Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this bold debut about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister—a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption.
Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plants to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy.
Dell is her stream’s dungeon master, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes and her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost to the hottest pepper on the Carolina Reaper. Dell is finally good at something—but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.
Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestream, Just Watch Me careens through a week in the life of this charismatic misfit with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both a razor-sharp tragicomedy about the internet economy and a surreptitiously moving tale about the desire to be watched, and the terror of being seen.
Just Watch Me is character centered work that’s a sort of tragi-comedy. The book is an exploration of loneliness in our modern world, how self-exploitation online has become a new norm, and the dangers of putting yourself (and your private life) online.
I really enjoyed the dark humor and learning about the live-streaming community( I knew nothing about the online live streaming world prior going into Just Watch Me). Dell was a fascinating main character. She’s quick witted, unhinged, and the fun type of weird that you can’t look away from.
I alternated between reading the book myself and listening to the audiobook. The audiobook is narrated by Kelsey Navarro Foster who did a fantastic job. Readers of character centered stories, with an unhinged main character will love this one.
Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg will be available on January 20. Many thanks to Simon Audio for the gifted audiobook and Avid Reader Press for the gifted copy!
Dell Danvers is quite the mess. She’s barely scraping by in NYC in an illegal apartment, she’s just lost her job and her sister is in a coma at a fancy hospital that is ready to pull the plug. Dell needs money fast. She decides to fundraise/live stream for seven days to make rent and to raise enough to pay for one week of private care for her sister.
Dell’s followers mount as she gets into eating hot peppers for cash while her life continues to spiral. Will Dell find a way out?
The book skewed a bit young for me but I still enjoyed it. Dell seems to make a very wrong decision possible…but she makes it look a little too easy to make money online. Interesting book. 3.4 stars.
Holy smokes! So I went into Just Watch Me with zero expectations and I’m glad I did, because it turned out to be compulsive, chaotic and wildly intense in the best way!
Our main character Dell is quite a hot mess. Shes edgy, reckless and totally unapologetic. With her sister in a coma and her own life unraveling, broke after losing her juice bar job thanks to a run in with a finance bro, she throws herself into full time streaming. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to dislike this book based on how insufferable the MC is alone but I really enjoyed the book as a whole. Reading it felt like biting into a hot pepper, fiery yet impossible to put down.
What surprised me most about this story was how, beneath all the heat and chaos, the story also carried true tenderness. There were moments that had me tearing up as often as I was flipping pages in a frenzy.
This was such a fun, chaotic read, and one I’ll definitely be recommending. Big thanks to Avid Reader Press and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy. Just Watch Me hits shelves on January 20, 2026 and it’s one to keep an eye out for!
I love a quirky book & this one is quirky for sure. When I saw the blurb referenced Fleabag...say less! Couldn't get my hands on it quick enough.
Dell lives in a tiny space that would only be considered livable in NYC. While she doesn't have modern conveniences like a bathroom and air conditioning she does have a ton of plants....including the one living inside of her ear?!
She finds herself unemployed and needing to quickly make money for rent as well as private care for her comatose sister, Daisy. Desperate times call for desperate measures and her jalapeño plant has sparked inspiration. Dell begins by live streaming herself eating a jalapeno and quickly ups the ante in hopes of making a buck. Shock value = $$$. Habaneros, ghost peppers, shoplifting. Pretty much nothing is off limits.
Told over the course of a couple weeks this book takes us on a crazy journey that at no point did I know where it was headed. Unlike Fleabag I didn't really connect with the characters so didn't feel super invested or emotional towards them. I did enjoy the ending and the uniqueness from start to finish. I'd love to see more from this author for sure!
•Debut •Quirky •Grief •Mental health •Complex family dynamics •First person POV •Unreliable narrator
3.5 ⭐️ rounded up
Thank you to NetGalley & Avid Reader Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Publishing 1•20•26
Wow wow wow wow WOW! Just Watch Me is a book that I could not log off from. Dell, a NYU dropout and disgraced ex-employee at Juice Body, finds herself $14,000 short of paying her rent and keeping her younger sister on life support. Seeming to lack any other options, she begins to livestream her life 24/7, increasingly getting more and more desperate to earn anonymous donations from her viewers. This book spirals out of control, unforgiving towards its main character and unafraid to show the sadistic side of humanity.
Lior Torenberg’s writing is snappy and clever, but she also knows when to linger and stick a knife into you (especially with plant-like analogies). I was especially impressed by how accurately internet chatroom language and personalities were captured, complete with the one person who can’t stop shouting out the country their from and another person randomly revealing that they are a high school student a la “I have a math test to study for tomorrow :(“
At its heart, Just Watch Me asks its readers to reckon with redemption and who has the power to forgive. It’s one long crash out that is impossible to look away from. This is an amazing debut novel and one that people will be lucky to read in January. Thank you Avid Reader Press for the ARC, you little dungeon crawlers >:)
This book is such a wild ride and I was 100% here for it! I thought Dell was such an interesting character that I couldn't help rooting for. The concept of this book for one is completely wild. Dell starts 24/7 live streaming so she can raise money for her sister who's been in coma so she can put her on private life support. Things progress and just get crazier from there.
The writing style is super compelling and it was a super fun read that I highly recommend. I can't wait for this book to come out so I can get a finished copy!
thank you so much to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
My friend wrote a book and I could NOT put it down. So many killer lines. It felt fun to read even though the subject matter was gruesome? That’s the balance right there.
Fired from her latest job, drowning in debt, and trying to move her comatose sister into private care, Dell starts streaming her life. Every minute of it. As her following grows, Dell performs increasingly humiliating and dangerous stunts in order to drill money out of her sadistic viewers.
Full transparency: I read this book (and wrote this review) on day three of the first cold I've had in like four years, so give me some grace (and some nyquil). And you know what? Maybe that's the ideal state to read this book in because I thought it was a good time! I love a weird, character-focused novel with a fmc who is kind of a terrible person–and let it be known that Dell does some rancid stuff in this book, but it all makes sense for her circumstances so I'm on board. I like the pacing a lot and it didn't really drag at points which is always nice to see in a debut. I like the streaming element and how genuinely scary the story gets in regards to some of the viewers and what Dell is willing to do. I'm a little mixed on the ending. Largely it was satisfying but there was like two major threads that we never really got an explanation for or any follow up on as far as I can tell. Honestly, if anything I would have liked this to be weirder and more disturbing because it's a hell of a situation to find yourself in.
If you support women's rights and wrongs, this book is for you! Expect spice...but not that kind of spice.
Thank you to Lior Torenberg and Avid Reader Press for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Dell Danvers streams her life for seven days, escalating dares and attention‑grabbing stunts as she scrambles to save her comatose sister (and herself). The premise is sharp, a fresh twist on a familiar trope: a meditation on visibility, grief, and the intoxicating spectacle of being watched, of earning reward merely for existing. Torenberg’s ambition is unmistakable: dark humor, digital fame, fresh fruit, and raw vulnerability all collide into a bittersweet moral.
Yet the escalating stunts— pepper after pepper, a metaphorical scorched‑earth of attention and pain— often overwhelm the emotional core. I respected the heat, but couldn’t swallow the fire without flinching. The novel wants to make you squirm and clap at once, and it succeeds in concept, even if I found many parts simply indigestible.
A bold debut, uneven but deliberate, bright and loud: a livestream of grief and desperation where the Carolina‑Reaper of fame burns real pain. Admirable, incendiary, but impossible to fully inhabit without wincing.
Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg — 5 stars, no hesitation.
This book got its hooks in me within the first few pages. Dell is an absolute disaster of a human being — broke, panicked, grieving, physically falling apart — and somehow still marching herself straight into the world’s worst idea: livestreaming her life 24/7 to try to save her sister.
The setup sounds simple, but the execution is feral. Watching Dell spiral through this one week of nonstop streaming felt like rubbernecking at a slow-moving car crash you know you shouldn’t stare at… and yet you absolutely will. It’s stressful, cringe, unhinged, and weirdly tender underneath all the bad decisions.
This book consumed my brain for days. I was either reading it, thinking about it, or preparing emotionally for whatever deranged thing Dell was going to do next. Now that it’s over, I’m genuinely disoriented in that “book hangover, don’t talk to me” way.
Thank you @netgalley for the ARC — I loved every unhinged minute of it.
Thank you to Scribner UK and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
A weird girl book to watch in 2026, we follow Dell, a young woman who's just lost her job, has crippling stomach pain, and a sister in a coma. To obtain funds to pay for her sister's medical bills, she decides to start live-streaming her daily life, which escalates quickly into completing risky on-screen stunts for cash. Our narrator is a flawed character, but I was always rooting for her. The book digs into her vulnerabilities and recklessness in an interesting way, and at times I laughed, at others I was incredibly stressed. A brilliant read that should be on the radar for anyone who enjoys offbeat stories.
The cover was what caught my eye. I was also ready for a literary fiction. Wild this is a debut, the writing is incredible. This is not a book for you if you have to like your MC because damn Dell lives a questionable life and makes questionable choices. The amount of times I cringed through scenes but I had to keep reading. I could not stop. If you like messy this one if for you. 3.5⭐️ rounded up
Thank you NetGalley, Lior Torenberg, and the publisher Avid Reader Press for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Wild and weird and sad and messy!!! Dell Danvers is a very unlikeable person who needs cash, and fast. Her sister is in a coma, and the doctor says it's time to pull the plug, unless Dell can raise enough money to keep her sister alive on private life support. She begins to livestream 24/7 in an effort to raise this money, but her followers need to be entertained, and Dell spirals into self-destructive and unhinged behavior, all while live. Dell is a mess, and she's mean, and kind of awful. She's also dealing with a strained relationship with her mother, and the grief of her sister's coma, and we do see moments of tenderness and sadness come through. If you can't stand a complex, unlikeable main character, this one might not be for you. I personally loved following her spiraling descent into madness, one hot pepper at a time.
Thank you to Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for the ARC.
Another five star read for me! I am so thankful to Avid Reader Press, NetGalley, and Lior Torenberg for granting me advanced access to this title before January 20, 2026.
Dell is going through it. Her sister is in a coma. She’s broke and the debt is piling up, and oh yeah she doesn’t have a bathroom in her rinky-dink apartment, and she may or may not have a raging stomach ulcer.
After burning bridges at her juice shop job, she’s hit rock bottom and needs a way to make rent/bills/not starve.
So she turns to live-streaming her daily goings-on, and while it’s a slow trickle at first, her engagement hikes up as she begins to take on more dangerous tasks, such as inserting habaneros into herself, shoplifting, and even competing in spicy contests! With the intent of raising money for her sister, in hopes of putting her on a private life support health plan.
Her viewers LOVE HER, but there’s one who sees through the BS and aims to expose her lies.
I couldn’t put this one down and loved the mixed media formatting.
When we first meet Just Watch Me's protagonist Dell, she's a recent college dropout living in a utility closet-turned-studio apartment in New York City. She doesn't even have a bathroom; her neighbor, Lee, gave her a key to their apartment just so she can shower.
Things are, generally, not going well for Dell. Rent's due in a week and she's not going to make it, on account of just being fired from her job at a smoothie shop in Grant Central Station - the owner won't give her her last paycheck. Her only source of income is unreliable - she sells plants she grows from stolen cuttings on Facebook Marketplace. Oh, and her sister's in a coma. Things aren't exactly easy for her, but she's a fighter.
Until one day, on impulse, she decides to make an account on a website called LiveCast and stream for 24 hours straight, in order to raise money for a good cause because, you see, she has one week to make $14,000 - or her sister will be pulled off of life support.
What follows is as intense as a Carolina Reaper.
If you'd told me when I started this book that it would make me cry, I would not have believed you, but over the course of 270-ish pages - that fateful week - I grew to like Dell, even though she's an asshole. I was rooting for her. She's 20 years old, her life is kind of in shambles, and instead of raising a white flag and moving home to New Jersey, she's determined to make it work herself, by any means necessary.
This is a book that tosses curveballs after curveball at its readers, each one more interesting and more stressful than the last. I thought I knew what to expect - I did in fact guess where it was going about halfway through - but it still managed to pleasantly surprise me. Comparing this to Fleabag and Big Swiss was a smart marketing play. Loosely likable leads who struggle to find their place in a world that seems to constantly reject them. Phenomenal, phenomenal book.
This novel is a good reminder to us all that you can be whomever you choose to be on the internet! When Dell is fired from her job at Juice Body she needs money so badly she begins to livestream everything she does. Her fans love it and begin donating money as her sister is in a coma. But we all know things are not always as they seem to be and Dell gets caught up in a whirlwind of things she never imagined! Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
Grateful to NetGalley and Avid Reader Press for the ARC!
Dell Danvers is desperately in need of cash. She's barely scraping by in New York City even before she loses her job at a juice bar. She decides to livestream her life as a way to make money to pay her rent and also to help her younger sister get the healthcare she needs. Dell's audience grows as she eats hot peppers while streaming, but one of her followers begins sending her threatening messages.
This novel is a darkly comic take on the content economy and on how online personas can be used to protect us from the truths we don't want to face about ourselves. Dell is deeply flawed as a protagonist, but you still find yourself rooting for her. I'd recommend this book for anyone who enjoyed Margot's Got Money Troubles and I Hope This Finds You Well.
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
An intense, worthy addition to the Sad Girl Genre of books I seem to be very into.
I really couldn't put this one down - the conversational, sardonic tone of our narrator completely pulled me in. Dell is not a nice person, but I did sympathize with her, even as she spiraled to rock-bottom, took out a pickaxe and began breaking ground. I liked that Dell was genuinely very messy and struggling, her failings hurting both herself and others.
The depiction of livestreaming and internet culture felt pitch perfect - both validating and enjoyable while also invasive and disconcerting. Dell's fans as reoccurring characters in the chat were great.
Some parts of the novel dragged - the repetition of a main character who livestreamed 24/7 - although realistic - started to bore me at times. I also wanted to know more about Lee and Dell's friendship before the events, to feel a little more compelled by why Lee would stand by Dell at her worst.
I chuckled at several parts (especially Dell's stream chat), felt gripped by the drama surrounding Dell's stalker, and felt appropriately gut-punched by some ending bits. As is often the case in Sad Girl books, this is full of visceral, bodily descriptions - it played well into Dell's talent of eating spicy foods.
This is a novel about grief, our sense of self in the age of the internet, and about burning everything down and then both having to and getting to start over. About moving on even when you don't think you can.
I'd love to read whatever else Lior Torenberg puts out.
Thanks netgalley for the ARC. Just Watch Me started off strong but the further I got the more it lost me. The pacing felt all over the place, sometimes slogging sometimes rushing, and by the end I wasn’t sure what I was still doing there.
My biggest issue was Del…I just didn’t get why she sucked so much. The story kept telling me she was terrible but I never understood why, and that made it hard to care about her fall. A lot of reviews say this book has so much heart but I didn’t find it.
4.5 stars- On the surface, this book appeared to be a bit out of my wheelhouse or just something I’d be disinclined to pick up. The story follows a young Dell, who is barely making ends meet in her tiny, tiny NYC studio apartment and trying to find a way to make some quick cash to help her sister afford private medical care, against a ticking time clock. She tries streaming a whim one night and realizes the potential to make quick cash once she begins building a following and doing increasingly dangerous stunts, many of which involve eating insanely spicy peppers.
Again, on the surface, this premise might sound even a bit silly but, I thought this book was really fantastic. From the start, Dell is in a downward spiral and despite her best efforts to appear casual and without a care in the world, we can see how much she is suffering and just lost. The author does a great job at creating this external facade, while still showing us the character’s interiority. Dell’s character, along with other secondary characters like Lee and her mother, are so fleshed out and multi-faceted that they feel real and easy to care about.
I also enjoyed the structure of this novel, it’s told over the course of a week, as Dell live streams her life for hours straight throughout this time. I thought this plot might grow to feel repetitive or boring because how interesting can reading about a stream be? Especially if it’s the entire book… But, the author does a great job at creating new, inventive plot points to push the story forward, keep at a good pace, and maintain the readers interest. Plus, I enjoyed reading the streamer’s comments and interactions with Dell, it was easy to follow along with and easy to understand how Dell could get so swept up into this world. The juxtaposition of the virtual and real life challenges that Dell faces, those that she sweeps under the rug, and those that she gets swept away in are very interesting and I think accurately represents a lot of what people experience in an increasingly virtual world.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to contemporary fiction fans or people that like close character studies. Don’t let any element of the premise throw you off, it is so excellent!!
Thanks to NetGalley and Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster for this advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review.
Dell is a bit of a mess. She's just been fired from her smoothie job, she lives in a literal former walk in closet (no bathrooms), and her younger sister Daisy is in a coma with the hospital pressuring her and her mother to pull the plug. Desperate to get money for a private nurse for her sister, Dell decides to start a streamathon, where she will livestream her life. Through a dare she realizes that she has a knack for eating spicy peppers, which helps increase her viewer count. However there is a certain viewer who has dug into her past and is threatening to reveal it to all of her followers.
I thought I'd like this book but I actually really, really loved it. There is something very appealing to me about a MC who is messy and really floundering in life, especially when its revealed its because they are struggling with something else in their life that they are refusing to deal with. These emotionally closed off, in denial, everything is fine even if it isn't characters are my people. So I really enjoyed Dell, even in all her bitchiness, and I loved her story.
I am always going to read a book that has parasocial relationships and I think this is the first that Ive read that focuses on a streamers side of that. I loved how the author went about it portraying all the different types of fans, the loyals, the ones just there for maybe boobs, and the 'Keyboard Warriors'. Then showing how all of them, even the loyal ones didnt actually care about her as a person, she was just a form of entitlement to them. It was all well done.
I didn't read the description of this book so I didnt realize it had so much to do with hot peppers. My palate is unfortunately a "ketchup is spicy" type so at when I realized it was going to be all about eating hot stuff, I kind of assumed I'd check out a little. But not at all! I thought it was a good direction to take the story and I learned something new about a topic I previously had no interest in.
Thank you to Netgalley and Avid Reader Press for the free arc in exchange for my honest review.
Just Watch Me is a fantastic literary fiction debut following Dell Danvers for a period of a couple of weeks. She experienced a major trauma with her sister's accident that put her in a coma. The doctors want to unplug her because she has been in a vegetative state for almost two months and do not see any signs of brain activity. Dell is on a mission to find $14K so her sister can be brought home and be monitored one more week, in case a miracle happens. Dell seems like an unhinged, reckless character from the very first pages: her unprofessional attitude at the juice bar she's been working at leads to her getting fired. She goes back to her apt, which is in reality her neighbor Lee's walk-in closet and she commiserates: rent is soon due, so are her utilities, phone bill, etc.. and she doesn't have enough to cover those expenses. She decides to stream! I had zero knowledge of the streaming world and man this was insane. She gives herself 7 days to gather $14,000 for her sister. We get to follow her on those 7 days and see how streaming can make you turn your life into a sitcom that can go off the rails at any moment!
This book dabbled on many subjects: making it on your own, family ties, overcoming a life-threatening situation, mental health, take responsibility for your actions, and much, much more. I read this book in two days! It was fun, crazy, yet very deep and harrowing. I cannot wait to read more by this author! This is also a great book club selection because I believe everybody will have a strong opinion after reading this, there is so much meat to chew on.
A dry, tragically hilarious story of a girl in NYC who unintentionally becomes a livestream star. Dell is desperate, grieving, and completely broke. She is living in a closet of an apartment with no bathroom and filled to the brim with propagated plants for sale. Dell finds an unexpected avenue of financial support when she start a live streamathon to raise money for her sister’s life support. What starts out as innocent and unique devolves into something darker, as she receives dares and threats that make her rethink her community, mental outlook, and need for money and independence. Torenberg juggles extremely somber topics and emotions with a smart deft and humor. There are funny antics and escapades, fascinating takes into parasocial vs. real relationships. It was a chaotic book in the best way, and it was so engrossing I finished this book almost in one sitting. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!
Gorgeous cover, unique premise (a very polarizing woman struggling financially in NYC starts video streaming online herself eating increasingly hot peppers in order to make money), and pretty good writing! though I will say ultimately not completely for me in terms of my own taste, which obviously is just subjective!
I think this was generally an interesting satirical and definitely singular kind of book, very topical and true to the strange streaming culture so prevalent on today’s internet, all the way down to the inevitable dunce-like comments left on every piece of media ever shared, and the fear of the hatred and vitriol of the wrong audience, and online streaming is a topic I haven’t seen explored too much in fiction so far. I think if you like these kind of meta, weird, and internet concerning novels, and books with unlikable and self destructive main characters, you’ll really like this one.
I was already hyped for this book based on the absolutely immaculate cover and description, but oh my gosh it somehow exceeded my already very high expectations. Wildly funny while simultaneously so emotional, I truly didn’t expect to feel all of these different emotions with this story! And just like Dell’s viewers, I could not stop watching her story in this unputdownable novel by Lior Torenberg.
Dell is barely scraping by. She lives in a windowless, bathroom-less, one room apartment in NYC. Her younger sister Daisy is in a coma, and she has a hard time facing this reality. After getting fired from her job, she needs to earn some cash fast, so she decides to give streaming a shot with the goal to raise $14,000 to fund private life support for Daisy. Little did she know, her streaming career would take off in a wild, tense, and extremely spicy way.
Thank you to Avid Reader Press and Netgalley for this ARC!