Evil Genius

by Claire Oshetsky

An exuberant novel about a young woman’s quest to carve her own path—even if she needs to step over a few dead bodies along the way

It’s 1974 and San Francisco is full of mystery and menace. Nineteen-year-old Celia Dent keeps telling herself how lucky she is to be married to Drew, a man who says he loves her. But Celia’s contentment with her little life is shattered when a woman she knows is murdered in a love tryst gone awry. What would that be like, Celia wonders, to die—or kill—for love? What would it be like to live each moment passionately and with full knowledge that each breath is bringing her closer to her final breath?

Before Celia knows it her musings about love-and-death happenings are bleeding into daily life. She’s practicing her marksmanship at a local gun range. She's searching for a love tryst of her very own. She's thinking about how good it would feel to bury something sharp inside her domineering husband’s ear. It’s all pretend, though, until the night comes when Celia finally goes too far, and she and Drew are set on a deadly collision course.

Exhilarating, surreal, and bitingly clever, Evil Genius is a comic noir about obsession and desire—and what happens when a sweetly seditious young woman dares to imagine a better life for herself.

Claire Oshetsky is also the author of the novels Poor Deer and Chouette, which was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Adult

240 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication February 17, 2026

About the author

"Listen! I will be honest with you, I do not offer the old smooth prizes..."
- Walt Whitman

I review books here on goodreads as a reader, for the most part, and not as a writer. Come follow or friend me on my reviewer's page. if you like.

I visit this page so infrequently that I won't be accepting friend requests here.

Now and then I'll be leaving reviews on goodreads as "Claire Oshetsky" but only for those books that have influenced me as a writer.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Celia is a nineteen year old telephone operator in 1970’s San Francisco, married to Drew, who is extremely controlling.
Celia becomes quite obsessed about love and death when her coworker is murdered by her own husband in a crime of passion.
Celia starts off as a meek character… putting up with her husband’s angry tirades… and then things change, she becomes empowered by some friends at work.
Lots of action packed situations that Celia becomes involved in.
This is a darkly comic, extremely entertaining and fast read.
Celia is quirky, offbeat, unhinged but lovable.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one as I have this author’s previous novels!
I devoured this one.. highly recommend!

Thank you to Netgalley through Ecco, for the gifted ARC, in exchange for an honest review!

[Claire Oshetsky]

It's July 6 2025 and the first review copies of Evil Genius will be out in 10 days and the story will no longer belong to me.

I'm spending a quiet time today, thinking about why I wrote this novel the way I did. You could say Evil Genius was written in reaction to the melancholy of my last novel, Poor Deer. I'm not sure if Evil Genius a funny novel, exactly, but I had fun writing it. I let the sentences build and grow in ludicrous and weedy ways. If you read the novel then you will eventually get to somebody shouting: The goddamn dog-walker left the doggone dog room door open again! I've told her a hundred times to latch it tight!, and when you do I hope you remember you read it first right here.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A darkly comic, action-packed novel, including questionable decisions, cruel and illegal acts, some convenient coincidences, and shocking consequences. 19-year-old Celia is overcoming trauma, wreaking revenge, and striving for a free, happy, and authentic life.

The opening chapter is titled “The Cliffhanger”, which proved true: I read the whole book in a single sitting. Randall is telling coworkers how Vivienne Bianco was murdered by her husband while he was hiding under the bed. He's cut short before he can finish the story, but it sets Celia thinking about life, death, and murder.
“It’s a strange but true fact that a typical person living in these modern times will cross paths with thirty-six actual, in-the-flesh murderers in their lifetime, along with seventy-seven people who are destined to be murdered.”

It’s a distraction from her dull job in a telephone company billing office in 1974 San Francisco:
“On the third floor of a six-floor building on Fourth Street.”
People call with sob stories to excuse late payment, usually in vain. The staff “rip their lips” (cut their telephone contract) with relish, and joke about heavy-breathers who also call.


Image: Cut off: an old-fashioned landline handset, with a severed cord: freedom, or tragedy in waiting?

Celia never knew her father, her mother died recently after paranoia and mental health problems, and she is newly married:
“My Drew never once hit me.”
But he does push, demean, control, and gaslight her.

In her reverie, she plays with counterfactual versions of who was manipulating who in the unfinished story, and wonders what it would be like to murder someone. She wants to know more about Randall and Vivienne, so she starts socialising more with coworkers. One thing leads to another…

Nothing in the narrative is wasted, and it’s great fun, but with plenty of depth as well.

Note I read an uncorrected proof; the final publication may differ slightly.

See also

• This is lighter, and in some ways more realistic, than Oshetsky’s other two novels, though quirkiness and a love of birds and animals is common to all. See my reviews:
• Chouette, 4*, HERE.
• Poor Deer, 5*, HERE.

• For a different take on dull office life, see Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, which I reviewed HERE.

• The thrill, sometimes sexual, of thinking about and seeing sudden death reminded me of JG Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition, which I reviewed HERE, and his Crash, which I’ve not read.

• Reading this, I recalled the (fictitious) conundrum of whether Ronald Opus’s death was murder or suicide. See HERE.

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talk about a wild ride! This is Oshetsky's best work yet.

Would leap to recommend this to fans of Motherthing by Ainslee Hogarth and/or The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff.

📝 Thoughts & Observations Log below (spoiler free) 👇

PART 1 - THE CLIFFHANGER

Already loving this book's wry humor. And as protagonist's go, Celia is a riot (a dark and twisted, strange and amusing riot).

Page 12 just sold me on this book. I'm laughing so hard! 🤣

PART 2 - A DROP OF WINE

I love when an author drops a few subtle clues that make you suspect something's not right, and then you turn a page and—💥BOOM!💥—your suspicions are confirmed AND things are much worse than you even imagined.

😀 Very curious to see where this is going . . .

PART 3 - ELEVEN MINUTES TO SPARE

Picture me glued to this book because an unhinged character with dangerous thoughts is one thing, but an unhinged character with dangerous thoughts AND A WEAPON is quite another! 🍿🫣

PART 4 - LONG-LEGGED CRABS

I guess Celia is biding her time? Nothing to report for Part 4. 🤷‍♀️

PART 5 - KEEP MOVING THROUGH IT

A subtle shift in tone here as we glimpse Celia's relationship with her mother-in-law and learn more about her past.

I hope we get a few more doses of dark humor in the chapters that follow.

PART 6 - THE SOCK MAN

I can't say whether this part about a man and his sock was funny or uncomfortable. I just know that I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how things would play out. 👨🧦🎤

PART 7 - HELLO, WIFE

Holy hell. 🫢 Every chapter in this part had me grinding my teeth, or gasping aloud, or biting my nails. Good stuff!

PART 8 - SMALL PLASTIC LIVES

I can't make heads or tails of Celia's thinking. One minute she loves her (abusive) husband and imagines herself having children with him, and the next minute she's saying she might want to kill him.

I know she's only 19, was likely groomed, and is accustomed to abuse, but even knowing all that, I'm left scratching my head.

I'm ready for Celia to take drastic action.

PART 9 - LOVE AND DEATH

MY JAW IS ON THE FLOOR! 😮

PART 10 - THE CONFESSION

So many threads of this book are converging in ways I never expected. Brilliant!

PART 11 - LOVE AND LIFE

Okay, I really like the ending overall, but I can't help wishing the final page had done more for me. Nonetheless, this was a great read!

👉Pub date: February 17, 2026.

My deepest gratitude to the kind people at Ecco for sending me an advanced reading copy.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the title to the epigraph by Walt Whitman (which makes hilarious ironic sense once you finish the book) to the last sentence of the Acknowledgements, I love everything about and in this novel. Protagonist Celia Dent with her practical way of negotiating the unnegotiable is somebody I love and understand.

Once again, the structure of this new Claire Oshetsky book is perfection.

The plot! Where to begin. It's a murder story, but every step of the way, I was surprised and could not imagine what would happen next.

This is my third book by Claire Oshetsky and I want to read anything she writes in the future.

[Cortney - Bookworm & Vine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed being in Celia's world and watching her change throughout the story... I would have happily taken another 100 pages and beefed up the story some, but I am so glad I picked it up. 4.25 stars.

[Debbie "DJ" · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author is an amazing storyteller. One of the best I’ve ever read. I can’t believe how they carried me through so much outlandishness and it all seemed perfectly normal. I would follow this author anywhere. Superb!

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Claire Oshetsky consistently views the world from an off-kilter lens. In her first novel, Chouette, she eviscerates society’s failure to accept nonconformity when a woman gives birth to an owl-baby. In her sophomore book, Poor Deer, a young girl is haunted by a cloven-hoofed apparition after she inadvertently causes her four-year-old best friend’s death. And in Evil Genius? She’s at it again when a young wife, stuck in a controlling marriage and a tedious job in the Resident Billing Office at the phone company breaks away from the narrow definitions of acceptable behavior.

We meet Carla Dent when she is just 19 and charged with “ripping the lips” (severing telephone contracts) of customers who are late with their telephone payments. Nothing very exciting happens in the office, so when two colleagues end up having an affair and the husband barges in and kills his wife, Carla is titillated. Particularly since her own husband (“my Drew”), who can’t seem to hold onto a job, expects her home on the dot right after work and always accuses her of being “in a mood.”

In darkly funny scenes, Carla finds herself drawn to some really weird phone customers (like the “Sock Man”), accepting an invitation to meet a narcissist’s new puppy when her train is late (“the goddamn dog-walker left the doggone dog room door open again”), purchasing a little black knife called a dirk, earning the eternal enmity of Mrs. Brisket whose son amassed a fortune in bills calling porn sites, and --- well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun.

Suffice to say, despite the outlandish premise, there’s something endearing about Celia and the book really works. As in Claire Oshetsky’s previous two books, the theme is empowerment, as Celia realizes that “no one gets to be the boss of me.” Thanks to Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, for an early copy in exchange for an honest reiew.

[Stephanie (aka WW) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book by its premise and the glowing reviews this author has received for her earlier books among my friends on Goodreads. I was thrilled by the prospect of reading Claire Oshetsky’s newest work and coming to my own conclusions about her ability to draw readers in. And…I’m happy to report that Evil Genius succeeds on all fronts. It delivers on both characterization and plot. The FMC, Chloe, at just 19 years of age and already stuck in (let’s just call it) a weird marriage, is a wonderfully written character. She’s flawed and deeply human, and I rooted for her at every turn in this unusual, but captivating, novel.

Having enjoyed this book thoroughly, I now plan to go back and read the author’s previous books, Poor Deer and Chouette.

Much thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for providing me with access to the e-ARC of this book for review.

[Kip Kyburz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book both highly unique yet right in line with ouevre of Claire Oshetsky. Consistently hilarious, we follow the story of Celia Dent, our 19-year-old phone company employee in 70's San Francisco, stuck in a fraught marriage and trapped in her circumstances, until she wakes up and decides upon a different path. Evil Genius is plottier than her previous works but gives us every bit of the interiority into our protagonist that we would desire. It has some of the makings of a murder thriller, but I think largely avoids fitting neatly into any certain genre due to a wonderful off-kilterness in how Celia sees the world and her place in it. Another winning book you will devour as quickly as you can.

[michelle ࣪ ִֶָ☾ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 rounded down. I'm glad that a lot of early reviewers seem to have gotten something from this, but it just didn't quite do it for me.

The writing was hit or miss. While generally the narration had it's entertaining moments, and there were a few sections that were quite well done and stuck with me, a lot of it just lacked the same rhythm and felt almost awkward. Some of it just felt like it was trying way too hard to be eccentric. And some of the dialogue, especially from Drew, the fmc's husband, was so bad it just took me out of it.

A few lines at the ending kind of seemed to want me to believe that the fmc was in fact an evil genius, and if that's the case - I do not agree in the slightest. She wasn't an unlikable narrator, I'm a big weird girl fan, but it did feel like there was a lot of build up just for her to not have much involvement in the actual climax of the novel at all.

I feel like this started strong with a good set up, and while I appreciate some of the themes that were driven home here, overall it ended up being a bit disappointing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[Quill (thecriticalreader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky is a feisty, offbeat look into reclamation amidst horrific misogynistic violence.

Evil Genius takes place in 1970s San Francisco and follows Celia, a nineteen-year-old telephone company operator. Celia becomes obsessed with love and death after her coworker is brutally murdered by her husband. Her obsession with the case becomes more understandable when we learn about her own domestic situation: Celia is married to a man named Drew who is, quite frankly, a despicable human being. Celia accepts his highly abusive and controlling behavior as normal and loving, but she begins to question her situation after her coworker’s death sets off an unlikely chain of events.

Evil Genius has a strong central through line of empowerment amidst horrific violence and loss. Celia’s sees the world through a somewhat off-kilter lens. She’s simultaneously shrewd and astonishingly naïve, fragile yet tenacious. Her perspective lends a sense of righteous outrage against the abuse, rape, and assault she endures as a young and vulnerable woman in the 1970s.

Oshetsky’s plot has plenty of clever twists and turns that land Celia in frankly outlandish, but horrifying, situations. Unfortunately, at a certain point it became difficult for me to suspend my disbelief regarding the number of coincidences and violent acts/accidents Celia encounters in a very short period of time. I also found myself a bit emotionally detached from the narrative because of Celia’s unique narration style. However, it was a short, easy, and entertaining read—definitely work checking out (I highly recommend checking trigger warnings beforehand!).

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow - twisted up and then kinda awesome. In Claire Oshetsky’s forthcoming novel we follow Cecilia a 19 year old who works as a phone operator in a telephone billing office and is married to an abusive older man. Many scenes had me grimacing and tensing up (complimentary). I don’t often pick up books that make me feel that way but after I picked this up I truly couldn’t put it down. Oshetsky does a great job describing this absolutely horrible situation and placing us right in Cecilia’s head. I wish this was out right now because although it’s not explicitly horror it did make me feel anxious and scared in the way that you maybe want to feel during the month of October. Look out for Evil Genius out February 2026.

[lola · Rating 4 out of 5]

ottessa vibes with none of her artificial aftertaste. a joy

[ianthereader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe Claire Oshetsky is the true evil genius.

[this_eel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Poor Deer earlier this year and really enjoyed it. Like Poor Deer, Evil Genius is a slippery, brief, bittersweet novel with a dreamlike quality that distances the reader somewhat but barely dilutes the difficult subject matter and suffering, endearing main characters. Evil Genius is about a 19 year old telephone company customer service operator who has married a real POS named Drew. Drew is the worst, and Celia is a lovely girl with odd flights of fancy and a kind of amoral, self-discovering wanderlust. Not that she travels anywhere, but as the book unspools, her sense of self and of the world grows larger. Despite the terrors in her life and the ways in which she is pummeled by the unpleasant forces that act on her, she possesses an internal kernel of unflinching strength that she stubbornly nurtures into a life for herself.

I adore Celia.

I could easily see someone hating the way this book plays out, but I loved that even the climax feels a bit like a dream you wake up from unable to decide if it was pleasurable or nightmarish. I almost forgive them (Claire Oshetsky, the wonderful downer) for the hints about the rest of Celia's life, which are heartwarming and then tragic because that is the nature of living.

This is one of those books where I feel that the title/cover combo is going to give a sense to the reader that is entirely off-base -- looks like you're going to be reading HENCH again, for example -- and I hope very much that the right audience slips past the cover and finds delight in the story Oshetsky has actually written. Which I think is a bit like if How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying was about spousal abuse and you were a little bit high.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a little fever dream of a book. It is a story about Celia Dent, a young wife in the Bay Area married off too soon following her mother's death. She ends up with a scrub tech who is the average nasty 70s American male, 3 steps shy of serial killer but passing as a decent husband. She is regularly abused but confuses that with love because what else is there? Starved for (positive) attention, she starts to daydream about a love tryst that led to a shooting of a coworker while her hatred of her husband begins to surface. She takes risks, drinking and staying out, but also arms herself because she knows how vulnerable she is on some level. Celia's musings and wonderings seem off kilter but also right for a young girl who has not known kindness and still partially lives in the world of fantasy. Despite having no one in her life to help her orient herself, Celia manages to get her life right and gets lucky along the way. Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

[Bridget S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover could have been blank and I would have known right away that this was written by Claire (complementary!)!

More complex themes written in a very unique yet accessible way. Also Drew’s mom, toxic “boy mom” alert!

Highly recommend getting this when it comes out on February 17, so glad I got to read early.

Thanks NetGalley and Ecco for the eARC!

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

This was a ride!!

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Celia Dent, a nineteen-year-old housewife in 1970s San Francisco, decided she wanted more than obedience, stability, and her husband’s version of love. This life she’s settled into has started to feel like a carefully laid crab trap.

She isn’t listlessly daydreaming— she is testing the edges of what’s possible, what’s permissible, what she can get away with.

Claire Oshetsky gives us a narrator who is at once naïve and unsparingly practical. Celia can be reckless, yes, but she’s also shrewd, making choices that are as surprising as they are self-preserving. She knows the stakes and pushes anyway, not out of ignorance but out of a hunger to finally define her own story. That tension, between innocence and sharp calculation, is what makes her such an interesting guide.

The novel thrums with comic noir energy: sly, darkly funny, and charged with the promise of danger. Oshetsky renders Celia’s interior world with a kind of nervy clarity, showing us how quickly curiosity and imagination can shade into obsession, how easily longing can turn into something sharper, riskier— something more alive.

This isn’t a victim’s tale— it’s a portrait of a young woman learning how to take her life back, one perilous step at a time. The novel is brisk, unsettling, and wickedly smart, with a heroine who is turning this into her own coming-of-age story (with a twist).

[Rachel Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Celia Dent is kind of tired of life. Her life. She's got an itch and she's ready to make some big moves.

So when some work drama involving a tryst that leads to uxoricide, she becomes fascinated with the idea of doing something so passionate.

This is a darkly humorous romp, so bizarre that it can only come from a creative and brilliant mind!

Very different from Poor Deer-- it's always exciting to see such diversity with an author. I had the opportunity to hear Claire at a panel and I knew I had to bump Evil Genius to the top of my TBR. Also, living in the Bay Area, it was super neat to be so familiar with the setting of the book.

[victoria marie]

Not yet published • Expected 17 Feb 26

this book has been such a lifeline for me… such a complete kindness & got me back into reading again in some darkness & beyond amazing as a book itself.

I’ll comment more after it’s release, but cannot stop thinking about how lucky we are to live in a world with art that alters & changes & literally saves people for the better… can’t help but compare this experience of getting this book when most needed to this clip of Bill Murray explaining how a painting saved his life: https://youtu.be/8eOIcWB7jSA

if you haven’t yet, I plead with you to get her other two brilliant novels, as soon as possible, & preorder this right away.

[Karli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Celia Dent is a 19 year old women who is married to a great man. What makes Drew so great? Well he puts up with Celia and all her attitude for one thing. Also when he hits her he doesnt hit her too hard. Perfect man. The gaslighting in this book was crazy. Celia is parentless, young and married to a significantly older man. A lot of her musings at times were straight up out of pocket but I loved it. I loved watching her find her own strength and stick up for herself as well.

This is kind of a hard book to describe because it is about abuse and self empowerment/discovery but Celia at times was just kind of nutty. It also has a whole true crime storyline going on with her one of her coworkers, a perverted man on the phone who had lots of socks, and a mother who's grieving and looking for revenge. There was a lot going on and I felt like it was throughly entertaining.
The only thing I didnt like was the ending. Nothing about the last chapter really provoked any feeling from me and I didnt really like the time jump.

Thank you to Netgalley & Ecco for the arc

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that I found difficult to get through because of the controlling and abusive husband, and the way Celia cows to his demands for much of the book. It was the 70s, though, and while I know it's historically accurate the way society devalued women, it's still very difficult for me to immerse myself in such a story. But, voila! I did it!

It's a sympathetic look into the lives of women in urban 1970s America. The old ways of the submissive and subservient wife roll at odds with the feminism of the single women was depicted beautifully and with sensitivity. Even the creeps were treated with sensitivity. Very well done, and not the dark tome I anticipated. There's humor and incredible kindness, an LGBTQ character, and a knife that you know will get action eventually, but the way things play out is still quite shocking.

I think this would make a great book discussion book.

[Krissy (books_and_biceps9155) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poor Celia, she never stood a chance. From being stifled in her sexuality as a child to being in an extremely abusive relationship with a gaslighting man…she couldn’t win.

I loved the way Oshetsky writes. It’s so simple yet razor sharp. She gets her point across in few words and they are powerful. The story is written as if Celia is telling you about her past and it felt like juicy gossip. Its told in eleven parts which I thought was clever.

Celia starts off as a meek, quirky young lady but she grows before our eyes. The twists were well done, and I loved the way this was wrapped up. Thank you to my forever buddy reader @kelseyliftsanddips for reading this with me and introducing me to Oshetsky. Thank you to @eccobooks for my gorgeous copy!

[Melodi | booksandchicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

My third book by Oshetsky and once again I was taken on a wild ride and I was here for it. She writes with such a unique voice and a plot that is indulgent to the reader, I couldn't look away.

As the reader we are in the head of 19 year old Celia Dent. We quickly see how people have always taken advantage of her and she is always the willing and kind person out to help others and apologize for whatever she thinks she may have done wrong. I really liked Celia and was instantly rooting for her against all the people in her life.

It starts off pretty basic and then by the end my mind was reeling. A fun, wild, and short book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for the gifted e-arc of this book.

[Mia ♡]

wow! loved!!! definitely a twistier/darker read than my normal beach read, but i couldn’t put it down!! 🫶loved the twists and turns and slowly learning more about the main character until i was rooting so hard for her. a perfect story of revenge and karma ♥️ also love a novella/shorter read. SO good!

[Sydney Aldrich · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly wasn’t my cup of tea, I’m not sure if I didn’t like the writing style or if it’s just not my genre but it’s also not fair to completely judge because it’s not finished it’s editing yet. It was a very interesting story line but the writing was hard to follow

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book got under my skin in the best way and I can’t wait for its release!