The Adjunct

by Maria Adelmann

From the acclaimed author of How to Be Eaten, a fresh take on the campus novel that follows an adjunct professor gigging her way through academia’s poor job market when she crosses paths with her old PhD adviser whose new novel might be about her—for readers of Worry, Vladimir, and Less.

Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. But her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus.

Tom and Sam have a complicated history, the lasting impact of which has haunted her academic career, and it’s the last thing she wants to think about as she navigates academic politics, institutional hurdles, and romantic entanglements with men and women that further complicate a sexuality not even she can define. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasons—and his long-awaited second novel is about a professor’s reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future—and herself.

With biting humor and a keen eye for detail, Maria Adelmann offers a fresh twist on a tangled #MeToo story and turns Sam’s downward spiral into a searing critique of class and the hollow promises of the American dream. A hilarious yet sobering look at how hustle culture has come to define modern academia, The Adjunct Who really controls the narratives of success, identity, and power?

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Adult, Academia, Humor, Literature

352 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication March 31, 2026

About the author

Maria Adelmann’s work has been published by Tin House, n+1, The Threepenny Review, Indiana Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and others. She has been awarded prizes by the Baker Artist Awards and the Maryland State Arts Council, and her work has been selected as a Distinguished Story in The Best American Short Stories. She has an MFA in fiction from The University of Virginia. She enjoys learning complicated new crafts and letting personal projects take over her life. A longtime resident of Baltimore, Adelmann recently ended up in Copenhagen after getting stuck there during the pandemic.

Reviews

[DianaRose · Rating 5 out of 5]

if the gym is the place people go to stay healthy, academia is the place people go to be completely unwell… in all forms…

full rtc

[emma]

the wave of Reckoning With Problematic Past Relationships literature is one i’m surfing, to make a metaphor overstay its welcome.

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

4.5 stars

The Adjunct by Maria Adelmann is an essential addition to the campus novel genre that tackles themes of class exploitation, identity, and feminism with refreshing, and often humorous, directness.

Like our protagonist Sam, I once had a dream of becoming a humanities professor. I loved academia and teaching; I couldn’t imagine a cooler job. My academic mentors alternately encouraged and discouraged me from pursuing a PhD: they knew it would be an amazing path for my abilities and interests, but they also knew how minimal my chances at tenure-track employment would be. I heard horror story upon horror story about the academic job market, and I remember feeling shocked when I realized that one of my adjunct professors was teaching seven classes in one semester—like Sam, across two campuses—while raising two children and battling cancer. The shock grew when I learned that adjuncts only get paid a couple thousand dollars per class and receive no benefits. That’s about $250 per week for a job that demands an exorbitant amount of time and effort. Reading The Adjunct was like glimpsing into a dark alternate pathway in which I “followed my dreams” and got that history PhD.

Sam is in her mid-thirties and working as an adjunct for several classes to scrape by in hopes of eventually securing an elusive tenure-track (or at least full-time lecturer) position. Her life is a constant scrabble to avoid homelessness as living expenses, student loan debt, and medical bills stack up. On top of her destitution, she feels misplaced in the #MeToo era that demands clear categorization of identity. Her past comes back to haunt her when she discovers she is working at the same university as her old grad school advisor, Tom, with whom she had a close relationship in graduate school. Their relationship inhabited a sort of murkiness at odds with the clean-cut narratives of the #MeToo movement; while it never quite veered into a sexual relationship and took place between two adults, their differences in age and power left Sam feeling used and betrayed. Her thoughts and feelings on their relationship come to a head when she learns Tom has published a fictional novel that appears to be based on their relationship.

Adelmann very much uses The Adjunct as a soapbox for her takes on the exploitations of adjuncts, the broken academic system, and the complex, invisible webs of power that ensnare the vulnerable even in an age of increased “awareness” and “visibility.” Her takes are insightful and incisive—she holds nothing back, but it never feels preachy. The gaps in our literary consciousness she’s addressing are real, and her skilled writing adds urgency and depressing hilarity to her message. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the complex ways patriarchal and capitalist power reshapes itself in a modern academic context.

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

[Alaina]

Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC!

Honest, messy women in academia, my beloved. Clips along at a nice pace, nuanced exploration of uncomfortable topics, upsetting ending. I think this book is exactly what it wants to be.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

**BIG SPOILER at the end of my review**

Thank you, NetGalley, for this uncorrected eproof ARC of 'The Adjunct' by Maria Adelmann - expected release date of 03/31/2026.

ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After reading all the reviews, I know I'm in the minority here but I just couldn't get into this book. There was only one main character, Sam, who was too much yet at the same time, not enough. I was overwhelmed and annoyed by the constant drama and the lemons life gave her (enough already) yet I also felt like I didn't know her enough to feel bad for her. She was basically one giant question mark. We were given no back story about her life before becoming an adjunct, she was constantly questioning her career, her living situations and her sexuality, it felt like she was an incomplete character. And what was written about her made me not like her, she came off as a whiny, woe-is-me, opportunistic user of people. I'm also really mad at the ending, like, really mad. One of the only positive things she had going for her was that she didn't sleep with her married professor, even though he claimed she did. He used her as a scapegoat to avoid admitting he actually slept with his wife's best friend. That lie basically ruined her college life yet at the end, she insinuates that they're going to meet up to sleep together, many years following the lie. Why go that route for her?

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several other books that I have read in this genre (book where terrible things befall a female protagonist) have a hard time of winning me over because often their miseries are preventable or simply too odd for me to believe (cough cough Big Swiss cough). Not in this case. Sam’s reality - the hellscape that is capitalism and the neoliberal-ified academy system - is all too familiar. I loved the little asides of literary or theoretical analysis that reminds you of the fun parts of Learning; the twisty-turny nature of living in a post-MeToo world/reckoning with the aftermath that many were left in after supposedly having the opportunity to exorcise all the bad men; the steady tick of numbers as Sam recites how much she has left in her checking account, how much debt she accrues; and most viscerally I felt her envy of her peers who purport to be in her cohort but in reality are buoyed by surreptitious wealth. Very enjoyable and fascinating to read especially as someone who works in the academy (or rather - for it).

[em · Rating 3 out of 5]

i enjoyed 75% of this book and was planning on rating it high, but then i read the ending. and the ending alone made me want to scream and throw this book off the nearest tall building.

if you love a pathetic main character, this is the book for you. one bad thing after another happens; sam truly cannot catch a break. i understand it's the nature of being an adjunct professor and a commentary on the state of higher academia in general, but wowie. it was a slog to get through. at what point does a story stop being realistic and instead become trauma porn the reader is made to sit through? it got old fast. sam spirals constantly and is always sabotaging any decent person she meets. while then going back to the most terrible person she knows!!!!!!!!!!!! which leads me to my biggest gripe about this book...

i cannot get over the ending. truly what the fuck????? the entire book posits on the fact that sam's entire career, but more importantly personal and social life is affected because of her affair with her professor. we discuss this relationship in the context of #metoo, as being a woman, as being a (maybe?) bisexual woman. we seen unfortunate thing after unfortunate thing happen to our mc and we understand tom's role as a catalyst for this spiral. and then we watch sam walk right back to that giant waste of a fucking human being at the very end of the story. the ending didn't have to be redemptive or happy or cliche, but i wanted it to be true to the story we just sat through. sadly, it was not. perhaps it was sam reclaiming her power/narrative in the dynamics with tom, but it was not convincing. it was an incredible injustice to sam, our story, and the poor reader sitting through this book.

it was interesting in its exploration of intersectionality of identity, and coming to terms with being ambivalent, or still not knowing where you stand within specific identities. being half of something can sometimes feel all of nothing. sam's grappling with this as a main character was relatable to me, and i think written well overall.

as i said, i enjoyed this book for the majority of the time i was reading it. i really planned to give it a much higher rating and praise, but the ending made me rethink all of it. idk, i just think we can do better.

thanks for netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced reader's copy in exchange for my honest review.

[rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, Simon & Schuster and Netgalley, for providing this Advanced Reader's Copy in exchange for an honest review.

Have you ever read My Year of Rest and Relaxation and wondered what the protagonist would be like if she went into academia? I have not, but when reading this book, that was what I envisioned.
Adelmann combines sophisticated yet readable prose with the incredibly engaging narrative of things going wrong. Where do we put our locus of control? Is our adjuncting a fault of our own in part, or is it purely the result of modern academia being, well, Modern Academia? What are the ethical considerations of publishing autofiction that incriminates others? How do we know we have hit rock bottom? How many years of doing your PhD is too many?
Perhaps my favorite trope is when a book ends on a precipice, which is probably what made me think of MYORAR. After a series of unfortunate events and passivity, it is most powerful when the character takes action. Here, the structure of the post-factum diary, the first chapter/prologue that reveals the ending, makes us reflect on what led Sam to the precarious situation that is her life. Amazing work from Adelmann.

[Athena A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this raw and perhaps unprecedented take on a campus novel, the author lays out the perils of desirability in academia and the liminality of being an adjunct (and questioning your sexuality) in the style of chaotic girl literary fiction. I was entertained and genuinely stressed out for her. Girl save yourself from this spiral!

Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I flew through this book! Such a unique take on the professor student relationship plot line…and wow what a commentary on the deterioration of our higher education system. Currently an adjunct myself and this was TOO REAL

[Tilda · Rating 5 out of 5]

will forever think about this ending !!
(also prevented me from thinking about applying to PhD programs ((again)) thank you for your service)

[Angel **Book Junkie** · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Scribner, Maria Adelmann, and NetGalley for a copy of The Adjunct in exchange for an honest review. Honestly, this one fell a bit flat for me. I didn’t feel like the book had a real plot, and there was nothing that truly got me excited or invested in the story. On top of that, the main character just didn’t click for me — they were more irritating than relatable.

That said, the writing itself has moments of clarity and thoughtfulness, so it’s not a complete miss. It’s just one of those reads that left me underwhelmed overall.

[mikayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loveeeeed this my god
4.5

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who is an adjunct, I loved this...and related so much to this book
This book is like looking into a fun house mirror that somehow still manages to show your exact real face, exhausted, underpaid, and grading papers in a car between campuses...lol

Maria Adelmann absolutely nails the quiet madness of being an underpaid, overqualified academic surrounded by people who think your job is a cute little hobby.

I love a good satire. (but honestly too realistic to be satirical??) book about academia. An interesting take on a power dynamic/#metoo story that definitely won't be for everyone, but I liked it.

Thank you netgalley for the arc!

[Judi]

Well, that’s 352 pages of my life I’ll never get back. I kept hoping the protagonist would grow but no, she keeps motivating her own downfall to the very last sentence.

[hannah ⊹ ࣪ ˖ · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are books that entertain you, and there are books that make you think about its subject so intensely that is has you dismantling systems you once viewed as normal. The Adjunct does both, but most importantly, it does the latter so, SO well—using sharp humor, simmering rage, and uncomfortable precision along the way.

Sam is an adjunct professor, stretched thin between classes, side gigs, and the endless cycle of job applications. She’s brilliant, capable, and constantly exhausted—the exact kind of person academia claims to value while systematically exploiting. When her former doctoral adviser, Tom Sternberg, resurfaces at a nearby college—armed with a new novel and a conveniently self-serving version of the past—Sam’s already fragile footing begins to crack. What follows isn’t just personal drama. It’s a look at power: who holds it, who loses it, and who gets to rewrite the narrative.

Adelmann absolutely nails the imbalance that exists in higher education. The contrast between adjunct and tenured is maddening in the most intentional way. Sam hustles endlessly just to survive, while Tom coasts on reputation and institutional faith—even after years of creative stagnation. The injustice isn’t subtle, and it isn’t supposed to be. This book will piss you tf off, and it should!

I appreciated how messy and undefined Sam’s personal life feels. Her romantic entanglements and questions about her own sexuality aren’t neat or performative—they’re complicated, contradictory, and deeply human. Nothing in this book is packaged for comfort. And Tom is INFURIATINGLY believable. The kind of man who intellectualizes everything, who frames his reckoning as bravery while avoiding all real accountability. Watching the power dynamics shift—and not always in the ways you hope—felt authentic.

This book is bleak at times. It’s tense. It’s frustrating. But it’s also sharp, funny, and full of restrained fury. It’s about who gets to tell the story of success, of harm, of ambition—and what happens when you refuse to accept the version handed to you. If you’re in academia (or adjacent to it), this will hit hard. If you enjoy literary fiction that dissects hustle culture, institutional hypocrisy, and the mythology of the American dream, this one is absolutely worth your time. I loved this so much more than I thought I would!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this eARC!

[AMenagerieofWords Deb Coco · Rating 3 out of 5]

The campus was not a contained world. Tenured professors whining about exclusion were just in the privileged position of thinking it was.
The Adjunct
Maria Adelmann
•
How many ways can the campus novel be spun? Many of us adore this trope but have become leery of the recurring theme of student and professor. And while this does fall into that category, it feels original in many ways - enough for me to share it here.
•
The Adjunct is the story of Sam, an adjunct who is struggling to keep her head above water and we witness her downward spiral to about as rock bottom as it gets. She is not only dealing with the poverty level adjunct pay scale that accompanies her job, but is also in the wake of a twisted relationship with her graduate school advisor, Tom.
•
What I thought worked here was the very honest look at the hierarchy of academia. If you know this world, Adelmann gets to the nitty gritty of how incredibly unglamorous it is unless you’re the top 1%, and how hard it is to get there. Sam’s financial struggles are portrayed realistically, with no happy bow at the end. Here is someone with a PhD from a prestigious school who is living hand to mouth and barely makes ends meet.
•
Sam runs into Tom on the campus where she is teaching and discovers he has published a book that appears to revolve around what unfolded between them. Their liaison was extremely messy and caused her to change tracks midway through her studies. It was not the typical student-teacher affair as we’ve seen in books like My Last Innocent Year, Vladimir and The Rachel Incident. But, if you enjoyed those I think this will definitely work for you.
•
The #metoo movement is front and center here too and explored in all its intricacies - there is a lot going on between these pages but I felt it worked well together. My favorite part was the myriad of literary references and Sam’s monologues about her passion for reading.
•
“I liked words... I liked how when strung together the whole hit you before the parts”
•
Thank you @scribner for my copy! On shelves 3/31. (I would be at 3.5 if I could give half stars!)

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Advanced Reading Copy provided by publisher

Sam is an adjunct professor of literature, cobbling something close to a living by shuttling between multiple campuses teaching undergrads while applying for more permanent positions and getting nowhere. She is surprised to end up at the same college as her former mentor, Tom, with whom she had a complicated relationship that she has never fully reckoned with. He has just written a new novel, with a character that bears strong similarities to her and their dynamics.

Almost too on the nose, Sam is teaching courses on the Campus Novel and the Masculine Voice, as the novel tackles both the exploitation of labor in academia, where, as the character says, the adjuncts are both essential but disposable. It also takes on #MeToo, although Sam's experience doesn't quite resemble the stories in the media. Her sexuality is also something that doesn't quite fit the models she's seen.

Sam can be a frustratingly passive character. The novel can also be frustrating to read at times. In some cases, like its take on the exploitation of the adjunct's labor, dialogue can come across too much as an essay disguised as a conversation or internal monologue. The way the book describes the juxtaposition of the campus and the local surroundings in Baltimore also sometimes comes across that way. It's #MeToo storyline strives for more nuance but sometimes at the expense of the characters. As frustrating as these characters can be, it was also refreshing to see a different side of the campus novel: not one that focuses on the white male and privileged side of the canon of campus novels, nor one that focuses on the coming-of-age student life. It also plays with the nature of narrative and storytelling in sometimes interesting ways.

I'm of two minds at the ending. Without spoiling, it ends up as a somewhat natural place for the character to end up, though I wish it had arrived there more out of the character's volition than desperation. I also liked the ambiguity, although I didn't like how the author cued it up by talking about the narrative devices at play. I picked this up because I enjoyed the author's previous novel, How to Be Eaten, which upends the fairy tale in the same way this one tries to rethink the campus narrative, although that one was ultimately more successful and enjoyable for me.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Adjunct was more of a literary fiction novel than I usually read. We follow Sam, an adjunct professor at a university in Baltimore, where her former doctoral mentor Tom has recently relocated. During her graduate studies, it was suspected that Sam and Tom had a relationship, and Tom is now publishing a book using those suspicions as the plot line.

Adelmann says multiple things about our current culture throughout the novel. First, she weaves in depictions of the division of Baltimore, between the Black and white neighborhoods of the city, while telling the story. Sam, as someone with a low income, lives in the poorer neighborhoods of the city. Also, as the title suggests, we read the unglamorous life of an adjunct professor, someone who does triple the work and receives very little pay. Compare the adjunct to Tom, a full professor who has gotten to spend the last decade writing without publishing and who still receives full confidence that his new novel will be a bestseller. Lastly, we see the shifting power dynamics in each of Tom’s relationships throughout the novel. Relationships aren’t always what they seem.

Though I don’t typically enjoy literary fiction novels, this novel stood out because addresses higher education, a topic I am intimately familiar with. I would recommend this to other grad students and people in the higher education space. If societal commentary and metaphor is your thing, I would also recommend this. The adjunct professor is just one profession where the lower ranked employee is doing MUCH more work than the long-time employee (i.e., tenured professor). This novel shines light on the unfair system that we’ve created.

An ARC was provided by NetGalley and Scribner in exchange for an honest review.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a semi-retired professor with a penchant for academic novels, I could not wait to read this book. It promised to be a contemporary skewering of the tragedy that academic life has become for so many in recent years. It delivered on its promise and more! Sam, the narrator, is a not-so-freshly minted literature Ph.D. adjuncting at two different schools and living on the poverty line, while hoping to manage her debts long enough to snag the gold ring of a tenure-track position. At the outset, the book appears to be a comic romp that offers humor while showcasing the challenges, indignities, and injustices of contingent employment as an adjunct instructor. However, partway into the book, one realizes that Sam's downward spiral has no end in sight. The indignities and injustices mount one upon the next, and each of her possibilities for escape seems to evaporate. The book successfully combines critiques of contingent university labor, predatory professors, the #me-too movement, and the cruel ironies of academic hierarchies. Having worked in three different universities/liberal arts colleges over the course of several decades, much of what Maria Adelman writes rings true, from aging professors seeking ego boosts via young students to adjunct faculty members barely making ends meet (even obliged to sleep in university offices). I wish that the main character (Sam) had been more appealing, as I think that would have made this a "hit the ball out of the park" contemporary academic novel, but unfortunately, she is pretty unlikeable. Even then, the fact that despite an unlikable main character, I stayed up way past my bedtime reading this book attests to this being a good read.

[Joy Matteson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sam is a typical overworked and underpaid academic, on the lowest tier of the academic hierarchy: the adjunct gig life. Juggling multiple institutions and struggling to make ends meet, she is hired to teach a course at a University where her former advisor, the celebrated author Dr. Tom Sternberg also works. Sam’s complex history with Tom underscores the power dynamic between men and women in academia, and explores who gets coveted and secure positions in the rarefied air of scholarship and who does not. When it’s revealed that Tom’s latest novel might be about their former relationship, complete with salacious and fictitious details, Sam is faced with defining her own identity or letting the world define it for her. Skillfully narrated by Suehyla El Attar-Young, this audio rendition is a treat for literary listeners. El Attar-Young crafts the intense dialogue scenes between Tom and Sam with high drama; she carefully pauses to create tension for the young Sam as she describes the terror, power, and attraction she felt for Tom. Tom is performed with arrogant, self pleasing tones, and El Attar-Young’s ability to snap back and forth is captivating. The haughty department chair Sam reports to is appropriately performed with patronizing and syrupy tonality, while one of Sam’s high strung love interests is presented with a mile a minute breathless monologues about colonialism within academia. This audio rendition is keenly performed and achieves beautiful oral storytelling. This is highly recommended for fans of complicated female protagonists written by authors such as Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

~ I received an ARC copy of The Adjunct in exchange for an honest review ~

Adelmann's The Adjunct explores the experiences of non-tenured educators in the field of professional academia within the context of the #MeToo movement. Our main character is in her thirties but struggling with the realities of finding permanent work in her field, reevaluating her choices in life and trying to make sense of her own choices and sexuality. Her life which is perpetually upended is further upended by the release of a book that eerily echoes to a relationship she had with a former professor. Throughout the story she tries to navigate understanding herself, the nuances of being part of the #MeToo movement (but not really) and the struggles of trying to make a life out of academia.

To be honest, this book was painful to read - it seems like our main character's sole purpose was to perpetually be a victim of the system or the people around her. The little autonomy she does have seems to be fraught with problems and she seems to be a punching bag for many of the characters around her. The people who used to befriend see her with a level of disgust, she can't seem to get her life together and can't afford to either.

I'm sure Adelmann intended to make the piece a reflection and critique of power structures in the college setting and the cold reality that some who look for futures in academic face, but the point gets lost if you're wincing at each thing that goes wrong for the main character.

[Holly | Raise Your Words · Rating 2 out of 5]

| 2/5 Stars | ★★☆☆☆

Trigger Warnings for The Adjunct​: Quid Pro Quo, Exploitation, Harassment, Anxiety, Debt Stress, Identity Crisis, Emotional Trauma.

The Adjunct by Maria Adelmann acts as another entry into the campus novel library, though from a uncommonly used lens: an adjunct professor. Our main character, Sam, is the adjunct in question who is just trying to make ends meet while working her way through academia's job market. She snaps up a couple of classes at a private liberal arts college and finds her old grad school advisor now works there... but Tom wasn't just her advisor, he tangled his way far deeper into Sam's psyche.

I was so incredibly excited for this book, but just found it lackluster. The Adjunct has a really meaty core: surviving in academia can suck, especially if you don't have all the "right ins." This is so potent in today's age where the fight for tenure is so grueling. None of the characters in The Adjunct are super likable, which I frankly enjoy, but it feels like everything they're going through is an inch deep. Just when we'd start thinking about Sam's sexuality, we'd hard pivot into an experience from her graduate program that feels completely disparate. This happened continuously in The Adjunct.

Overall, I love this premise, but not the execution. I wish Adelmann had focused on providing a strong set of support beams so the core of this book didn't get lost. If Sam's focus was on sexuality, #MeToo, debt and survival, rather than all three, it may have made the center core more impactful. Adelmann just made Sam's story too messy, which is more realistic, but harder to read in a novel. Thank you to Maria Adelmann, Scribner, and NetGalley for an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) in exchange for my honest review.

Follow all of my reviews and content with LinkTree

[Patricia Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. So wanted to affirm 'Sam"...it doesn't get better. Her clear "I" writing in the first person took us from the prologue (which prepares us for the ending!) through the mechanizations of academia and the devaluation of a university education. Sam is one of the ROAD SCHOLARS; The Full Time Part Timers; getting a wage less than their working students and teaching a course load just under full time. Thus, there would be minimal contract wage and no benefits. That Is, working for an educational system that devalues education. This exploitation of adjuncts is integrated with her struggle of just staying alive in a systemic patriarchy.. Her graduate advisor Tom has written a book that centers around an affair between a Prof (presumably Tom) and his grad student ( who many assume to be Sam). Yet they had no affair. He has written it to pander to the 'me too' movement. Maria Adelman's writing gives clear insights into the pain of being devalued, loss of control over your life, the shattering of the 'magical dream' that education is THE way to a full, useful life... In her words " I was essential to the University but ENTIRELY REPLACEABLE"... I also found gems of wisdom in her writing to treasure and carry with me e.g. " I also knew that dividing people into hierarchies of suffering was stupid...and what did winning get you anyway???p. 302) Thank you Good Reads and Maria Adelmann for this Good read...

[Helya · Rating 2 out of 5]

💭 ⓂⓎ ⓉⒽⓄⓊⒼⒽⓉⓈ
I am always intrigued by books set in academic spaces, and this one offered an eye opening look at the unfortunate job market many people in academia face. I was initially very invested because I had no idea where the story was going. I tried to hold on to everything happening, but it eventually became too much and took away from getting to know the MFC as a person. I felt disconnected from her and never truly felt like I knew who she was. I think focusing more on the book written by her former advisor might have helped me connect more. I kept reading, thinking I knew how she could redeem herself for me as a reader, but the ending went in the opposite direction and left me feeling a bit betrayed, which can sometimes work, but not for me here. That said, the book did make me reflect deeply on power dynamics and the unfortunate realities present in many academic settings. There were many powerful quotes that made me feel empathetic toward the characters. Ultimately, the delivery just was not for me.

📚 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:
👩🏻‍🏫Academic setting
💪🏽MeToo themes
🫟Messy characters
💡Self discovery
👊🏼Social commentary
🗣️Unreliable narratives
🖤Dark humor
☯️Moral ambiguity

⚠️ 𝙏𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨: Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Classism.

👩🏻‍🏫𝕄𝕐 ℝ𝔸𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔾👩🏻‍🏫
⭐️⭐️💫

💕Q U O T E: “𝒲𝒽𝓎 𝒹𝒾𝒹 𝓅𝑒𝑜𝓅𝓁𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝑒? 𝒯𝑜 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝓉𝑒𝒸𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓂𝓈𝑒𝓁𝓋𝑒𝓈, 𝓉𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝒶𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔, 𝒷𝑒𝒸𝒶𝓊𝓈𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝓇𝓊𝓉𝒽 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒽𝒶𝓇𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝑜 𝒷𝑒𝒶𝓇.”

🙏 Thank you Scribner for this free ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

[Hope Stewart · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Adjunct wants very badly to be a sharp, incisive takedown of academia’s exploitative labor system. And to be fair, it absolutely understands the assignment. Adjunct life is miserable, precarious, and absurd. Unfortunately, understanding the problem is not the same as telling a compelling story about it.

The book proceeds to make its point over and over and over again. Sam is underpaid, overworked, disrespected, and spiraling. We get it. What we do not get is narrative momentum, meaningful development, or a reason to care beyond a general sense of secondhand exhaustion. Scenes pile up without building toward anything, as if the novel itself is stuck adjuncting from chapter to chapter.

By the time the ending arrives, ambiguous and self-satisfied, it feels less like a deliberate artistic choice and more like the author shrugging and walking away. Nothing resolves, nothing sharpens, and nothing lands. After all that emotional labor, the book offers no insight deeper than “this system is bad,” which is true, but also not exactly revelatory.

There are flashes of wit and moments that hint at what this book could have been. Sadly, they are buried under repetition, navel-gazing, and a plot that refuses to do the bare minimum. In the end, The Adjunct feels like a novel that mistakes inertia for depth and misery for meaning.

Bottom line: Yes, academia is broken. No, this book did not need to be.

[timeforthecheck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Scribner via NetGalley for the ARC.

“I liked words. I like them as if they were objects, trinkets, or iridescent pearls that shone different colors in different lights. I liked how when strung together the whole hit you before the parts. I liked when sentence stuck in me like a barbed thorn.”

If I had to sum up my feelings on this book, it’s the above quote. The Adjunct really takes a mirror to society and the fields that shape our culture and thoughts and straight up puts them on blast. And I ate it up.

The characters, the stage, the pretentious asshole of a published professor in this are incredibly realistic. They are so realistic that you just want to yell into a pillow because everyone and everything is so screwed up.

You’ll see these characters working numerous jobs to make ends meet, sacrifice their morals and ethics because they have to make ends meet. You’ll see others talk a big game and moral grandstand but go home and do nothing because it doesn’t impact them.

It’s more than just a professor writing his “experience” and version of a fictional story. Although, we do talk about his book a bit; Maria Adelmann really expands on her messaging. This book is bleak, sad, tense, frustrating (seriously, screw you Tom), but spitefully passionate and hopeful.

I would highly recommend this.

“The thing about rock bottom is nothing’s a gamble. You can’t lose what you already lost.”

[Janna Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just... wanted so much more from this book. The premise is incredibly important and one I relate to - I got a PhD in the humanities, I currently work in academia, I was an adjunct, and I know how terrible the job market is. How undervalued adjuncts are, how grossly underpaid, how little students truly know that their professors are struggling to make ends meet, the myth of higher education, etc.

I was interested in the ""new"" take on MeToo this book worked to present, but my god was it an underbaked argument in the midst of the 9000 different things that the author attempted to argue (and in my opinion, poorly). Too much happened in very little time. Themes seemed under-explored because they were cycled through receptively, and quickly. There was so much word-space dedicated to... the setting. The environment. Or describing a product, that it made for a slow read that seemed never-ending. I also hate when books attempt to be increasingly vague at some parts, and then lay out their arguments SPECIFICALLY as if giving the reader a lecture (the author did this frequently regarding some contemporary political issues, or the economy. There were other ways to make these points). It made for a disjointed read.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

What starts out as an amusing take on the campus novel slowly morphs into a biting critique of the academic establishment as it exploits cheap labor of adjunct lecturers. The protagonist, Sam, is thirty-four, a PhD, and is still scrambling for jobs semester after semester as she seeks full-time employment. This could have been little more than a didactic lecture about inequity. But the book's exploration of nuance in tricky situations like professor/student relationships, how or whether to employ consent in all sexual interactions, the stark reality of having crushing student deb, no safety net, and indifferent superiors, along with an imperfect main character who doesn't seem to know herself at all, creates a compelling story.

When I started this novel, I thought of it as a new version of Lily King's Writers and Lovers. But that comparison isn't correct. Sam is her own character, desperate and lonely, but also a caring, thoughtful teacher. She's smart and funny but also so unhappy and unsure. It's a campus novel, after all, that isn't shy about showing the cracks in an antiquated higher education machine unwilling to protect its most vulnerable workers.

As much as I liked reading this novel, the ending did not land for me.

[Andrew Langert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this novel through NetGalley.

This is about and narrated by Sam, an adjunct college professor in the Baltimore area. She has a PhD, but is only work as an adjunct at two different colleges, teaching two classes at each. Adjuncts get a minimal amount of pay, so Sam can’t afford her own apartment and sleeps on a couch at someone else’s place. A theme of this book is the trend developing of a big economy, where people don’t have traditional jobs, traditional pay and benefits or any kind of job security.

The book is written as sort of a stream of consciousness. You learn every thought that is going through Sam’s head. She is single, but is tainted by the belief of many that she had an affair with an older (and married) professor when she was a graduate student, ultimately causing the professor to lose his job and end his marriage. The professor has just come out with a novel, supposedly fictional but more likely autobiographical, in which his main character is a professor with a similar story as his own.

The book has a sad tone. Sam is a loner, seemingly living life without a purpose.