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The Adjunct
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?
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?
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 31, 2026
About the author
Maria Adelmann
4 books327 followersMaria 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 114 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
the wave of Reckoning With Problematic Past Relationships literature is one i’m surfing, to make a metaphor overstay its welcome.
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
October 2, 2025
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
full rtc
August 19, 2025
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.
March 18, 2026
4.5
#ad much love for my finished copy @scribnerbooks #partner
& @simon.audio #partner for the ALC
The Adjunct
< @
My Dark Vanessa meets Notes on a Scandal
Everything is temporary…
But it was just one voice, lost in the noise of many…
Adjuncts live in the margins of academia - contingent and perpetually underpaid for labor that often exceeds that of their tenured counterparts. Sam moves through this instability with a slight desperation, trying to keep herself afloat when an adjunct position is offered to her. It is not security, but it is money, so she accepts. What follows is a complex portrait of her life, unfolding in both the present and past.
🎧: Also followed along to the audio and I def recommend it. Suehyla El Attar-Young is a phenomenal narrator! I don’t think I had listened to her before, so I had to search her other books to get a little sample and damn - aren’t I glad I picked this audio as one of my picks for March! So good. Her tone and pitch were perfect; you can feel the emotion pour out of her. Fabulous, truly fabulous. Sick person sniffs and drunk voices were hilarious.
I loved the academia setting and how it’s examined under the lens of a feminist standpoint. Sam is high up there with some of my favorite characters. You feel empathy for her and her struggles, they feel intimate and relatable. This book went much deeper than I originally thought it was going to.
I was especially drawn to the intellectual arguments - both inside the classroom and out - where multiple perspectives are given space and thought and are throughly explored. I loved how issues of our times meets this book where it is, examining other major works of art. The geek in me was geeking. (Works Quoted section purely amazing.)
The only thing I didn’t like was how much sex was a part of the book .. just not my thing, but I get why it’s part of the book. The chapters are so long (which is just a mental thing for me) but you just keep reading not really noticing until you want to take a pause and realize there’s 20 more pages. There are breaks in the chapters tho, so that helped.
Mem
Trying to find a class your first day on campus 😂 legit
Bruised tailbone - omgggg they suck. I got in an argument with a teacher in 8th grade because he wanted me to sit down. I refused. It fking hurt! (For months) I won obv - no one tells me anything (stubborn af)
Neighborhood straight from The Purge 😂
The nicknames for the students
Drunk voice from narrator
That damn tooth!
Final Thoughts:
I’m so tired of men ruining .. RUINING women. In every sense.
Covers now
Racism
Sexism
MeToo
#ad much love for my finished copy @scribnerbooks #partner
& @simon.audio #partner for the ALC
The Adjunct
< @
My Dark Vanessa meets Notes on a Scandal
Everything is temporary…
But it was just one voice, lost in the noise of many…
Adjuncts live in the margins of academia - contingent and perpetually underpaid for labor that often exceeds that of their tenured counterparts. Sam moves through this instability with a slight desperation, trying to keep herself afloat when an adjunct position is offered to her. It is not security, but it is money, so she accepts. What follows is a complex portrait of her life, unfolding in both the present and past.
🎧: Also followed along to the audio and I def recommend it. Suehyla El Attar-Young is a phenomenal narrator! I don’t think I had listened to her before, so I had to search her other books to get a little sample and damn - aren’t I glad I picked this audio as one of my picks for March! So good. Her tone and pitch were perfect; you can feel the emotion pour out of her. Fabulous, truly fabulous. Sick person sniffs and drunk voices were hilarious.
I loved the academia setting and how it’s examined under the lens of a feminist standpoint. Sam is high up there with some of my favorite characters. You feel empathy for her and her struggles, they feel intimate and relatable. This book went much deeper than I originally thought it was going to.
I was especially drawn to the intellectual arguments - both inside the classroom and out - where multiple perspectives are given space and thought and are throughly explored. I loved how issues of our times meets this book where it is, examining other major works of art. The geek in me was geeking. (Works Quoted section purely amazing.)
The only thing I didn’t like was how much sex was a part of the book .. just not my thing, but I get why it’s part of the book. The chapters are so long (which is just a mental thing for me) but you just keep reading not really noticing until you want to take a pause and realize there’s 20 more pages. There are breaks in the chapters tho, so that helped.
Mem
Trying to find a class your first day on campus 😂 legit
Bruised tailbone - omgggg they suck. I got in an argument with a teacher in 8th grade because he wanted me to sit down. I refused. It fking hurt! (For months) I won obv - no one tells me anything (stubborn af)
Neighborhood straight from The Purge 😂
The nicknames for the students
Drunk voice from narrator
That damn tooth!
Final Thoughts:
I’m so tired of men ruining .. RUINING women. In every sense.
Covers now
Racism
Sexism
MeToo
March 31, 2026
I was fully prepared to give this a higher rating; even though it was a downer of a read most of the way through, and parts of it were well written... except that ending just pissed me off.
I also believe this author, unlike a lot of academics writing novels about the working class, has actually experienced poverty, and the authenticity shone through in this tale of the plight of the adjunct and the ever dwindling state of her bank account and tenuous relationships. So it's a shame this really didn't work for me because it was wasted potential. The author does have a voice, even if it's a depressing one.
I went into this hoping for a dark satirical campus novel from the female gaze, unlike so many of the masculine campus novels out there. I think if there had been any satire in this at all, it would have been an improvement, but there was nothing, not even a sarcastic lilt, just the mind-numbing tedium of a spiral into homelessness and destitution.
The worst part was that desperate, looking for a place to sleep, the protagonist Sam ends up with the smarmy professor who used her and lied about their romantic entanglement for his book, telling everyone she was a desperate stalker who slept with him after coming across his sex toys on a house sitting gig and lodging a complaint against him that ruined him, when he was the one who ruined her. I guess I get it given her circumstances but the ending had not a glimmer of hope that anything would change for her.
Then don't get me started on her questioning her sexuality. This woman is what, 27? But she acts like she's 12 and having sex for the first time. I mean I get it, I'm demisexual and I didn't have sex or relationships until I was 25 because debilitating crushes made it hard to date, and I didn't realize I was bi until I was 30, so I was hoping to see some of my experiences reflected here. But she just acted like a teenager who used people and couldn't figure out what she wanted other than to be wanted. I couldn't relate to her motivations.
A lot of good ideas were here, and I'd try other books by this author, but the ending just ruined an already dark and hopeless book for me. I don't mind reading about depressing topics and think literary fiction is the perfect vehicle for them, but damn, this was so depressing that I wanted to go back to reality and that's depressing enough these days. I really wanted Sam to change and she just spiraled into a never ending doom dungeon.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I also believe this author, unlike a lot of academics writing novels about the working class, has actually experienced poverty, and the authenticity shone through in this tale of the plight of the adjunct and the ever dwindling state of her bank account and tenuous relationships. So it's a shame this really didn't work for me because it was wasted potential. The author does have a voice, even if it's a depressing one.
I went into this hoping for a dark satirical campus novel from the female gaze, unlike so many of the masculine campus novels out there. I think if there had been any satire in this at all, it would have been an improvement, but there was nothing, not even a sarcastic lilt, just the mind-numbing tedium of a spiral into homelessness and destitution.
The worst part was that desperate, looking for a place to sleep, the protagonist Sam ends up with the smarmy professor who used her and lied about their romantic entanglement for his book, telling everyone she was a desperate stalker who slept with him after coming across his sex toys on a house sitting gig and lodging a complaint against him that ruined him, when he was the one who ruined her. I guess I get it given her circumstances but the ending had not a glimmer of hope that anything would change for her.
Then don't get me started on her questioning her sexuality. This woman is what, 27? But she acts like she's 12 and having sex for the first time. I mean I get it, I'm demisexual and I didn't have sex or relationships until I was 25 because debilitating crushes made it hard to date, and I didn't realize I was bi until I was 30, so I was hoping to see some of my experiences reflected here. But she just acted like a teenager who used people and couldn't figure out what she wanted other than to be wanted. I couldn't relate to her motivations.
A lot of good ideas were here, and I'd try other books by this author, but the ending just ruined an already dark and hopeless book for me. I don't mind reading about depressing topics and think literary fiction is the perfect vehicle for them, but damn, this was so depressing that I wanted to go back to reality and that's depressing enough these days. I really wanted Sam to change and she just spiraled into a never ending doom dungeon.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 21, 2025
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.
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.
Read
February 22, 2026Thank 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.
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.
April 3, 2026
As a PhD candidate, I feel that everything that needed to be said has already been said. This book hit me hard…
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
**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?
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?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 9, 2026
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).
April 14, 2026
4 stars. I love a pathetic main character, so what? The office, but in academia format. I found this as charming and witty as I did sad. Sam, an adjunct professor faces life problem after life problem. Her past is thrown in her face and she starts to spiral HARD. It’s one of those endings that you are either gonna love, or you are gonna hate and it’s gonna make you not like the book. As always, thank you Scribner for the earc!
September 18, 2025
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.
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.
August 29, 2025
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.
Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC.
Read
February 21, 2026Well, 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.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 14, 2025
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
September 15, 2025
will forever think about this ending !!
(also prevented me from thinking about applying to PhD programs ((again)) thank you for your service)
(also prevented me from thinking about applying to PhD programs ((again)) thank you for your service)
March 17, 2026
Is it a campus novel? Is it literary fiction? Sure, but it’s mostly—surprise!—a horror story.
As if academia didn’t have enough problems: Your favorite professor might be eating parfaits out of the garbage and sleeping under her desk.
This book is kind of the apex predator of campus novels that skewer campus novels, but more importantly, it’s a horrifying indictment of working in higher education and really, of the entire system.
As someone who has spent a good bit of their adult life in Academia, I was horrified to find out just how bad things are for those at the lower end of the teaching hierarchy. It’s not that I wasn’t aware of the issue that there is often a huge pay gap between a tenured professor and an adjunct teaching the exact same class. It’s the degree to which this is true that shocked me.
We teach people that education is the surest way out of poverty, but oh, what to say when a woman with a PhD winds up not just destitute but literally unhoused because she wants to—gasp—use her degree to actually teach?
My heart broke for Sam over and over again, but what really got me was this:
“I put my head down, didn’t make many friends. It was lost on me that the crux of the whole thing was connections. How naive: what I liked about school was school.”
You can argue, I suppose, that no one has ever had worse luck than this woman, who was kind of behind the proverbial eight ball from the start. But it’s alarmingly to see how easily she slid to where she ends up at the end of the novel. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions as much here as anywhere else, but the old cliche conveniently doesn’t mention that sometimes it’s being at the mercy of others’ intentions that really does you in.
The secondary characters here really serve the narrative well. Sam’s homophobic family, creepy and undisciplined charmer Tom, patriarchal handmaiden Aliana, and perhaps most intriguing, Sophie.
She’s a really fascinating character, abhorrent but often not wrong in what she believes. She’s a type though, and one you’ll frequently see around academic settings: The anti capitalist fantasist with a solid enough safety net to be self righteous but too little self awareness to recognize her own privilege.
No one has more unreasonable expectations for the poor than people who like to cosplay poverty. In a way this makes Sophie a huge villain in Sam’s story, even though much of what she says isn’t t wrong and she’s not directly responsible for any of the things that have befallen Sam.
I loved Maria Adelmann’s How to Be Eaten, but I think I loved this one even more. Truly an epic and necessary gut punch to the Ivory Tower, and a beautiful and exceptionally thoughtful piece of writing.
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
As if academia didn’t have enough problems: Your favorite professor might be eating parfaits out of the garbage and sleeping under her desk.
This book is kind of the apex predator of campus novels that skewer campus novels, but more importantly, it’s a horrifying indictment of working in higher education and really, of the entire system.
As someone who has spent a good bit of their adult life in Academia, I was horrified to find out just how bad things are for those at the lower end of the teaching hierarchy. It’s not that I wasn’t aware of the issue that there is often a huge pay gap between a tenured professor and an adjunct teaching the exact same class. It’s the degree to which this is true that shocked me.
We teach people that education is the surest way out of poverty, but oh, what to say when a woman with a PhD winds up not just destitute but literally unhoused because she wants to—gasp—use her degree to actually teach?
My heart broke for Sam over and over again, but what really got me was this:
“I put my head down, didn’t make many friends. It was lost on me that the crux of the whole thing was connections. How naive: what I liked about school was school.”
You can argue, I suppose, that no one has ever had worse luck than this woman, who was kind of behind the proverbial eight ball from the start. But it’s alarmingly to see how easily she slid to where she ends up at the end of the novel. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions as much here as anywhere else, but the old cliche conveniently doesn’t mention that sometimes it’s being at the mercy of others’ intentions that really does you in.
The secondary characters here really serve the narrative well. Sam’s homophobic family, creepy and undisciplined charmer Tom, patriarchal handmaiden Aliana, and perhaps most intriguing, Sophie.
She’s a really fascinating character, abhorrent but often not wrong in what she believes. She’s a type though, and one you’ll frequently see around academic settings: The anti capitalist fantasist with a solid enough safety net to be self righteous but too little self awareness to recognize her own privilege.
No one has more unreasonable expectations for the poor than people who like to cosplay poverty. In a way this makes Sophie a huge villain in Sam’s story, even though much of what she says isn’t t wrong and she’s not directly responsible for any of the things that have befallen Sam.
I loved Maria Adelmann’s How to Be Eaten, but I think I loved this one even more. Truly an epic and necessary gut punch to the Ivory Tower, and a beautiful and exceptionally thoughtful piece of writing.
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
April 6, 2026
To be blunt, I read books to escape reality. I don’t mind if the struggles the main character goes through are realistic. But, if the main character does nothing, absolutely nothing, to redeem themselves, then it feels like time wasted. That’s how I feel here.
Sam starts the story miserable and ends it miserable. She doesn’t give anyone a chance. Her life is a constant struggle and instead of trying to get better and connect with those who reach out to her, she stews in her self-pity. I love an unlikeable main character, but here, I just couldn’t do it. I understand why her life is horrible, the way academia is an exploitative and capitalist institution that rarely benefits those who put in the work. There are socioeconomic factors that play a role in Sam’s life that I totally emphasize with, in fact, I love how she didn’t shy away from discussing them with the reader. But I just couldn’t help but leave this story with nothing. The author complains about academia and the plight of those in it, but we don’t leave the book with anything but disgust. The end doesn’t justify the means.
Sam spends the whole book trying to fit herself in categories based around her femininity, financial status, educational background, and sexuality; all while simultaneously dismissing how society forces us to place ourselves in these boxes. She villainizes Sophie and Gabe for doing those things and avoids any sexual or physical connection with either of them.
Oh and the whole conflict about the Professor’s book being about her never really comes to fruition. Especially toward the end. Her whole disagreement with Aliana over it felt unnecessary too.
I think I’ll give this three stars for the writing and how meta it was at times (like her class about the campus novel and how this is essentially a campus novel). But this book didn’t say anything and the character just ends up in a worse place than where they began, which isn’t fun to read in fiction. It’s exhausting.
Sam starts the story miserable and ends it miserable. She doesn’t give anyone a chance. Her life is a constant struggle and instead of trying to get better and connect with those who reach out to her, she stews in her self-pity. I love an unlikeable main character, but here, I just couldn’t do it. I understand why her life is horrible, the way academia is an exploitative and capitalist institution that rarely benefits those who put in the work. There are socioeconomic factors that play a role in Sam’s life that I totally emphasize with, in fact, I love how she didn’t shy away from discussing them with the reader. But I just couldn’t help but leave this story with nothing. The author complains about academia and the plight of those in it, but we don’t leave the book with anything but disgust. The end doesn’t justify the means.
Sam spends the whole book trying to fit herself in categories based around her femininity, financial status, educational background, and sexuality; all while simultaneously dismissing how society forces us to place ourselves in these boxes. She villainizes Sophie and Gabe for doing those things and avoids any sexual or physical connection with either of them.
Oh and the whole conflict about the Professor’s book being about her never really comes to fruition. Especially toward the end. Her whole disagreement with Aliana over it felt unnecessary too.
I think I’ll give this three stars for the writing and how meta it was at times (like her class about the campus novel and how this is essentially a campus novel). But this book didn’t say anything and the character just ends up in a worse place than where they began, which isn’t fun to read in fiction. It’s exhausting.
April 14, 2026
I initially picked this book up because of the title. I’m adjuncting for the first time this semester, but in the annoying I don’t need the money, this is just for fun type of way which is not the situation the narrator is in.
But this book far exceeded my expectations. I am going to be pondering it for quite some time. There were pages I read over and over and over again. Adelmann’s writing is sharp and visceral. For example, I can’t get this passage out of my mind. “When you were expendable, you felt expendable. Your only recourse was making a state of exception for yourself by reaching an altered state—embodiment divorced from reality—or by disassociation, reality divorced from yourself.”
The last chapter was one of the saddest, most fucked up things I have read lately (and sad, fucked up is my primary genre) because where she ends up is where so many women end up when they feel like they’ve run out of options.
But this book far exceeded my expectations. I am going to be pondering it for quite some time. There were pages I read over and over and over again. Adelmann’s writing is sharp and visceral. For example, I can’t get this passage out of my mind. “When you were expendable, you felt expendable. Your only recourse was making a state of exception for yourself by reaching an altered state—embodiment divorced from reality—or by disassociation, reality divorced from yourself.”
The last chapter was one of the saddest, most fucked up things I have read lately (and sad, fucked up is my primary genre) because where she ends up is where so many women end up when they feel like they’ve run out of options.
April 3, 2026
Well one thing’s for sure after reading this. I’m going to definitely try NOT to be an adjunct. Egads.
Sam is an adjunct literature professor for two universities and to say she is busy is a gross understatement. She’s grading, reading, lecturing, hustling, scrounging free meals, trying to stretch her meager income, applying to different professor jobs, and I’m tired just thinking about it. To throw another wrench into the plans, her former grad school advisor, Dr. Sternberg is back on campus and they have a history, which now she has to tip toe around especially since he seems to have a new book out with their said history at the center.
I swear, my tummy hurt this whole book with sympathy pains for the stress that Sam was under. And it does not let up all the way to the very last page. WHEW.
I loved that this book was so many different things all at once - a campus novel, a character study, a takedown of adjunct culture in academia, a close look at the MeToo movement, stream of consciousness, and funny observations. I usually can be wary when a book is too much, but this really all seemed to work (obvi I didn’t get a PhD in literary criticism).
The ending I think will be controversial, for sure. But honestly, it kind of tracks with the mega spiral Sam was on.
Also I started watching The Rooster on HBO around the same time I read this, which was even more collegiate vibe-y.
This was a fantastic book, especially for anyone that loves a novel set in academia, but also longs to see it be heavily critiqued.
Sam is an adjunct literature professor for two universities and to say she is busy is a gross understatement. She’s grading, reading, lecturing, hustling, scrounging free meals, trying to stretch her meager income, applying to different professor jobs, and I’m tired just thinking about it. To throw another wrench into the plans, her former grad school advisor, Dr. Sternberg is back on campus and they have a history, which now she has to tip toe around especially since he seems to have a new book out with their said history at the center.
I swear, my tummy hurt this whole book with sympathy pains for the stress that Sam was under. And it does not let up all the way to the very last page. WHEW.
I loved that this book was so many different things all at once - a campus novel, a character study, a takedown of adjunct culture in academia, a close look at the MeToo movement, stream of consciousness, and funny observations. I usually can be wary when a book is too much, but this really all seemed to work (obvi I didn’t get a PhD in literary criticism).
The ending I think will be controversial, for sure. But honestly, it kind of tracks with the mega spiral Sam was on.
Also I started watching The Rooster on HBO around the same time I read this, which was even more collegiate vibe-y.
This was a fantastic book, especially for anyone that loves a novel set in academia, but also longs to see it be heavily critiqued.
October 27, 2025
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.
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.
August 22, 2025
I loveeeeed this my god
4.5
4.5
April 10, 2026
Perhaps too realistic - a brilliantly written take on the admittedly tired trope of the horndog professor and the less tired trope of adjuct precarity.
October 23, 2025
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!
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!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
God, every day I’m glad that I decided to stop my academic career at the master’s level, and I’m even more grateful that teaching at the professorial level was never a desire of mine because man, adjuncting sounds like hell. Truly
In this novel, the main character, Sam, is an adjuncting English prof who keeps getting beaten down by life. On her first day at her new adjuncting gig, she runs into the professor with whom she had a…complicated and murky relationship. To make matters worse, he has officially published a new novel, seemingly about their dynamic, and this causes Sam a lot of stress (rightfully so). But she doesn’t have a lot of time to focus on that, what with applying for full-time positions, teaching classes, lesson planning, grading, and trying to scrape through each day. Of course, with the exploitation of adjunct professors, scraping by becomes a bigger and bigger ask as real-life problems arise.
Overall, I enjoyed the prose. I thought the author had a wonderful grasp of how to write, but I ended up becoming bogged down by exactly how much Sam ended up going through. I understand its realism, but in fiction, I want there to be one modicum of hope, of success. Something good to happen, no matter how small it may be. That just wasn’t the case here, and it reached a point where reading it became a chore instead of a pleasure. I want to add that I saw several people criticizing the ending, and honestly? I appreciated it. I think it aligned very well with Sam’s character and her goals.
Secondly, and the most minor critique I have: this felt so pretentious at times. I love books set in academia, I really do — though I may (read: probably) never return to school — but I’m slowly learning, I hate when the academia centers on the English department. Say what you will, call me what you will, but I was also under the head of my alma mater’s English department, and it was by far my least favorite of my two majors (ask anyone I was close to during that time — I repeatedly asked my advisor if I could drop the major). The characters always carry an air of pretentiousness that I haven’t read in any other campus novel, and it’s the very thing I hated about my English major in the first place.
Third, this felt simultaneously too woke and not woke enough. Much of the conflict centers on the MeToo Movement, and like real life, I suppose, the person without power in this situation was most often blamed simply because she was less gregarious. The need for nuance was stressed, but only when these characters wanted to defend their beloved professor and never at any other time. And this doesn’t change with other issues. One character comes from a privileged background but is still an adjunct and suffers from this exploitation; because of her privilege, Sam deems her perspective as less valuable. There were several conversations about the exploitation of contract labor, a very real and a very big problem across a variety of professions, and it’s both heavy-handed and dismissed. These are all real-world reactions, but the amount of times these real-world reactions occurred rubbed me the wrong way.
Finally, I will always have trouble reading books that touch on a subject like this. It’s why The Love Hypothesis will never be my favorite Ali Hazelwood book. But this novel in particular has some similarities to a situation I dealt with in my program, and it became a hard read to navigate. That’s not the author’s fault, and if anything, the author gave me words to phrase what I’ve been thinking for years. Overall, not bad, not great, and I’m not planning to read it again. 3/5
In this novel, the main character, Sam, is an adjuncting English prof who keeps getting beaten down by life. On her first day at her new adjuncting gig, she runs into the professor with whom she had a…complicated and murky relationship. To make matters worse, he has officially published a new novel, seemingly about their dynamic, and this causes Sam a lot of stress (rightfully so). But she doesn’t have a lot of time to focus on that, what with applying for full-time positions, teaching classes, lesson planning, grading, and trying to scrape through each day. Of course, with the exploitation of adjunct professors, scraping by becomes a bigger and bigger ask as real-life problems arise.
Overall, I enjoyed the prose. I thought the author had a wonderful grasp of how to write, but I ended up becoming bogged down by exactly how much Sam ended up going through. I understand its realism, but in fiction, I want there to be one modicum of hope, of success. Something good to happen, no matter how small it may be. That just wasn’t the case here, and it reached a point where reading it became a chore instead of a pleasure. I want to add that I saw several people criticizing the ending, and honestly? I appreciated it. I think it aligned very well with Sam’s character and her goals.
Secondly, and the most minor critique I have: this felt so pretentious at times. I love books set in academia, I really do — though I may (read: probably) never return to school — but I’m slowly learning, I hate when the academia centers on the English department. Say what you will, call me what you will, but I was also under the head of my alma mater’s English department, and it was by far my least favorite of my two majors (ask anyone I was close to during that time — I repeatedly asked my advisor if I could drop the major). The characters always carry an air of pretentiousness that I haven’t read in any other campus novel, and it’s the very thing I hated about my English major in the first place.
Third, this felt simultaneously too woke and not woke enough. Much of the conflict centers on the MeToo Movement, and like real life, I suppose, the person without power in this situation was most often blamed simply because she was less gregarious. The need for nuance was stressed, but only when these characters wanted to defend their beloved professor and never at any other time. And this doesn’t change with other issues. One character comes from a privileged background but is still an adjunct and suffers from this exploitation; because of her privilege, Sam deems her perspective as less valuable. There were several conversations about the exploitation of contract labor, a very real and a very big problem across a variety of professions, and it’s both heavy-handed and dismissed. These are all real-world reactions, but the amount of times these real-world reactions occurred rubbed me the wrong way.
Finally, I will always have trouble reading books that touch on a subject like this. It’s why The Love Hypothesis will never be my favorite Ali Hazelwood book. But this novel in particular has some similarities to a situation I dealt with in my program, and it became a hard read to navigate. That’s not the author’s fault, and if anything, the author gave me words to phrase what I’ve been thinking for years. Overall, not bad, not great, and I’m not planning to read it again. 3/5
April 15, 2026
Ok this is tough. I have a LOT of feelings about this book. I have worked in public and private higher education, (attended both as well) so when I picked up this book I was riveted. I compulsively read it in 2 days. The first 75% of the book was, for me, 5 stars.
Finally, I thought, someone talking about the lived experience of how fucking insane and difficult and ridiculous it is to work in education making minimum wage(or below) while totally over qualified, dealing with student debt, and having to deal with the total lack of empathy/decency from tenured profs making so much more damn money than you. Not to mention the rampant sexism, misogyny, racism, and ableism that still plagues literally every school I have ever been to, worked at, or visited. Yes! I thought. Shine a big bright fucking light on the mess that is American for profit education.
Then things went left.
At about the 75% mark the miserable, can’t catch a break, perpetual victim MC Sam starts comparing her life as an adjunct worker to people in war prisons and immigrant detention centers. The allegory she’s trying to make is that she, like them, is stuck in a weird in between space the world has made room for because of reasons. Uhhhhh, no, mama, no. From there this rapidly decreased to one or two stars for me.
I think I was hoping for some kind of resolution where she made some kind of move to reclaim the narrative of her own story being rewritten by the grossest man ever or found some solidarity/sisterhood with the many female characters in her vicinity that try to help her out and instead she just scoffs about how pretty they are or put together or whatever.
Minor spoilers ahead (I’m really trying not to). The final scene between Sam and Sophie is really really tough. Instead of thinking critically about the reasons she’s stuck in the situation she is and I don’t know, writing about it publicly, unionizing with Sophie, or anything! Sam does exactly what capitalism expects/wants/needs from her- she lashes out at the one person trying to help her bc Sam has some perceived notion that Sophie has “more money” than her, or “less debt” or something. At this point I wish the focus of the Story would have followed Sophie to the holiday party while she makes a scathing tear-down-the-system toast and goes on with her life.
Because I won’t spoil it, I think if I had to suffer through that horrible fucking phoned in bullshit ending then you should too.
I’m most frustrated because I saw where the author could have gone with this and instead she decided “what is the most horrible miserable thing I could throw at Sam/the reader/and still be able to publish this book?” And then she did that instead of giving us something elevated.
Finally, I thought, someone talking about the lived experience of how fucking insane and difficult and ridiculous it is to work in education making minimum wage(or below) while totally over qualified, dealing with student debt, and having to deal with the total lack of empathy/decency from tenured profs making so much more damn money than you. Not to mention the rampant sexism, misogyny, racism, and ableism that still plagues literally every school I have ever been to, worked at, or visited. Yes! I thought. Shine a big bright fucking light on the mess that is American for profit education.
Then things went left.
At about the 75% mark the miserable, can’t catch a break, perpetual victim MC Sam starts comparing her life as an adjunct worker to people in war prisons and immigrant detention centers. The allegory she’s trying to make is that she, like them, is stuck in a weird in between space the world has made room for because of reasons. Uhhhhh, no, mama, no. From there this rapidly decreased to one or two stars for me.
I think I was hoping for some kind of resolution where she made some kind of move to reclaim the narrative of her own story being rewritten by the grossest man ever or found some solidarity/sisterhood with the many female characters in her vicinity that try to help her out and instead she just scoffs about how pretty they are or put together or whatever.
Minor spoilers ahead (I’m really trying not to). The final scene between Sam and Sophie is really really tough. Instead of thinking critically about the reasons she’s stuck in the situation she is and I don’t know, writing about it publicly, unionizing with Sophie, or anything! Sam does exactly what capitalism expects/wants/needs from her- she lashes out at the one person trying to help her bc Sam has some perceived notion that Sophie has “more money” than her, or “less debt” or something. At this point I wish the focus of the Story would have followed Sophie to the holiday party while she makes a scathing tear-down-the-system toast and goes on with her life.
Because I won’t spoil it, I think if I had to suffer through that horrible fucking phoned in bullshit ending then you should too.
I’m most frustrated because I saw where the author could have gone with this and instead she decided “what is the most horrible miserable thing I could throw at Sam/the reader/and still be able to publish this book?” And then she did that instead of giving us something elevated.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Adelmann writes so accurately about graduate school and the reality of higher education post-2009 recession that it triggered a gut-churning level of anxiety.
The other reviews are hitting this book for seeming unrealistic in the level of misfortune of the main character, but in many ways, Sam is representative of the majority of adjuncts. Patching together a series of courses across multiple campuses (I bet the real average is higher than two), facing catastrophic health care bills and unstable housing, grasping to hold on to a vision of academia that was sold to her as overachieving undergraduate, all while making minimum payments on student loans that will follow her into retirement. The article Adelmann mentions, about the adjunct who died in her office, isn't a fabrication.
And, Adelmann is best, here, as she highlights the false class consciousness and play-acting at poverty that is rampant in academia. While the larger cast of characters may feel like a charade, it's also a painfully realistic portrayal of the realities of higher education. There's both an obvious, but underplayed, benefit of having parents with a certain level of cultural and educational capital, as well as the financial safety net of stable parents. Setting the story up in two worlds--private versus public--allows Adelmann to show how Sam has more in common with the working students who deliver her pizza than the tenured faculty down the hall.
When the book struggles is when Adelmann leans into Title IX/Me Too angles of the story. Ultimately, that set up is valuable, and does allow for the ending, which will be controversial, but that I found to be satisfying. However, it's clear that Adelmann hasn't fully settled on how she interprets the Me Too Movement, and that shows in the wishy-washy, and at times, clunky exposition on the issue. It's not that I think the book had to have a solid perspective (I'm conflicted enough about the topic to think that a conflicted ending is appropriate), but that it often felt like Sam was monologuing on the topic, at the determinant of moving the story along.
I think this book will be most enjoyed by those either in or on the fringes of academia, who will see many of their experiences reflected back at them with both a level of honesty, but also humor, for the institution. Those patching together life as a gig worker or freelance worker will be able to draw parallels to their lives, as well.
* Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review! *
The other reviews are hitting this book for seeming unrealistic in the level of misfortune of the main character, but in many ways, Sam is representative of the majority of adjuncts. Patching together a series of courses across multiple campuses (I bet the real average is higher than two), facing catastrophic health care bills and unstable housing, grasping to hold on to a vision of academia that was sold to her as overachieving undergraduate, all while making minimum payments on student loans that will follow her into retirement. The article Adelmann mentions, about the adjunct who died in her office, isn't a fabrication.
And, Adelmann is best, here, as she highlights the false class consciousness and play-acting at poverty that is rampant in academia. While the larger cast of characters may feel like a charade, it's also a painfully realistic portrayal of the realities of higher education. There's both an obvious, but underplayed, benefit of having parents with a certain level of cultural and educational capital, as well as the financial safety net of stable parents. Setting the story up in two worlds--private versus public--allows Adelmann to show how Sam has more in common with the working students who deliver her pizza than the tenured faculty down the hall.
When the book struggles is when Adelmann leans into Title IX/Me Too angles of the story. Ultimately, that set up is valuable, and does allow for the ending, which will be controversial, but that I found to be satisfying. However, it's clear that Adelmann hasn't fully settled on how she interprets the Me Too Movement, and that shows in the wishy-washy, and at times, clunky exposition on the issue. It's not that I think the book had to have a solid perspective (I'm conflicted enough about the topic to think that a conflicted ending is appropriate), but that it often felt like Sam was monologuing on the topic, at the determinant of moving the story along.
I think this book will be most enjoyed by those either in or on the fringes of academia, who will see many of their experiences reflected back at them with both a level of honesty, but also humor, for the institution. Those patching together life as a gig worker or freelance worker will be able to draw parallels to their lives, as well.
* Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review! *
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
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!
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!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“I liked words... I liked how when strung together the whole hit you before the parts”
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Thank you @scribner for my copy! On shelves 3/31. (I would be at 3.5 if I could give half stars!)
The Adjunct
Maria Adelmann
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!)
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
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.
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.
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