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Sagebrush Baby
Violet’s real life sucks.
While her golden-boy brother collects milestones like trophies—We bought a house! We got married! We’re expecting!—Violet is stuck.
Stuck working at Dollar General.
Stuck in a single-wide trailer with her vodka-soaked mother.
And stuck with a boyfriend who refuses to have children…with her.
To escape, Violet becomes someone else. Online, she’s DreamsWilted1: a tragic yet noble mother of two autistic children, dishing out grim warnings about the horrors of marriage and motherhood to a small internet audience.
It’s all a lie, of course. But for once, Violet is seen.
So when a new man moves into her dead-end town, she sees an opportunity to bring her wilted dreams to life. She becomes pregnant. And this time, she goes viral. Suddenly, she’s no longer faking a story, she’s living it.
But when the past catches up—and one of her followers gets too close to the truth—Violet is forced to do the unthinkable to keep her story alive.
While her golden-boy brother collects milestones like trophies—We bought a house! We got married! We’re expecting!—Violet is stuck.
Stuck working at Dollar General.
Stuck in a single-wide trailer with her vodka-soaked mother.
And stuck with a boyfriend who refuses to have children…with her.
To escape, Violet becomes someone else. Online, she’s DreamsWilted1: a tragic yet noble mother of two autistic children, dishing out grim warnings about the horrors of marriage and motherhood to a small internet audience.
It’s all a lie, of course. But for once, Violet is seen.
So when a new man moves into her dead-end town, she sees an opportunity to bring her wilted dreams to life. She becomes pregnant. And this time, she goes viral. Suddenly, she’s no longer faking a story, she’s living it.
But when the past catches up—and one of her followers gets too close to the truth—Violet is forced to do the unthinkable to keep her story alive.
- GenresFiction
313 pages, Paperback
Published July 29, 2025
About the author
Leah Campbell
3 books12 followersLeah Campbell is an author specializing in romance and general fiction. During the day, she works as a Product Director at a tech company. In her free time, she enjoys writing, whether works of fiction or blogs about technology and product management. She also considers herself an avid fiber artist and obsessive lover of all things romance and horror. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, two dogs, and cat.
She is the author of two romance novels, My Boyfriend Satan and Another Mourning Support Group.
She is the author of two romance novels, My Boyfriend Satan and Another Mourning Support Group.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
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May 20, 2025This one came from deep in my heart, molded from my fears and toxic thoughts and insecurities. I loved writing it and I sure hope you love reading it. This one is for my desert queens and kings in Reno, Carson Valley, and, of course, little ol' Washoe Valley.
September 18, 2025
Sagebrush Baby is a dark, gripping look at the twisted side of parenthood, and how social media messes with our sense of self. The main character is a narcissistic psychopath, and watching her unravel is both disturbing and hard to put down. The book does an amazing job of showing how disconnected people can get from each other (and themselves) in today’s world. It’s intense, thought-provoking, and stays with you long after finishing. Definitely worth reading if you’re into stories that explore the messier sides of human nature!
March 13, 2026
what. the fuck.
June 11, 2026
What in the actual F did I just read?! I have read some unhinged characters in my day, but Violet may take the damn cake, or in her case, sage.
Set in a trailer park in the middle of Nevada desert (which is unique in and of itself) we get to meet quite a range of bizarre, self-centered and narcissistic characters. This novel has every trigger warning known to man. So please look them up!
Violet made me angry and disgusted. We see a very dark look at social media, influencing, the desire for attention AND parenting. Campbell does not shy away from the ugly and it is pretty brutal. I don’t know why I haven’t seen this around more since we seem to be in an era of female rage and delusion.
Set in a trailer park in the middle of Nevada desert (which is unique in and of itself) we get to meet quite a range of bizarre, self-centered and narcissistic characters. This novel has every trigger warning known to man. So please look them up!
Violet made me angry and disgusted. We see a very dark look at social media, influencing, the desire for attention AND parenting. Campbell does not shy away from the ugly and it is pretty brutal. I don’t know why I haven’t seen this around more since we seem to be in an era of female rage and delusion.
June 8, 2026
I don’t know how to rate this one. I’m so angry with this book. Not at the writing, but the story. The characters. The outcome. Every character was hateable. Fuck Violet. Fuck Mother. But most of all, fuck Violet. Psychotic b****. This triggered me and I don’t even want children. I’m so disgusted by this book. Ugh.
March 17, 2026
Ummmm what? No trigger warnings? Intense stuff
January 24, 2026
I started this book today… and finished it today… because it’s just that addicting.
Set in the Nevada desert with unlikable, but dynamic and self-centered characters, it feels a bit like Napoleon Dynamite meets weird girl lit. (With a large helping of witty and visceral humor.)
I started off feeling bad for FMC, Violet; wishing “red flag guy” would pop out of the bushes to wave it at her long term boyfiend…I mean boyfriend.
I love the way conversations, encounters, and “romance” are written.
But, oh my goddess, as far as character arcs go, I now loathe Violet!!!
This is a self-published gem of totally f*ck%d up weird girl lit. I am so glad I bought this and it deserves to be read.
Set in the Nevada desert with unlikable, but dynamic and self-centered characters, it feels a bit like Napoleon Dynamite meets weird girl lit. (With a large helping of witty and visceral humor.)
I started off feeling bad for FMC, Violet; wishing “red flag guy” would pop out of the bushes to wave it at her long term boyfiend…I mean boyfriend.
I love the way conversations, encounters, and “romance” are written.
But, oh my goddess, as far as character arcs go, I now loathe Violet!!!
This is a self-published gem of totally f*ck%d up weird girl lit. I am so glad I bought this and it deserves to be read.
June 6, 2026
what a book to get me out of my reading slump!! i will always love delusional women and unfortunately violet is now top of the list. this made me miss reno in the most diabolical way. so many lenses to read through between social media brain rot, performative motherhood, peaking in high school, food deserts in low incomes (dollar general groceries whew), you name it.
fucked up, well written, delusional, bad bitch, 10/10 for all of it
fucked up, well written, delusional, bad bitch, 10/10 for all of it
May 7, 2026
It's sagebrush, baby.
Goddamn. I feel like I need to see a therapist after spending so much time in Violet's brain via this book.
Incredible work by the author! Can't wait to read anything and everything she writes!
Goddamn. I feel like I need to see a therapist after spending so much time in Violet's brain via this book.
Incredible work by the author! Can't wait to read anything and everything she writes!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 19, 2026
I’ll echo other reviews… what. the. fuck.
This was super dark, even for me.
Don’t believe what you see on social media.
This was super dark, even for me.
Don’t believe what you see on social media.
September 22, 2025
Sagebrush Baby is a must read. There a twists and turns you don’t see coming with complex characters and an unhinged plot. I highly recommend this book- Leah’s way of story telling is one that draws you in and keeps your attention. Read Sagebrush Baby!!!
April 4, 2026
Please don’t read this if you have a child, especially a baby. This was really triggering and made me stick to my stomach. Really well written, just so so dark.
June 29, 2026
Three stars feels almost too generous and yet strangely appropriate for Sagebrush Baby — a novel that is, without question, technically accomplished, and yet leaves you feeling as though you've wandered into someone's fever dream without a map or any particular reason to care about anyone trapped inside it.
Leah Campbell writes with spare, assured confidence. Her prose carries a deliberate grit befitting a story set against the bleached, indifferent landscape of the Nevada desert. There is real craft here, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But craft in service of what, exactly? That is where this novel begins to unravel.
Violet is, by design, a profoundly disturbed protagonist. She constructs an entire fabricated identity online — complete with fictional children she portrays as autistic — as a form of emotional currency, a means of being seen in a life that affords her almost none. This is where Campbell's premise is at its most genuinely unsettling, and for a stretch, there is something compulsively readable about watching Violet inhabit her own elaborate lie. But Campbell populates her novel with a cast so uniformly awful — so thoroughly stripped of even a faint redeeming quality — that the reading experience becomes less a study in human darkness and more an endurance test. Unlikeable characters are not themselves the problem. Literature is full of them, and we are better for it. The problem arises when every character exists on the same flat plane of awfulness, where no one's choices carry moral weight because no one has any moral ground to stand on. When everyone is equally terrible, no one is particularly interesting.
Vinnie's absence of grief following River's death is perhaps the novel's most jarring miscalculation. Whether intended as a commentary on emotional vacancy or simply a failure of characterization, it reads as hollow. It was a moment that should crack the narrative open with consequence and instead falls entirely silent. We knew he was an asshole but we still should have seen SOME kind of reaction from the deadbeat dad himself.
And then there is the ending. Violet consuming sagebrush appears to be Campbell reaching for something feral and symbolic — a woman dissolving back into the desert landscape that formed her. What it communicates instead is confusion bordering on alienation. If the image is meant to signal complete psychological disintegration, it requires far more narrative scaffolding than the novel bothers to construct. More troubling still is the question the book never satisfyingly answers: why did Violet genuinely want a child? Not in performance, not for the algorithm — but at her core. The novel gestures toward the answer without ever committing to one, which is perhaps its most damning quality.
What rescues Sagebrush Baby from a lower rating is the very thing that makes it so difficult to simply dismiss — Campbell can write. The sentences hold. The atmosphere is viscerally rendered. The premise, however repellent in execution, is genuinely original. But originality without emotional coherence is ultimately just noise, and for all its shock and dark audacity, this novel produces a considerable amount of it.
Leah Campbell writes with spare, assured confidence. Her prose carries a deliberate grit befitting a story set against the bleached, indifferent landscape of the Nevada desert. There is real craft here, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But craft in service of what, exactly? That is where this novel begins to unravel.
Violet is, by design, a profoundly disturbed protagonist. She constructs an entire fabricated identity online — complete with fictional children she portrays as autistic — as a form of emotional currency, a means of being seen in a life that affords her almost none. This is where Campbell's premise is at its most genuinely unsettling, and for a stretch, there is something compulsively readable about watching Violet inhabit her own elaborate lie. But Campbell populates her novel with a cast so uniformly awful — so thoroughly stripped of even a faint redeeming quality — that the reading experience becomes less a study in human darkness and more an endurance test. Unlikeable characters are not themselves the problem. Literature is full of them, and we are better for it. The problem arises when every character exists on the same flat plane of awfulness, where no one's choices carry moral weight because no one has any moral ground to stand on. When everyone is equally terrible, no one is particularly interesting.
Vinnie's absence of grief following River's death is perhaps the novel's most jarring miscalculation. Whether intended as a commentary on emotional vacancy or simply a failure of characterization, it reads as hollow. It was a moment that should crack the narrative open with consequence and instead falls entirely silent. We knew he was an asshole but we still should have seen SOME kind of reaction from the deadbeat dad himself.
And then there is the ending. Violet consuming sagebrush appears to be Campbell reaching for something feral and symbolic — a woman dissolving back into the desert landscape that formed her. What it communicates instead is confusion bordering on alienation. If the image is meant to signal complete psychological disintegration, it requires far more narrative scaffolding than the novel bothers to construct. More troubling still is the question the book never satisfyingly answers: why did Violet genuinely want a child? Not in performance, not for the algorithm — but at her core. The novel gestures toward the answer without ever committing to one, which is perhaps its most damning quality.
What rescues Sagebrush Baby from a lower rating is the very thing that makes it so difficult to simply dismiss — Campbell can write. The sentences hold. The atmosphere is viscerally rendered. The premise, however repellent in execution, is genuinely original. But originality without emotional coherence is ultimately just noise, and for all its shock and dark audacity, this novel produces a considerable amount of it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 21, 2026
I umm… I don’t know what I just read. The main character in this book was horrific. And it had me so twisted up inside because I initially felt bad for her and just couldn’t grapple with it all.
This has to be one of the most unhinged female main characters that I’ve ever read. It’s set in a trailer park in a tiny town in the desert, and there are really just no options in life for Violet or anyone. Every single character is despicable in their own way, but I really struggled hard because part of it was a product of generational circumstances and trauma, but at some point that stops being an excuse for Violet’s behavior.
Just be sure to check the trigger warnings because this one is bad.
This has to be one of the most unhinged female main characters that I’ve ever read. It’s set in a trailer park in a tiny town in the desert, and there are really just no options in life for Violet or anyone. Every single character is despicable in their own way, but I really struggled hard because part of it was a product of generational circumstances and trauma, but at some point that stops being an excuse for Violet’s behavior.
Just be sure to check the trigger warnings because this one is bad.
March 27, 2026
A total 'what the fuck did I just read'.
Every character is behaving badly. Doing their best in terrible ways. Violet is a stressful character to follow, and her spiral was painful to endure. These are all compliments. I enjoy unhinged characters, and still, I don't know that I'll ever be able to coherently describe what this book did to me.
Be mindful of your trigger warnings!
Every character is behaving badly. Doing their best in terrible ways. Violet is a stressful character to follow, and her spiral was painful to endure. These are all compliments. I enjoy unhinged characters, and still, I don't know that I'll ever be able to coherently describe what this book did to me.
Be mindful of your trigger warnings!
September 19, 2025
rough stuff
March 18, 2026
I loved this book but also am incredibly angry at this book lol. like.. WHY? Violet needs serious therapy and this truly makes me glad I experience zero desire to have a baby.
Did Not Finish
April 10, 2026I really enjoyed what I read of this book (just under 50%). I just had some life things come up and fell off before finishing it. I hope to go back to it at some point.
April 11, 2026
this was so insane i don't even have the words just check trigger warnings for sure
June 17, 2026
Vinnie reminds me of Trent from Daria
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews