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Offseason
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Expected 5 May 26A blisteringly funny and transcendently deranged debut novel following a young woman who takes a job at an all-girls boarding school in a small coastal town to teach English literature—and to try, desperately, to escape the trap that is herself.
In Avigayl Sharp’s brilliant and bold debut novel, Offseason, our fiercely observant but self-deluded narrator finds herself teaching at an all-girls boarding school on the Eastern Seaboard. In between manic lectures that veer from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House to the childhood maltreatment of her beloved Iosif Stalin and the generational legacy of the Holocaust, she consorts and canoodles with the town’s locals—including the possibly disgraced male teacher whose job she’s taken over—implicating everyone she meets in her obsessive quest to pin down where, exactly, her own life went wrong.
Though she's vowed never to return to her hometown in the middle of the country, the holiday season sends her careening back into the orbit of her overbearing, maladjusted family. Drunk at a bar on the frigid afternoon of the seventh night of Chanukah, she encounters the figure from her adolescence who may or may not be responsible for violating her, bringing her down, and ruining her life. The past collides with the present—but catharsis and closure are nowhere to be found. Not at the bar. Not in her childhood home. And certainly not in the unruly spirals of her mind.
Serious yet irreverent with a delirious velocity, Offseason reimagines the conversation around trauma while reckoning with the doomed project of “speaking your truth,” the compulsion to repeat, and whether we can be transformed by art and love.
In Avigayl Sharp’s brilliant and bold debut novel, Offseason, our fiercely observant but self-deluded narrator finds herself teaching at an all-girls boarding school on the Eastern Seaboard. In between manic lectures that veer from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House to the childhood maltreatment of her beloved Iosif Stalin and the generational legacy of the Holocaust, she consorts and canoodles with the town’s locals—including the possibly disgraced male teacher whose job she’s taken over—implicating everyone she meets in her obsessive quest to pin down where, exactly, her own life went wrong.
Though she's vowed never to return to her hometown in the middle of the country, the holiday season sends her careening back into the orbit of her overbearing, maladjusted family. Drunk at a bar on the frigid afternoon of the seventh night of Chanukah, she encounters the figure from her adolescence who may or may not be responsible for violating her, bringing her down, and ruining her life. The past collides with the present—but catharsis and closure are nowhere to be found. Not at the bar. Not in her childhood home. And certainly not in the unruly spirals of her mind.
Serious yet irreverent with a delirious velocity, Offseason reimagines the conversation around trauma while reckoning with the doomed project of “speaking your truth,” the compulsion to repeat, and whether we can be transformed by art and love.
304 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication May 5, 2026
1786 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
December 9, 2025
Offseason is one of those rare novels that grabs you instantly and doesn’t let go. I flew through it. Not just because the writing is sharp and propulsive, but because the protagonist is so bizarrely, brilliantly herself.
The story follows a young woman who moves to a small town on the Eastern Seaboard for a short-term teaching job at a private academy. Instead of the fresh start she imagines, the isolation and strangeness of the off-season campus push her deeper into her own obsessive inner world. She fixates on the Holocaust, her family’s knot of trans-generational trauma, Stalin, pedophiles - dark, thorny subjects that in another novel might weigh things down. Here, they become part of a voice so incisive and unexpectedly funny that I found myself laughing out loud at moments that should, by all logic, be grim.
What I loved most is how the book balances emotional discomfort with wicked humor. Her intellectual rabbit holes don’t feel like quirks for color, they’re the exact machinery through which she tries (and often fails) to make sense of her own anxiety, history, and desire. It’s unsettling, illuminating, and deeply human.
The pacing is electric, the voice unforgettable, and the blend of seriousness and comedy is pulled off with a precision that feels effortless. I finished it wishing I could read it again for the first time.
If you like fiction that’s strange, smart, unflinching, and genuinely funny, Offseason is a knockout.
5⭐️
Thanks to NetGalley and Astra House for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
The story follows a young woman who moves to a small town on the Eastern Seaboard for a short-term teaching job at a private academy. Instead of the fresh start she imagines, the isolation and strangeness of the off-season campus push her deeper into her own obsessive inner world. She fixates on the Holocaust, her family’s knot of trans-generational trauma, Stalin, pedophiles - dark, thorny subjects that in another novel might weigh things down. Here, they become part of a voice so incisive and unexpectedly funny that I found myself laughing out loud at moments that should, by all logic, be grim.
What I loved most is how the book balances emotional discomfort with wicked humor. Her intellectual rabbit holes don’t feel like quirks for color, they’re the exact machinery through which she tries (and often fails) to make sense of her own anxiety, history, and desire. It’s unsettling, illuminating, and deeply human.
The pacing is electric, the voice unforgettable, and the blend of seriousness and comedy is pulled off with a precision that feels effortless. I finished it wishing I could read it again for the first time.
If you like fiction that’s strange, smart, unflinching, and genuinely funny, Offseason is a knockout.
5⭐️
Thanks to NetGalley and Astra House for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
November 15, 2025
Thanks to Netgalley and Astra House for the ebook. We follow a young woman who gets a last minute gig to teach at an all girls school in New England. In a time where you would never make students read a long novel, she assigns Dicken’s nearly thousand page Bleak House (one student later asks her, Can’t you tell we’re just pretending to have read it?). And then while teaching she constantly talks about pedophiles, the miserable upbringing of Stalin, who is a favorite of hers, and her family’s personal history of the Holocaust. She’s such a fascinating character. She seems to enjoy talking to one of the town’s transients, who never remembers her later, than anyone else. She thinks the teacher she’s replacing for the year may have had an inappropriate relationship with one of the students and then starts an affair with him. She swears she’ll never go home again and then goes home Christmas break and goes out to a bar and starts making out with a childhood acquaintance who she says abused her and ruined her life. It’s not always clear what to believe, but it’s amazing to be in her head as she’s constantly full of praise and apologies to everyone she meets, but so blisteringly mean and inappropriate in her thoughts.
February 27, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley, Astra Publishing House, and Avigayle Sharp for my very first ARC!
I loved this book. It won’t be for everyone — and that’s fine. It’s one of those “nothing happens” in a dramatic sense, but somehow everything happens, you know? The action is almost entirely internal.
The main character has a somewhat romantic obsession with a young, 'misunderstood' Joseph (I mean Iosif) Stalin. She's worried about her possibly depressed psychiatrist offing himself. She constantly spirals into strange, funny internal monologues about important things and also things that are not. (Who knew people could be so passionate about the different kinds of -philes?)
Hilarious, witty, brilliant. Offseason is entertaining, beautifully written, and deep. Amazing debut! One of my favorites to kick off 2026.
TL:DR - funny, absurd, self-aware, very original. If you like Fleabag you'll love this.
I loved this book. It won’t be for everyone — and that’s fine. It’s one of those “nothing happens” in a dramatic sense, but somehow everything happens, you know? The action is almost entirely internal.
The main character has a somewhat romantic obsession with a young, 'misunderstood' Joseph (I mean Iosif) Stalin. She's worried about her possibly depressed psychiatrist offing himself. She constantly spirals into strange, funny internal monologues about important things and also things that are not. (Who knew people could be so passionate about the different kinds of -philes?)
Hilarious, witty, brilliant. Offseason is entertaining, beautifully written, and deep. Amazing debut! One of my favorites to kick off 2026.
TL:DR - funny, absurd, self-aware, very original. If you like Fleabag you'll love this.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This book was All Fours by Miranda July meets The Coin by Yasmin Zaher, perfect for lovers of girl-messes in literature. I really enjoyed this book. It's one that you really have to give your full attention to in order to fully sink into the prose, brilliantly written by Avigayl Sharp. The novel is very humorous in a way where you're not entirely sure if you should be laughing, but the ridiculousness of everything out of the FMC's mouth had me chuckling out loud several times. I especially think Sharp excels at writing when her characters are telling anecdotes to each other- these stories within the main narrative structure are insane and take so many strange turns. I would definitely recommend this to lovers of weird women in fiction.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Want to read
January 23, 2026Everyone is raving... I fear I am too easily influenced
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February 16, 2026
The Fiona DG Story
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I went into Offseason expecting dark wit and sharp insight. What I got was 300+ pages trapped inside the head of one of the most insufferable narrators I’ve read in a while.
The premise had promise: a woman takes a teaching job at an all-girls boarding school while unraveling her past. But any momentum the story might have had is buried under an avalanche of self-important, awkward, and relentlessly self-referential inner monologue. We never get a break from her “observations,” which say far more about her limitations than about the world around her.
She has textbook main character syndrome. Every interaction bends back toward her. Every event becomes proof of her own depth, trauma, or intellectual superiority. Her references and philosophical tangents feel less like insight and more like someone trying very hard to sound profound. Instead of layered commentary, we get circular navel-gazing.
The tone seems to aim for dark comedy, but the humor never lands. Scenes that feel designed to be biting or absurd come across as flat and uncomfortable. Instead of sharp satire, it reads as self-pity dressed up as wit. What was supposed to be funny just felt sad. Not devastating in a purposeful way. Just small, claustrophobic, and emotionally stagnant.
What frustrated me most is how narrow her worldview is. She has limited experience, which is fine in itself, but she has turned that limitation into a rigid, self-affirming worldview. There’s no curiosity, no real expansion, no genuine reckoning. Just repetition. The same emotional beats. The same self-mythologizing. Over and over.
A biting, self-aware narrator can be electric. This one is exhausting. By the end, I didn’t dislike the plot so much as I resented the constant confinement inside her head.
There’s probably a reader who will find this voice razor sharp and daring. I mostly found it grating.
The premise had promise: a woman takes a teaching job at an all-girls boarding school while unraveling her past. But any momentum the story might have had is buried under an avalanche of self-important, awkward, and relentlessly self-referential inner monologue. We never get a break from her “observations,” which say far more about her limitations than about the world around her.
She has textbook main character syndrome. Every interaction bends back toward her. Every event becomes proof of her own depth, trauma, or intellectual superiority. Her references and philosophical tangents feel less like insight and more like someone trying very hard to sound profound. Instead of layered commentary, we get circular navel-gazing.
The tone seems to aim for dark comedy, but the humor never lands. Scenes that feel designed to be biting or absurd come across as flat and uncomfortable. Instead of sharp satire, it reads as self-pity dressed up as wit. What was supposed to be funny just felt sad. Not devastating in a purposeful way. Just small, claustrophobic, and emotionally stagnant.
What frustrated me most is how narrow her worldview is. She has limited experience, which is fine in itself, but she has turned that limitation into a rigid, self-affirming worldview. There’s no curiosity, no real expansion, no genuine reckoning. Just repetition. The same emotional beats. The same self-mythologizing. Over and over.
A biting, self-aware narrator can be electric. This one is exhausting. By the end, I didn’t dislike the plot so much as I resented the constant confinement inside her head.
There’s probably a reader who will find this voice razor sharp and daring. I mostly found it grating.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Offseason, aptly named for its narrative taking place during a tourist town’s offseason, is about our narrator and main character, a grating and self concerned young woman, who has recently moved out of her parents house to take a job teaching at an all-girls boarding school in the east of The United States, in an isolated small town near the sea. Our protagonist is quite overtly unlikable but in an intriguing sense, similar to the main characters of novels like “Pizza Girl” or the soon to be released “Just Watch Me”; She is forceful with her hyperfixations, weirdly forward with her own lore, and really just gets through her life and her job in increasingly impulsive and unpredictable ways on her journey to come to terms with herself and her own history. I found the writing to be very promising for a debut novel, lots of collectible clever lines, a meandering but not dragging narrative, and enough sudden unsettling inserts to keep things interesting, albeit a little nasty. The ARC copy I read definitely had a lot of formatting issues (missing spaces, dashes, unneeded step downs), but otherwise felt balanced in chapter length and pace. Our protagonist’s unorthodox interests and hyperfixations, though often coming across as overly quirky, at other times, primarily in her obsession with the novel “Bleak House”, were an interesting tool to explore our characters own cognition of her pock-holed memory and trauma. Overall, despite its tendency to often fall into the literary ditch of “overtly unlikable women” so topical these days (common in Moshfegh, Awad, and Broder, etc.), I found this novel to be a promising debut that I think a lot of literary fiction fans, especially women who read primarily litfic, will eat up for sure and find decently poignant.
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January 23, 2026*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.*
Offseason follows a woman as she teaches at an all-girls boarding school. She teaches her students about Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and talks to the town’s locals. Her family history was shaped by the Holocaust and she frequently ruminates about Iosif (Joseph) Stalin. She goes back to her hometown where she encounters someone who may have violated her when she was an adolescent. Her mind spirals when the past collides with the present and closure is nowhere to be found.
This was okay, it had a strong start but then I did start to lose interest. The writing was a little stilted but this was different from all the other lit fic novels like this due to the characters background. Honestly, I don’t think this will be very memorable but I would still recommend this. The writing reminded me of the book The Coin by Yasmin Zaher.
This is an example of the writing - I had told him that my mother used too much soap on my vagina when I was a child with no concern for the delicacy of my vaginal pH, that my mother’s and sister’s beauty had been difficult for me to bear, that I had not been breast fed, that I could not remember ever having witnessed a primal scene but did recall once walking into the bathroom and encountering my mother’s mountainous pubic hair corkscrewing over the toilet, which stimulated and frightened me.
Offseason follows a woman as she teaches at an all-girls boarding school. She teaches her students about Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and talks to the town’s locals. Her family history was shaped by the Holocaust and she frequently ruminates about Iosif (Joseph) Stalin. She goes back to her hometown where she encounters someone who may have violated her when she was an adolescent. Her mind spirals when the past collides with the present and closure is nowhere to be found.
This was okay, it had a strong start but then I did start to lose interest. The writing was a little stilted but this was different from all the other lit fic novels like this due to the characters background. Honestly, I don’t think this will be very memorable but I would still recommend this. The writing reminded me of the book The Coin by Yasmin Zaher.
This is an example of the writing - I had told him that my mother used too much soap on my vagina when I was a child with no concern for the delicacy of my vaginal pH, that my mother’s and sister’s beauty had been difficult for me to bear, that I had not been breast fed, that I could not remember ever having witnessed a primal scene but did recall once walking into the bathroom and encountering my mother’s mountainous pubic hair corkscrewing over the toilet, which stimulated and frightened me.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This was brilliant. I love when main characters make strange observations or reveal their truest, weirdest selves to us as readers. It feels as if we’re inhabiting them for a while, experiencing every odd thought and uncomfortable feeling right alongside them. The MC is written almost like an otherworldly being, much like the characters in Yorgos Lanthimos’s films, who behave as if they’re otherworldly themselves, trying to blend into human life. Offseason is a hilarious and introspective debut that reminded me a lot of the works of authors such as Ottessa Moshfegh, Halle Butler and Melissa Broder, especially in the way the characters evolve and deliver their inner monologues. There’s a similar sense of grossness, taboo thoughts, and unfiltered behaviour. It’s awkwardly funny, almost absurdist. Offseason was delightfully unhinged, yet dreamy and thoughtful at the same time. I wholeheartedly enjoyed this and inhaled it in two sittings! I look forward to read more from Avigayl Sharp In the future.
Thanks so much to Astra House for providing my review copy in exchange for an honest review. This is definitely up there in my all-time favourite reads of 2025.
Thanks so much to Astra House for providing my review copy in exchange for an honest review. This is definitely up there in my all-time favourite reads of 2025.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
What is "Offseason" aiming for? Seemingly to imitate how Ottessa Moshfegh and co were writing ten years ago. Isn't this style a bit out of fashion now? Maybe not. For my part, I found this book's voice grating rather than electrifying. The manic, hyper-articulate narrator --ricocheting between literary references and personal trauma -- feels too indebted to writers like the aforementioned Moshfegh, and what once might have seemed daring now reads as predictable. The humor is abrasive without being especially fresh, and the relentless irony flattens moments that should land with emotional force. Too performative for me.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A somewhat inaccessible novel about a frustrating woman teaching for a year at a girls boarding school. The official description describes it as “deranged” but I almost feel it wasn’t deranged enough!
Our unnamed narrator had a chaotic brain and following her trains of thoughts can often be hard, but I did enjoy the humor that shone through her somewhat manic episodes. There isn’t much of a plot, just her dealing with her strange family, sexual politics on campus, and teaching Bleak House to a ton of high school girls who couldn’t care less. It’s definitely a vibe, I just didn’t really vibe with it myself.
Our unnamed narrator had a chaotic brain and following her trains of thoughts can often be hard, but I did enjoy the humor that shone through her somewhat manic episodes. There isn’t much of a plot, just her dealing with her strange family, sexual politics on campus, and teaching Bleak House to a ton of high school girls who couldn’t care less. It’s definitely a vibe, I just didn’t really vibe with it myself.
January 2, 2026
Unfortunately, this book was not for me. Even after completing the novel, I couldn't tell you the clear plot. I am not sure if it is my ADHD or if the book was just so sporadic, but I could not follow it at all. I kept feeling as if I was missing key information vital to the plot. The book follows the thoughts of a teacher who moved away from her family to teach at an all-girls academy. She returns to her family home over winter break, but the main character's thoughts were so sporadic and all over the place that I felt like I was getting whiplash.
Thank you, Netgalley, for an ARC.
Thank you, Netgalley, for an ARC.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Huge thanks to NetGalley and Astra House for the ARC! To be honest, this one just wasn't for me. I really liked the writing style and getting to see inside the narrator's head, but I couldn't get into the main character. Between the constant mentions of Stalin and the weird study habits, She just weren't very likable or convincing as a teacher. There were also quite a few typos that still need to be cleaned up. Thanks again for the opportunity
January 12, 2026
I just wasn’t the audience for this book. I finished it but I couldn’t really tell you what it was about or what even happened. It was repetitive and scattered and I couldn’t keep up or stay very focused. I didn’t like any of the characters. The main character’s introspective thoughts made me feel claustrophobic. Again, I just wasn’t the audience for it. 1.5 but I rounded it up to 2
Read
October 23, 2025Really not for me, but I see the appeal. The narration is really interesting insular and isolated and that’s also reflected in how they perceive the world, which is cool. Not really dark academia vibes if that’s important to you. Dark New England vibes for sure though.
tbr-arc
November 4, 2025i do have a thing for debut novels talking about literature
*thank you to Astra House for the ARC*
*thank you to Astra House for the ARC*
Review of advance copy
"Anything, I thought, repeated enough times could become a kind of comfort. That was the whole problem."
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
(1.5/5)
eARC provided by Netgalley in exhange for an honest review.
I've recently read Sharp's short stories, and enjoyed most of them, which was what motivated me to request this arc. It's interesting to see how her favorite themes web and evolve through her writing. This novel has quite a few similarities to her other work, but where before the narrative flowed well and seemed consistent and realistic, Offseason crashes and burns.
I tried my best to give this a fair chance, even as I've slowly become disillusioned with what people call "Sad Girl Literature." I think that's a disgusting term, but I can't think of another thing to call this subgenre that, by all regards, Sharp fits perfectly well into. Offseason has themes that I've become familiar with after reading Moshfegh, Broder, and other contemporaries. But Sharp lacks the imagination and refinement to make them work. There is no subtlety in this book. One or two passages are funny, some function appropriately well as character development, but none of it is really convincing, and none of it sticks. The narrator is a simple compilation of edgy traits that are meant to portray her loss of seemingly every mannerism and opinion a normal human being would have, but it is so extreme that she becomes a caricature of herself.
Being inside her head is exhausting. For a long time I couldn't read more than a page without sighing and closing my kindle. Think of the most negative and cynical person you know: I imagine this is what the inside of their head must sound like, and it is harrowing to be in it.
But it's not just that's the narrator is fatalistic—it's that everything about this book seems lazy and hastily thrown together. It's got a strong concept, some interesting side characters (Thomas and Cordelia), and I think it could work in a different context, but it is a drag to read. The style is nothing impressive, and Sharp uses narrative tools which are basic and predictable. I feel like I've read this novel before, but now it's screaming in my face and banging a drum next to my ears and it won't let me rest.
No character behaves normally. Sharp exaggerates and stretches beyond the realm of belief. No action or thought process goes where it should; nothing in this really makes any kind of sense. And it's not in a unreliable narrator—drugged up daze—manic episode way. It's in the author's choice of words and sentence structures. It's seeped into the fabric of the story itself, and it's impossible to scrub clean.
eARC provided by Netgalley in exhange for an honest review.
I've recently read Sharp's short stories, and enjoyed most of them, which was what motivated me to request this arc. It's interesting to see how her favorite themes web and evolve through her writing. This novel has quite a few similarities to her other work, but where before the narrative flowed well and seemed consistent and realistic, Offseason crashes and burns.
I tried my best to give this a fair chance, even as I've slowly become disillusioned with what people call "Sad Girl Literature." I think that's a disgusting term, but I can't think of another thing to call this subgenre that, by all regards, Sharp fits perfectly well into. Offseason has themes that I've become familiar with after reading Moshfegh, Broder, and other contemporaries. But Sharp lacks the imagination and refinement to make them work. There is no subtlety in this book. One or two passages are funny, some function appropriately well as character development, but none of it is really convincing, and none of it sticks. The narrator is a simple compilation of edgy traits that are meant to portray her loss of seemingly every mannerism and opinion a normal human being would have, but it is so extreme that she becomes a caricature of herself.
Being inside her head is exhausting. For a long time I couldn't read more than a page without sighing and closing my kindle. Think of the most negative and cynical person you know: I imagine this is what the inside of their head must sound like, and it is harrowing to be in it.
But it's not just that's the narrator is fatalistic—it's that everything about this book seems lazy and hastily thrown together. It's got a strong concept, some interesting side characters (Thomas and Cordelia), and I think it could work in a different context, but it is a drag to read. The style is nothing impressive, and Sharp uses narrative tools which are basic and predictable. I feel like I've read this novel before, but now it's screaming in my face and banging a drum next to my ears and it won't let me rest.
No character behaves normally. Sharp exaggerates and stretches beyond the realm of belief. No action or thought process goes where it should; nothing in this really makes any kind of sense. And it's not in a unreliable narrator—drugged up daze—manic episode way. It's in the author's choice of words and sentence structures. It's seeped into the fabric of the story itself, and it's impossible to scrub clean.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews