entirely on my own thoughts and feelings.

Overall rating : 2*
Writing skill : 2*
Noah's story: 3*
Malachia's story: 1*


I normally like a 'weird' book, ones that are completely out of the norm, but this just felt like it was being strange for the sake of it.
Noah's story was intriguing and I could follow it and appreciate what the author was trying to do.
Malachia's story however was just too confusing, I had to re-read some sentences many times and still couldn't process what they meant. There were about 10 pages with one word repeated over the whole page, and I just felt it was unnecessary.
I felt like we didn't need the stories to alternate each chapter, they could have been written as two separate short stories, one after the other. with a combined chapter at the end?! I don't know, maybe I just missed the point.
Disappointed I dint click with this book, as I really wanted to, but it wasn't for me.

[Yvonne (the putrid Shelf) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Christ on a fucking bike ...I couldn't make heads nor tails out of this one. I thought I was getting weird horror but instead I got indecipherable horror. Like I felt that I couldn't quite grasp how the two pov's came together as one. Malacais story felt like a complete drag

[Amber Thurlow · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was on a 80 degree flight that was delayed 2 hours, ran to my gate to miss my connecting flight by 3 minutes and not able to get rebooked for 4 days out and I still enjoyed that experience more than this book.

[Dani B · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was painfully unreadable. I was drawn in by the gorgeous cover and the interesting premise, but the book itself just was not good.

It follows two different characters, Noah and Malachia, every other chapter as they navigate the strange world proposed by the author. Noah seems like a character from our world, drawn in to the strange monster-like building as a salesman because he needed a job. Malachia’s chapters are something else entirely, and make almost zero sense. She doesn’t appear human, she’s some kind of acolyte or something, and there’s something about bones, godlike creatures, and a desire to restore something (?).

This book just did not make any sense. I could tell the author was going for a cheeky tone, making the horror absurd and funny—but it did not come off as funny, just juvenile and ridiculous. None of the descriptions or dialogue felt real or natural, it felt like the author was just trying to say “Ooo this is weird right? This is so weird, fuck, I’m weird ooo”. It felt like a high schooler trying to be creative in english class, trying to come up with a scary story in a time crunch using a thesaurus. The footnotes were pointless, and there were constant references to things that just didn’t work.

I’ll say the only enjoyable part of the book was the actual newspaper sections, particularly the person on the island. Those sections I found genuinely engaging, and the moss reminded me of Annihilation. If the whole novel had that tone / similar story structure, I think it could have been very good! That being said, that one small part did not make the book worth reading. I wouldn’t recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC!

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hot Singles In Your Area by Jordan Shively, Let me start off by saying I understand as an arc reviewer I get an uncorrected advance copy but this is the first time I have read a book and the first few pages were readable and the rest my phone just wouldn’t read it. I tried downloading another copy and it was the same thing. I really got into the beginning of the story with Noah interviewing for the new job, but I’m so disappointed and angry, that right when I was getting into the story, I could no longer read the rest of it. I am blind in almost every book that is available for Kindle is accessible for the blind, except for a rare few, but I have never started a book that was accessible friendly, and then abruptly stopped in the middle of the first chapter in the rest was unreadable by my voiceover. I am so sick of people forgetting that not everyone can see and I will never know how this book ends but due to the fact most gave it a two or one star I really don’t feel like I missed out on anything.

[Horror Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know what to expect going in to this book but it was different than anything I could have thought and that's a very good thing.

This horror/comedy is weird, satirical, and has everything you'd want in horror including tentacle plant ladies, demons, alternate worlds, and other creatures which you just have to read about to grasp their full scope.

Told from two perspectives, one in our world and one in another, they both collide in sometimes goopy and humorous ways. One of our main characters just wanted a job that didn't require him to clean up urine and blood. When he gets hired with no resistance as a salesman for advertising from a newspaper of some kind, he might just wish he didn't apply.

In another existence, our other main character is wondering why the magical and very eccentric city she lives in is empty, leaving her all alone with things she doesn't want to imagine.

These two arcs will come together in this blend of horror and hilarity with a great satirical twisty narrative that can sometimes be puzzling but still very entertaining.

I recommend this novel if you're looking for something weird and oddly different

I received an ARC of this book through Netgalley with no consideration. This review is voluntary and is my own personal opinion.

[Abby · Rating 1 out of 5]

For a novella, this book was still too long. I think the two storylines felt like a hat on a hat and were not successfully tied together. Malachia’s world was strange and much more interesting but still didn’t pay off for me. Also, the use of footnotes to add even more of the annoying main character’s voice and opinions was excessive and felt immature. The entire reading experience was like being stuck in the most annoying boy in the world’s head; I’ll pass.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is just word salad.

It feels like the author listened to a few episodes of Welcome To Nightvale and thought “yeah I could do that” and couldn’t.

[Michelle Graf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Unbound for the ARC.

While I really enjoyed it, I can see how this book can be for a very specific taste. It's untraditional in its physical format; while alternating between two main characters in drastically different worlds, it also uses images of an advertising section of a strange newspaper, and later, there's chapters that repeat and surround the narrative -literally- in darkness, just the word darkness. I think I get the story, and I like the use of body horror in a satire on capitalism and bureaucracy. Noah's side of the story is relatable, having done the janitorial work before, and gone through that desperate job search for something margianlly better. As bizarre and nonsensical as Malachia's world is, there is a sense of logic to it that I loved digging into. I kinda wish it were a bit longer, specifically with the ending. It feels like it ended when the plot was about 75% through, and then implied the rest of the adventure in the three corporate letters discussing the main characters. I'm not entirely clear on what happened, and it would have been more satisfying to continue reading it from their perspective. If you don't mind the abstract formatting, I'd definitely recommend this one.

[G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was drawn in by the cover and the description, however I found this book incredibly hard to follow. I’ve struggled to finish this, a book with less than 200 pages that felt much longer than it was.

I couldn’t quite get into the story, Noah’s chapters were a lot easier to follow where for Malachia’s ones I really struggled to picture what I was reading, maybe if this had been a longer book with more room for description it would have been easy to follow. Also, I don’t really get the footnotes so much so that I stopped reading them altogether. The formatting of the darkness chapters also made them pretty hard to read.

Maybe I just didn’t understand it, I may re-read it at a later date and see if I change my mind but ultimately, I don’t think this book was for me.

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fever dream. I’ve just stepped out of a fever dream.

This is my favourite kind of book. I love feeling 17 emotions at once and not knowing which one compels me most.

Jordan Shiveley has managed to create a completely unhinged and unrealistic world that was entirely relatable.

I’ll leave this review with one of my favourite lines “What the fuck had happened? He let out a long groan as images of… Had he deep throated a mouth-demon dick? Talk about your high-school fanfics that you never thought would get onto and off of your bucket list in the same day.”

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC, I can’t wait to add this to my collection.

[Geertje · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has quite a low average rating, and though I am baffled by some of the reasons why people have rated it so low - God forbid a weird book is actually weird - I do understand that this won't be everyone's cup of tea. Personally, I didn't think it was that weird, and whatever weirdness was there, I thoroughly enjoyed. The fact I am not rating it higher is because it feels like only half a story; where's the rest? What will happen to Noah and Malachia now?

The reason I am not rating it lower is because 1) when this book is good, it is really very good, and 2) that lesbian skeleton sex scene was wonderful and definitely worth an extra star.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me about 75% of the book to figure out what the hell was going on - but I get it now.

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley and Jordan for the ARC - once I put all the pieces together in my brain, I really genuinely enjoyed this book.

Hot Singles in Your Area is not going to be for everyone, in fact, it won't be for most people, however if you are a fan of Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn't Dead, The Left Right Game, and even the Magnus Archives.... this bizarre and delightful parallel story of Noah and Malachia is full of grotesque body horror (the image of the type writer is forever going to make me uncomfortable), a hilarious omnipresent narrator who provides footnotes, and some of the most creative world building I've read in a long time.

Thoroughly enjoyed this one!

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly relatable read. I, too, would labor over a typewriter, ichor seeping from my fingers into the keys grotesquely attached while a bone-handed acolyte hovers over me inquisitively, for good employment benefits.

I too, would date a minor diety, engaging in ossomancy, and growing the darkness under my bones.

I too, know that the real thing that connects us all, human, bone-god, or Svenn, is the love of a good sandwich.

My inner meat is also sometimes burdensome.

I certainly have moss under my fingernails.

I really enjoyed my time in this world, where everything was new and grotesque and familiar and mundane at the same time.

[Ayan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was weird, and I really like that about it.

Firstly, while I really enjoyed the mixed media aspect of this book with the newspaper ads, I felt like they were a bit disjointed being placed in the middle of two chapters. I feel like I need to re-read those portions to try and see how they fit in with the storyline. Disregarding that I really enjoyed the adverts that were eerie on their own.

Secondly, I liked that the author did not skimp on the body horror aspects of the book and how the satirical portions of the book did not feel disjointed.

[Jamie Brandenburg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very confusing and was not a fan of the writing.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea what was happening but I had a great time.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Hot singles in your area, holding dark offerings beneath unquiet waters, letting their cants drift down to what sleeps in the depths, raising their darkly shining eyes to the rising huntress mother in anticipation of what is rising up to meet them. xoxox."

Hot Singles in Your Area belongs to a hyper-specific sub-genre of horror, it sits amongst those artistic, fever-dream like books that are hallucinatory, fluid, and, somehow, seem to make less sense the more you read on. It is an ethereal and strange thing, a book that plunges its readers deep into a sickening and unhinged void of a world, and then, rather than offer up any clues to assist it's poor, disoriented audience, they're left with nothing, entirely alone and frightened. Despite this, perhaps the weirdest thing about this novel is how completely rooted in the human experience it feels, it's somehow at once both unrealistic to any life in the history of the universe and entirely too relatable. It is a savage thing, there's really no other word for it.

This novel might exist to just to make us all feel a little stupid, and that's actually, surprisingly okay, it's a magical thing to be able to be this lost within a story. There's something so sad and so very lonely about Hot Singles in Your Area, it feels so... Isolating, like you've been dosed up on acid against your will, and then forced to wonder a deserted apartment complex in the dead of night, except, the stairs, they never end, you keep climbing and climbing, in the dark, alone, never quite reaching salvation. This thing is freakish and confusing in a way that feels purposeful, it's absolutely by design that we're not meant to understand anything here.

"Janitorial work was usually his shit: work nights, listen to podcasts, get your work done way faster than your shift and all the rest was gravy. But this janitorial job at the bus station on the way out of town... was less than ideal. He had had to mop up a pool of blood and teeth once, blood and fucking teeth. Human teeth, probably. Just in a pool with no one around to explain why they were there. Although thinking about it, that was probably the best-case scenario."

Hot Singles in Your Area is a highly evocative horror novel, it's so packed full of grotesque, sickening imagery, it's so dense, that, it's impossible to focus on anything else, it demands your full attention, and it will get it. Despite how vivid the writing is, Hot Singles in Your Area is an indescribable beast of a novel. This may just be one of the most creative horror novels out there right now, but it's not for everyone, you'll either love this thing with your entire being or hate it with a fiery passion you never felt possible, that entirely depends on if you enjoy being left bewildered and confused by your horror stories. An utterly beautiful monster, a barren wasteland to lose yourself in, if you make it back from this one, you may never be the same.

"Have you seen me? Reward offered for seeing me. Have you? I have seen you. Yes, YOU. Such tears and wailing you would think you had caught at least a glimpse of me. HAVE YOU?"

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Initially, the first few pages had me thinking, "This novella will be making best-of lists in 2025," but as the story progressed, I found myself losing interest. The fragmented chapters left me craving more depth and exploration.

This novella had immense potential, but it raced through the story so quickly that it became challenging for me to immerse myself in the plot or care about the characters. The lack of character development made it difficult to connect with the characters, especially in the chapters following Malachia.

While I did appreciate certain elements—like the newspaper sections and their recurring mentions of teeth—other parts, like the footnotes, felt unfinished, and I struggled to grasp the intentions behind them, a feeling that grew stronger as the footnotes nearly vanished as the story progressed.

Novellas like these are tricky. There's certainly a niche audience out there who will appreciate the abstract horror and mixed media approach, but I'm not, and I found this confusing and unsatisfying.

I love a strange plot, but at times, this felt like it was “being weird for the sake of being weird.” For me to enjoy it more, I would have needed a bit more substance behind the weirdness.

Thank you to Unbound for providing this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel truly lost.. (but in a good way?) Like a shorter House of Leaves but I can't pin point what actually happened. I just know I read it... didn't I?

[Tanya · Rating 1 out of 5]

I definitely got drawn into this one by the cover and the promise of body horror. However, I just could not get into this story.

I found Noah's chapters slightly easier to follow than Malachia but really didn't have a clue what was going on for the majority and decided to give up about halfway into the book.

I didn't like the use of footnotes and they didn't add any clarity to the story. I liked the use of mixed media however they do not translate well on an e-reader and I had to look at those pages on my phone (in the NetGalley app) to understand what was going on there.

Thankyou NetGalley & Unbound for the ARC!

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was in a word, nonsense. Two stars only because it seemed like it could have been interesting? Like there's something here for sure but I don't know what. I don't mind a book that just drops you in instead of world building, but only if it serves to have a plot move quicker. But there was no plot, other than (maybe?) reaching the start of the events at the end of the book. I also had to read this on the NetGalley app bc the formatting on kindle made the book illegible.

It says the author runs a Twitter account and maybe if you're familiar with that this book makes more sense.
Thanks NetGalley for the copy

[Raistlyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoyed the newspaper pages; those were interesting if a little repetitive. I genuinely could not tell you what happened at the end. Just when I started to get a grasp on what was even happening in this book, it was over, with no indication of really what had happened or why. The last three pages are office memos that were incredibly hard to read on my Kindle because the text was meant to be like a typewriter except it was low on ink and the letters were only half-formed. This could’ve been a really cool book; unfortunately, the execution just didn’t work for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Unbound for the ARC.

[Shandi York · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, this one just didn’t work for me. Initially I wanted to read it based on the title and cover - I go into most books without reading the synopsis - but this one was so hard for me to really get into and it didn’t make much sense to me. We have two very different characters, one being more fantasy/sci-fi like, the other seeming to be just a regular human and it felt like such a disconnect. It’s a short one, but because it just didn’t flow well for me I found myself taking breaks from it. I will give the author another try in the future though. Thanks to Unbound for my eARC.

[melissareadshorror · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Unbound for an ARC of Hot Singles in Your Area by Jordan Shiveley.

Rating: 5/5

Spectacular Book. I absolutely loved it. This smart and unique blend of fantasy and horror is one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had this year. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before. If you’re a fan of films like Sorry to Bother You and Beetlejuice, you’re going to want this one!

[Jessica Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look, idk. This book was a literal fever dream but sometimes you need that. The writing was truly something unique. Not only did I really vibe with the writing but it was also funny. I do not like teeth and this has a bit more of that than I love but this story was so uniquely fun I don’t even care. I love a good weird book for weird people. I don’t get the negativity on this book, it’s written for a specific group of people.

[Branco Rood · Rating 1 out of 5]

While the title promises jokes and wacky goofy horror (given that this is a horror novel, or comedy-horror-ish, I guess, supposedly), Hot Singles in Your Area simply ends up feeling unfinished, poorly thought out, and above all not funny in the least. Okay, maybe I laughed once at the very beginning, but Shiveley's jokes get old quick. Not just that, he describes too much, without ever seeming to arrive at even the intimation of a point. This is, I think, best illustrated by the fact that he overuses phrases such as "what must once have resembled..." and "what appeared to be..." to describe objects and their properties in the two main characters' surroundings. And then he just straight-up catalogues those surroundings, and it's not relevant ever, because all both characters seem to know to do is respond to anything puzzling or scary with such original remarks as "umm... well fuck me, I guess" or they think to themselves something along the lines of "well, the old me, the one before all of this weird shit starting happening, would have been fazed by this, but this is just the new normal I guess, definitely nothing weird about a giant tentacle monster living in an apartment." The whole thing reads like an r/NoSleep thread, except that I've most definitely read more entertaining and scarier stuff on there, stuff that's also not written in this annoying 2010s internet lingo or whatever the fuck Shiveley's going for (it's unclear). And then both Noah and Malachia, the two main characters, are revealed to be gay way way into the novel beyond the point of being remotely interesting, followed by these really weird separate sex scenes which I won't go into detail describing except that Malachia gets fingered by her skeleton girlfriend (as in boned, get it?! She gets boned by her girlfriend is probably what Shiveley was going for with that one, though he never explicitly makes that joke, truly a terrible writer). And then, guess what happens, you have three guesses, take a moment... Okay, so what happens is the two plotlines intersect, Noah and Malachia finally meet, and that. is. where. it. fucking. ends. The journey Malachia was just setting out on doesn't even take place in the novel. She just finds a new companion in Noah (the friend she made along the way or something like that). So, what? Am I supposed to be invested enough to buy a potential sequel to this garbage glorified monster fanfic? What was the point of even writing this already too long, aimless, inconsistent... whatever it's supposed to be.

Because all of this was just me spewing my thoughts in one go, I forgot to say something about the book's formal experimentation, but even that's just kinda there without purpose and used very inconsistently throughout, so it should suffice to say that this is also not a redeeming factor for the book. All in all, what did I think of it? Maybe two chapters that were sort of okay buried in there somewhere. Would I recommend this book to anybody? No, just go to Reddit, they have better-written, funnier, and scarier stuff over there, which actually says a lot more about Shiveley's writing style than I already have in this review.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been following Jordan "@DreadSingles" on Twitter and now Bluesky for ages, so I figured why not try a book from the author of such banger tweets as HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, TEETH FILED INTO HUNGRY POINTS, DONNING WRITHING VESTAMENTS OF WHISPERING DARK, PRE-ORDERING THE FRESH NEW APOCALYPSE.

Well, turns out there's a long way between a banger tweet and a book. Hot Singles is weird fiction following two characters. Noah is some guy, started a new job with a newspaper called Printed Matter that publishes personals like the one above. His orientation involves a blood draw and watching a VHS of a red orb that erases your memory. It beats mopping up blood and teeth in a bus station bathroom. Maybe.

Malachia is a bone nun in an empty city called Silence, once ruled by nine Great Powers, but now practically empty. Her daily rituals and search for a lost lover take her to the Corpse Oak, which sends her on a mission to return the Great Powers who are overdue.

And that's about it. There are lots of weird little scenes, juxtaposing rotting mundane places like offices and apartment complexes with the teeth strew weirdness of Silence. But the overall impression is just so-so, more funny than horrifying (except for one bit, a kiss). And while I don't need rigorous worldbuilding, there's an utter carelessness towards Silence, Great Powers, and bone nuns. Like, we're supposed to recognize all these things as uncanny signifiers of hidden world who's truths would break our fragile human sanity, but it's just a bricolage of body horror.

[Angel · Rating 1 out of 5]

It read like it was written by a manic pixie dream boy who made Welcome to Nightvale his entire personality.

Cons:

- Written entirely in simile. For example, “She rotated in place like a tired door on rusty hinges,” “She hissed through her ground teeth like dark rainwater surging through a sluice grate,” and “It popped like the lid from a jar of spoiled preserves where the seal had finally corroded so much that it could no longer hold in the rampant bacteria that now coated what had once been the summer’s treasure of tomatoes.’
- Thesaurus was definitely used
- Footnotes that added nothing. Only took the reader out of the story.
- The most I’ve ever read about carpets
- The word anemone was mentioned way more than necessary for a book that had nothing to do with the sea or a sea creature
- Annoyingly long sentences. I counted and one was 64 words long.
- Completely nonsensical in parts. Had to reread a lot of the world building elements.
- Too much emphasis placed on the wrong plot points.

Pros/Cons:

- Interesting page layouts, but hard to read via ebook
- Plot found ground the last two chapters. Actually made me want to read more of the story
- The stories in the Printed Matter elements were worth reading, but I thought they were going to come into play at some point and they didn’t. Maybe in a future book.

[Shannon at Siren Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Unbound Publishing for this ARC via NetGalley! This book is amazing! If you love House of Leaves, Rouge or Bunny by Mona Awad, or the Ong’s Hat Conspiracy/alternate reality, this book is definitely for you.

Our main character takes a job, which quickly becomes consuming and confusing. Read the ad work he does on the actual ads and how he navigates this new unreality.

I had a fabulous time reading this! Especially as a reader of the above. If you haven’t dipped your toes in the above works I would still recommend it as a great gateway into the alt fiction world.

If linear storytelling with clean lines and strictly text, set in reality, is the only thing you like or want to like, you’ll find this frustrating. I encourage all readers to engage with the content and have fun with the unknown and mysterious! That’s the fun of reading right? It’s made up. It’s fiction. Or is it?

Really great! I cannot wait for you all to read this! Longer preview to be published on the Siren Books website.




Note: The length of time reading reflects personal commitments that got in the way, not difficultly of material.