The Obsessed

by Lizzie Buehler

An endearingly riotous coming-of-age debut from an award-winning translator, about a young woman who maps the love plot of her favorite novel onto her life and finds herself flailing when she gets into a relationship with a fellow literary obsessive.

Astrid is obsessed with the Russian American novelist Sofiya Sova, whose life trajectory serendipitously parallels Astrid’s own and whose writing seems to encompass every anxiety that Astrid has ever had. In hopes of gaining the purpose she so desperately craves, she begins her PhD with the resolve to live off the ethos of Sofiya Sova’s novel.

But when her boyfriend, Charlie, breaks up with her and she meets a fellow Sofiya Sova obsessive named Elijah, Astrid finds herself transcribing the love plot of her favorite novel onto her own life . . . until Elijah begins to pull away and Astrid is left flailing in a life scaffolded by obsession.

A bighearted portrait of the anxieties of desire, The Obsessed explores the trials of modern dating, the strange ennui of academia, and the question of how to create a world for yourself within and without the confines of your influences. What we’re left with is a striking portrayal of how a willing reader can bring a text to life, and similarly the animating power of a good novel.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary

304 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication July 28, 2026

Reviews

[Chloe Forkerway · Rating 5 out of 5]

if i get my phd at 25, do i also have to date a 40 year old man or can i skip that part?

[Ashley ✶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not even ten pages in I could tell as an anxious older sister that Astrid’s also the anxious older sister. No one loves being in college because of the up-tight rule following more than an older sister. This maybe resonated a bit TOO much with me, and I was spiraling with Astrid for better or worse.

Thanks so much Putnam Books for this arc!

[Amani · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too many random people, too many nonsensical events, too many text formats, too many pop culture references (literally mentioned « I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much » IG story UNIRONICALLY)

Main characters is insufferable (Idc if it’s on purpose), thinks too highly of herself, is lowkey racist and stupid. The plot was plotless. The setting was boring.

Good riddance.

[Connor G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably more like 2.5. Maybe 3. I don't know, to be honest.

Very odd, kind of empty book. It's a bit slice of life and not as tense or exciting as a title like "The Obsessed" might imply. I enjoyed some of the writing. There are glimpses of a unique sense of humor and a knack for wide-eyed observation that are compelling, but between these glimpses is a lot of dull moments and tedious over-explanation.

Astrid is a bit under-developed and while I related to her at times I found her almost too easy to relate to. A young woman in a PhD program who is both naive and deeply educated falling into obsession in multiple directions sounds like a good premise for a character but she was a little too grounded. I was hoping this would have moments of going completely off the rails but it never did.

I wasn't expecting anyone to get murdered or anything, but I was hoping for a breaking point and we never got there. Instead we stay firmly on track with moments of inner monologue that hint at losing touch with reality but she always pulls herself back down, which doesn't make for a very interesting read sadly.

In addition, the tediousness often made me put this down for long stretches of time. There's a lot of writing out the minutiae of every aspect of the main character's activity at times when it isn't necessary. There's a paragraphs-long explanation of the history of an ethnic minority of Russo-Korean people that ultimately feels pointless. There are long tangents about high-level academia that don't amount to much that could be eschewed to further develop the other characters around Astrid. I felt like all of Astrid's friends that are interestingly mentioned quite a lot could all be interchangeable. And they are treated exactly that way, which adds to the feeling of emptiness the novel has.

This is a particularly odd campus novel. I think if you like that this may be worth checking out, but understand that nothing really happens. And I don't mean that in the "there are no stark plot points to make room for philosophical observations or deep character study" way, I mean that like really nothing happens. Ultimately Astrid learns a lesson about how pining after people obsessively is no way to find yourself, but by the time we got to that conclusion I thought, "Well yeah, duh. Who cares?"

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons for the e-ARC in exchange for this honest review.

[Jane ♱⃓ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to love this. I was into the idea of an obsessive woman main character but ultimately this just wasn’t for me. There really wasn’t any point of the novel I found myself fully engaged and interested. There were many tedious descriptions of college and schoolwork. The main character is pretentious yet shows signs of extreme immaturity which did annoy me at times (◞‸◟；)

Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for this ARC in exchange for an honest review

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite similar to The Idiot indeed, but for some reason I connected more with the titular obsession in this book. Relatable and readable; fun and enjoyable. Between this and my 10 year college reunion and re-watching Girls for the second time I’m doing a lot of remembering what it was like to be 23!

[mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great prose and descriptions of life within the same vein of writers like Elif Batuman (which the author herself proclaims to be someone of great inspiration to her and even bases correspondence within the novel off her own interactions with Batuman), but ultimately this ended up being an underwhelming ready. It's always interesting to me how much authors insert of themselves into their own writing, and while reading this novel I could not stop thinking about how much of the novel I felt was a self-insert of the author. Buehler does a good job at describing lived experiences, and through the perspective of a character that has obsessive tendencies, but that's about it. The narrative was about as listless as the protagonist herself and there was no real payoff by the end of the novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Remi · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is one of those novels that quietly sneaks up on you and then hits uncomfortably close to home.

i'm amazed how accurately Buehler captures the inner life of someone who loves through ideas first. Astrid is less interested in surface attraction than in what people think, read, and believe. her tendency to obsess is to research, to scroll, to believe that knowing about someone is the same as knowing them. that felt painfully familiar. the novel understands how easily shared taste can be mistaken for emotional compatibility, and how devastating it can be to learn otherwise.

at the same time, the story isn’t bleak. Astrid’s close-knit friend group provides warmth and grounding, offering a tender counterbalance to her romantic uncertainty. their friendship is one of the book’s quiet strengths, reminding readers that support and intimacy don’t only exist in romantic forms.

this is not a plot-driven novel, nor is it interested in dramatic reveals. instead, it excels at portraying the slow, disorienting realisation that obsession can hollow out rather than fulfil, and that influence can only take you so far before you have to decide who you are on your own terms.

reading The Obsessed felt like holding up a mirror: uncomfortable at times, but ultimately clarifying. It’s a novel that invites reflection, especially for readers who have ever confused intensity with connection, or longing with love.

--------

to-read:

i'll never get tired of stories about obsessive women. i just know there'll be a lot of quote-worthy lines for me.

*thank you to G.P. Putnam's Sons for the ARC*

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Novel About Wanting as a Technology: My Review of “The Obsessed” and the Modern Art of the Phantom Buzz


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

In Lizzie Buehler’s debut novel, “The Obsessed,” desire is not a flame so much as an inbox: a bright, compulsive refresh; a phantom buzz; a blue-check confirmation that arrives like absolution and then vanishes into silence. Buehler writes with the calm, overheated clarity of someone who understands that modern longing rarely declares itself in grand gestures. It announces itself in the smallest units of contemporary life – screenshots, WhatsApp threads, the sickening interval between sending a message and deciding whether to answer, the low-grade nausea that accompanies waiting for someone else’s attention to return your body to you.

Astrid Duffy, the novel’s narrator, is a first-year Harvard PhD student in comparative literature – tall, restless, and temperamentally designed to turn coincidence into cosmology. She is also a person for whom the world has become unignorable. Not in the heroic sense: more like the way a soundtrack in a café becomes unbearable once you notice it looping, or the way a room begins to tilt when you realize you have not eaten enough and your brain is burning glucose faster than your appetite can keep up. Astrid’s central affliction is not simply infatuation; it is interpretive hunger. She reads other people, texts, and fictions with the same attentiveness she brings to translation: searching for the hidden system that might explain why one person stays and another withdraws, why a story feels “fated,” why a name reappears in the world like a sign.

Buehler’s slyest move is to offer a premise that sounds, at first, like a contemporary satire of literary obsession: Astrid is fixated on a Russian American novelist, Sofiya Sova, whose work has become her private scripture. Astrid has also become weirdly fascinated by a different Sofiya – a nonfamous woman who shares Sova’s name and seems to echo Astrid in voice, body, and aura. And then, in the way that the internet has trained us to experience as both uncanny and inevitable, the world supplies connective tissue: Astrid meets Elijah, a medical student whose own fixation on Sova’s novel becomes the secret language of their intimacy. The overlap is so improbable it begins to feel scripted. Astrid, who is a scholar by training and a mythmaker by instinct, cannot help but treat the convergence as evidence that the universe is speaking in her direction.

The brilliance of “The Obsessed” is that it never mocks Astrid for believing this. Instead, Buehler shows how such belief becomes a survival tactic in an era that offers too few secular forms of meaning. Astrid’s graduate program is an engine of abstraction. Her peers are brilliant in the way that sometimes feels like self-harm – producing work “no one will ever read,” submitting intellect to professionalized futility. Her friendships are bright but fragile, each one surrounded by the ambient churn of ambition, self-help language, and the soft tyranny of productivity. Her romance with Elijah, by contrast, arrives as a sudden pocket of intensity: a relationship conducted in the stylized cadence of a beloved novel, full of role-play, multilingual flirtation, and the sense that love might be a kind of interpretive partnership. It is not only erotic; it is epistemological. Elijah seems to confirm that literature can still organize a life.

This is a dangerous fantasy, and Buehler understands its danger with an intimacy that feels almost diagnostic. Astrid is the sort of person who can intellectualize herself into paralysis and then call it sensitivity. She is also the sort of person who experiences social life as a series of micro-exposures: should she ask a question at the reading, should she stand in line, should she chase the author out the door, should she reveal her heart in the presence of undergraduates. The book’s comedy is sharp, but it is never detached; it comes from inside the spiral. When Astrid and her friends perform a “stakeout” outside the apartment of the nonfamous Sofiya – cross-referencing Instagram posts, locating a fern behind a gauzy curtain, narrating their sleuthing like amateur detectives – the scene lands as both absurd and instantly legible. It is the kind of behavior a person can rationalize while doing it (“I wouldn’t make her information public. I just want it for myself”) and feel sick about afterward. In an age when surveillance is a hobby and intimacy is a form of data, the line between curiosity and violation is not crossed in one dramatic step. It is crossed in dozens of small justifications.

That incremental moral drift is one of the novel’s most contemporary achievements. “The Obsessed” is not merely about being fixated on a person or a book; it is about the technologies that allow fixation to masquerade as research. Astrid’s mind is trained to locate patterns, to make meaning from fragments. Social media rewards this skill by turning people into archives. A story becomes evidence. A tagged photo becomes a clue. The very tools that claim to connect us also make it easier to live near someone without ever meeting them, to assemble a private portrait of a stranger, to feel a false proximity that intensifies rather than resolves desire. Buehler’s portrait of this condition is especially strong when Astrid describes her sense of splitting in two: one self acting, the other floating above, observing, narrating, waiting for consequences.

The book’s central romance, meanwhile, is a study in asymmetry so recognizable it almost hurts. Astrid and Elijah do not have a dramatic breakup; they have a slow collapse of signal. He stops texting as much. He grows evasive. She rehearses scripts and still cannot speak. Their intimacy becomes a weather system: unpredictable, intermittently electric, full of sudden lulls that Astrid interprets as judgment. What makes the relationship compelling on the page is Buehler’s refusal to flatten Elijah into a villain. He is not cruel so much as unsteady. He is self-reflective, even ethical, and yet his ethics are often deployed in the service of his own freedom rather than hers. When he finally names what is happening – he needs to be “completely single,” he has been jumping between intense relationships, he worries he is promising what he cannot give – the language is gentle, therapist-adjacent, contemporary. It is also, in a way Astrid cannot quite name at first, a kind of power. He gets to frame the narrative. He gets to leave and still claim intimacy as a possibility.

Buehler’s prose shines in these moments of emotional bookkeeping. She is alert to the way modern people talk about feelings as if they are scheduling conflicts, and to the way “boundaries” can become an alibi for inconsistency. Astrid experiences each text like an injection. When Elijah vanishes for twenty-five hours, she notes the number with the precision of someone recording symptoms. When he returns, she collapses not only because she misses him but because the return confirms that she is still tethered. The novel understands something that many love stories miss: the problem is not just that Astrid wants Elijah. The problem is that wanting has become her primary method of feeling alive.

If that were all, “The Obsessed” would be a finely observed campus romance about attachment and modern communication. But Buehler deepens the book by introducing a second axis of desire: the author as oracle. Astrid attends a public conversation with Sofiya Sova and dissociates through the event, furious at the banality of the questions asked by undergraduates, convinced that she is the truer reader. The scene captures the particular arrogance that can coexist with fandom: the belief that identification is proof of special access. When Sova mentions receiving emails from readers who wish they were her character Eva and replies, “Oh no, please don’t do that! Eva is not who you want to be,” Astrid is not merely disappointed. She is destabilized. The line is a rupture in the fantasy that literature can bless your suffering as meaningful.

The novel’s most audacious section arrives when Astrid emails Sofiya Sova and receives a long, thoughtful response – a correspondence Buehler later acknowledges is based on real-life emails with Elif Batuman. In these pages, “The Obsessed” becomes something more than narrative: it becomes an essayistic conversation about Western literature’s romance plots, power structures, and the way women’s disappointment has been aestheticized into a cornerstone of “serious” storytelling. Sova’s reply is generous, sharp, and protective: she admits that her younger self drew meaning from painful relationships and now wishes she had been more careful with her own heart. She recommends Adrienne Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” Valerie Solanas’s “SCUM Manifesto,” and Shulamith Firestone’s “The Dialectic of Sex.” She offers Simone de Beauvoir’s ethical imperative: maximize your own freedom and the freedom of others.

A lesser novel might treat this exchange as a conversion scene, the moment the narrator is rescued by wisdom. Buehler is too smart for that. Astrid cries, prints the emails, tapes them to her wall like talismans, reads “Anna Karenina” as a kind of cosmic thank-you – and still cannot fully relinquish the glamor of suffering. She recognizes, with a quiet and crucial skepticism, that even the author does not have the answers. This ambivalence is one of the book’s triumphs. It refuses the clean arc from obsession to enlightenment, insisting instead that clarity arrives in waves – sometimes through advice, sometimes through humiliation, sometimes through the dull ache of relapse.

Relapse is exactly what the book delivers, with painful realism, when Astrid reunites with Elijah in New York. Their night together is rendered not as triumphant romance but as an exchange haunted by its own impermanence. They do not speak about what has happened; they do not claim it; they touch and then return to distance. The next day Astrid experiences a strange, almost holy emptiness on the subway, a realization that she could go anywhere, that the box was her own creation. It is one of the few moments in the novel that feels genuinely untethered, and it arrives not through a grand decision but through a train stalled in darkness, surrounded by strangers who offer no narrative, only silence.

What makes “The Obsessed” so effective is its willingness to treat obsession as both pathology and artistry. Astrid’s compulsion to connect dots is also her talent. She notices what others ignore. She gives the world texture. She is, in some sense, the ideal citizen of the internet age: a person who can turn fragments into story. The novel does not ask her to stop being this person. It asks her to recognize the cost of turning living people into symbols. Elijah is not the ideal man; he is a man. Sofiya is not a mirror; she is a person with her own life. Sofiya Sova is not a prophet; she is an older version of a younger self who also mistook pain for meaning.

The book’s closing movement is unexpectedly generous. Astrid finds her old journal entry about the “ideal man” and realizes it no longer fits; the journal feels like an expired fashion magazine, full of predictions that never came true. She does not burn it in a grand gesture. She shelves it. She decides to go for a walk for no reason other than to see the world. And then, at the moment when narrative would normally provide a payoff – the nonfamous Sofiya finally responds and agrees to coffee – the novel refuses to lunge. “This was what I had wanted, right?” Astrid thinks. The final line is an antidote to compulsion: she will think about how to reply later.

That restraint is the book’s most sophisticated moral choice. In a culture that monetizes immediacy, “later” becomes a kind of freedom.

Buehler’s literary lineage is visible, but she has her own tonal signature: the crisp observational intelligence of “The Idiot,” the millennial interiority of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” the anxious pattern-making of “Fake Accounts,” the social media ethnography of “No One Is Talking About This,” the academic self-satire of “Disorientation,” the philosophical romantic comedy of “Trick Mirror”–adjacent essay-thought, and the old Russian shadow texts that hover like an inheritance you cannot fully reject. Yet “The Obsessed” is not merely a book of references. It is a novel that understands how the present feels: the way the private self is always half-public, the way therapy language becomes flirtation, the way identity is built from texts, the way politics, climate dread, and institutional decay seep into romance as a background hum.

If the book has a limitation, it is the one that haunts many novels of consciousness: at times, its brilliance risks becoming too self-aware, too neatly interpretive. But even that flaw feels thematically appropriate. Astrid’s problem is not a lack of insight. It is an excess of it, untethered from a life that can hold it.

And yet Buehler gives her narrator something better than a cure: a shift in posture. “The Obsessed” does not claim that obsession disappears. It suggests that, with time, it can be metabolized into knowledge – and that knowledge can become the beginning of a life not organized around waiting for someone else’s reply.

For its unnervingly accurate portrayal of contemporary longing, its formal intelligence, its ethical seriousness, and its ability to be funny without being cruel, I would rate “The Obsessed” an 88 out of 100.

[Emma Cathryne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unbelievably weird book for me to read mostly because the content + a quick perusal of the author' socials show this to be: 1) a pretty direct work of autofiction 2) autofiction of the author's life when she lived AT MOST one street away from me in the greater Camberville area . Lizzie Buehler I do not know you but we very likely crossed paths at Somerville's own Thai Hut and/or the Boston Bouldering Project! The story follows a young woman (Astrid) in her late 20s working towards her PhD in Comparative literature at Harvard. Astrid has two primary "obsessions" that grant this novel its name: the first being the cool girl author of an immensely popular, and broadly misunderstood, campus novel (based very clearly on Elif Bautman's "The Idiot"), and the second being the various boyfriends, situationships, and romantic attachments in her life.

It was a super strange experience to read about streets, bars, and even specific restaurants (listed under slightly different names) that are intimately familiar to me. Buehler does a spectacular job of capturing the nature of the neighborhood and the specific local idiosyncrasies that defined the awkward 2021-2022 era of COVID in Boston. This was also the SINGLE MOST ACCURATE representation of modern heterosexual Hinge dating (derogatory) I have encountered in fiction.

It is hard to be an objective reviewer of this given this story given the somewhat shocking degree of fusion with my own life experiences. Nonetheless, I was impressed by Buehler's ability to transform what is ultimately a snapshot of her own life into something thematically meaningful. This felt like the best episodes of Lena Dunham's "Girls" adapted for the modern decade. Like Dunham with Hannah Horvath, Buehler seems in conversation with a version of herself from the recent past, using the vehicle of her novel to explore and critique her previous outlook. As a character, "Astrid" is sympathetic, but also petty, frustrating, and short-sighted. I think this story does a good job of showing how a pattern of "obsessing" about other people - whether romantically, aspirationally, or platonically" - often correlates with a powerful, even ignorant, degree of self-focus. Astrid's desire to be known, seen, & loved in a single, specific way blinds her to what she owes to other people and to herself. Despite being a process most, if not all, people in their 20s go through at some point, I don't see this specific feeling captured (or commented on) in contemporary literature.

Buehler does a good job of capturing another process that certainly hit me in my 20s - the gentle death of the idealized self. I was especially struck by a scene near the end of the book, where Astrid's favorite author gently cautions her against relating too much to a certain character (who is, of course, a powerful favorite of Astrid's). Implying that by loving & relating to this character, Astrid is missing something essential about the meaning of the book and herself. I loved this detail not only as (what I presume to be) a deeper level of metatexual conversation between Buehler's past & present selves, but also as a secondary commentary on readers taking a incorrect, surface understanding away from popular litfic (The Idiot, The Secret Histroy, etc.) that is in context deeply ironic and somewhat sad.

This is way more words than I intended to write about this novel, but I guess also speaks to how much it made me think! As someone who is usually a hater of this specific subgenre of litfic (My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Good Happy Girl) I thought that Buehler did a MUCH better job than others of communicating key critical commentary without overly absolving or punishing the protagonist.

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley & Putnam for the ARC!

Lizzie Buehler’s The Obsessed is a book that is too real for its own good, so measured in its depiction of lived experience that it fails to have much of a perspective.

Over the past few years, there’s been a glut of autofiction that overestimates the relevance of academia. If I misinterpret a literary theorist, I won't have to have an opinion. The average reader won't know any better. Even so, I often enjoy how authors slyly interrogate the absurdity of the institution and their place in it, using novelistic form to heighten every competing voice. Whether The Obsessed truly fits the genre is up for debate, but its passive protagonist sounds a whole lot like Lizzie Buehler: She attends an Ivy League. She studies comparative lit. She’s a translator. That last point in particular feels crucial to making sense of why this book doesn’t click.

Broadly speaking, translations favor word-for-word literalism or more contextualized interpretation, and The Obsessed feels defined by the former. While this is original work, it feels so committed to “fact” that it loses any sense of truth. It’s just a bunch of events happening to someone who doesn't have the interiority to engage with them. Every time the narrator invokes an academic touchstone like Wittgenstein or Byung-Chul Han, it’s with the performative familiarity of a graduate student. The problem with the novel being in first person is that it becomes almost impossible to parse whether Astrid is a boring character or Buehler is a boring writer. If there was more tonal definition, it might feel like there’s some substance behind the superficiality, but Buehler’s writing is detached to the point of apathy. Without a sense of authorial opinion, the book’s title feels ironic, but there’s no evidence of reflection that would motivate irony.

I mean, the book’s culminating revelation is itself a cliché: “I was more in love with my narratives about *character names* than with the people themselves.”

Overall, The Obsessed is a frustrating read because there are moments where it feels like Buehler is capable of more. There’s a character referred to only as “MIT Boy,” and across a series of text exchanges and a short story, his voice emerges with such a gratingly wooden specificity that one wonders why the other characters don’t get the same treatment. They need the same level of caricature to make sense on the page. It feels equally telling and unfortunate that the only other interesting conversation—between the protagonist and her favorite author—is lifted almost wholesale from an email that Elif Batuman sent to Lizzie Buehler. The only moment of genuine perspective in the book essentially occurs outside of it.

It’s hard to say whether the novel’s issue is in depicting mundanity or failing to interpret it, but either way, there’s not really enough here to pique one’s interest. Early in the story, the protagonist suggests that there are too many unnecessary books in the world. The Obsessed is a regrettably compelling argument in her favor.

[Anna Storm · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.25 stars. It really kills me not to rate this one higher. I was so excited about the concept of this book, as someone with a Ph.D. in English who's a sucker for any book that pokes fun at grad school life, but it fell a bit flat.

Some things I loved:
-The novel's self-awareness. I giggled when Astrid critiques the foreignization method of translation, only to do it herself a few chapters later. Then, there were a few passages where a character perfectly describes the novel, like when Astrid and her new love interest watch an absurdist film. She says the plot is impossible to understand, and you just need to let it "wash over you" and enjoy it (which, btw, is exactly the approach you need to take this book, or I fear it might frustrate you as a reader).
-The anxieties and ridiculousness of grad school were pretty well-captured. "The work I'm doing is pointless. I should be helping people! Why is everyone in an open relationship despite being miserable in them? Why is everyone else so much more self-assured and certain in who they are than I am?!" It brought back some memories and conversations I probably could've done without recalling 😄
-There's a letter at about the 85% mark that helps the entire book to make sense. Without that letter, I'm afraid I'd have rated the book lower. That being said, too much probably relies on one letter that brings the whole book together in a pretty overt way.

Some things I wish were done differently:
-For a book about obsession, I really wanted it to take the stakes to a higher level. I was expecting we'd get a serious unreliable narrator moment, where we'd realize Astrid's anxieties and obsessions were worse than she was letting on. Or, she'd take it to a more dangerous level. But nope. Nothing really happens. The book reads as Astrid's very honest diary.
-Speaking of, the writing style wasn't my favorite. The book does read like how I imagine her diary/journal would, so she goes on tangents that have little to do with the story (explaining her paper topics and niche research interests, or describing a class she hates). It's very tell v. show for a good portion of the book. And, Astrid's a pretty immature character, so some of the book can be cringey to read. I do think that's intentional, and we're meant to cringe at Astrid! So it's successful in capturing her voice, at least.

I think if you go into this book with different expectations than I had, you might enjoy it more. It never veers into horror, psychological or otherwise. It's a very earnest coming-of-age story about a young woman in academia who struggles to carve out her own identity, independent of those around her.

Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam Book for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Obsessed is a spiralling narrative from the perspective of a neurotic, obsessive academic and while some of it is interesting (given that she’s studying linguistics) this book wasn’t really for me. If you like stories set on college campuses detailing the minutiae of student life and relationships, you would enjoy this one.

I love stories about unhinged women—stories about obsession, narcissism, dramatics, unreliable narrators. Unfortunately the more interesting bits about her obsession with an author and an ex’s ex seem to take backseat to her relationship woes. There was very little interesting to me about her relationships involving selfish, disappointing men (a lesson she learns from her favorite author, but one that didn’t feel all that relevatory).

Personally, I also really disliked using the COVID pandemic as a backdrop that contributes to the main character’s neurotic clinginess and “FOMO”. It feels in poor taste to use references to uncomfortable masking, annoying online events, and jealousy that others were flaunting recommended isolation guidelines to hang out…. when the pandemic is ongoing and disproportionately affects people of color and contributes to enormous disparities in safe access to spaces for disabled people—while the main character is a white woman studying at a prestigious university whose biggest concern is whether her friends and boyfriends like her. And this wasn’t just the case of the main character being a bad person—all the characters express annoyance at these safety measures and even the premed student is glad he could still hang out with lots of people “during Covid” by flaunting rules. Eh. I feel like the COVID pandemic can be thoughtfully incorporated in literature these days, and this fell flat for me here.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

[Meagan Dover · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Obsessed by Lizzie Buehler follows the journey of Astrid as she earns her Doctoral degree at Harvard University. Astrid, to me, is an unlikable main character. She is neurotic, which is the fabric from which this character is created, and I get that, but I just failed to connect with her as a person. Astrid obsesses over everything, which is funny at times but also aggravating. I felt like I was watching her spiral and make these weird decisions socially that drove me crazy. She uses such overtly sophisticated language that seems unnecessary. It was definitely academic, and the topics about which she studied were complicated and uninteresting. The life decisions Astrid made were sometimes frustrating, but mostly just really boring. She was not exciting, and her interactions with others were at times extremely awkward. But maybe the author wanted Astrid to be unlikable? Or did she want the reader to empathize and try to understand her? I’m not sure.

The issues I have with this book are based on the main character, though, and not a reflection on the writing style, which was very descriptive and flowed nicely. The story was well-developed, and each character was thoughtfully introduced. I feel like I understood each person and his or her motivations. Each character helped move the plot forward intentionally, as well as impacted Astrid’s journey. That said, for me, this book didn’t hit the mark.

[Janine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A “lightweight” coming-of-age story about relationships and obsession.

Astrid Duffy is pursuing a PhD in Russian literature at Harvard obsessed by the Russian writer, Sofiya Sova, whose life seems “to parallel” Astrid’s and whose writing seems to”to encompass every anxious thought” of Astrid’s. Astrid’s sole desire is to “embody the ethos” of Sofiya’s novel. Astrid has long believed that parallels between the Russian novelist and herself gave some deep intrinsic meaning for her. When her boyfriend, Charlie, breaks up with her, Astrid is thrown into a panic as her love life was supposed to be following Sofiya’s. Astrid, however, finds Elijah, a Sofiya Sova obsessor himself, and feels likes back on track until that relationship crumbles. Where is she going?

The book posits that relationships have to be grounded on two sides - that is, parasocial relationships offer little in terms of emotional reciprocity and connection to the individual seeking to be loved. Astrid’s obsession is one-sided - even her relationships with Charlie and Elijah because they fulfill Sofiya’s book. I think this was the best part of the story; that is, obsession gains nothing for the obsessor.

I was a bit underwhelmed in the read. As noted above, writing about one-sided relationships was a great theme. I just felt Astrid could have been developed more and the story be a little deeper. But the writing is very good.

My thanks to NetGalley and G. P. Putnam’s Sons for allowing me access to this ARC.

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 – this didn't quite land for me.

the premise is a compelling one — academia and obsession is a delicious pairing — and Buehler's writing in the opening chapters is quick and quippy. I was initially drawn in by our narrator Astrid's voice and the world of her first year at Harvard doing her comp lit PhD, but then the novel struggled to sustain momentum.

Astrid cycles through a series of unremarkable romantic interests, pines after two different Sofiyas (one a famous author, the other her ex's ex), and drifts between musings on comp lit, Korean history, and life in general without really building toward a central conflict or deepening the cast around her. the pacing also felt a bit imbalanced; there are plenty of small plot points, but none with enough weight to drive the story forward.

I found the narrator thoughtful and reflective at times, but more often frustrating and immature, and at no point did I think "I hope X happens" or "I'm so curious about Y." I also expected obsession to be a propulsive, consuming force in the story (based on the title), but I found it to be more of a thematic backdrop than something that meaningfully drives things forward.

maybe I'd feel differently if I had comp lit grad school friends or expertise and/or a better understanding of translation work, but unfortunately this one wasn't for me!

Thank you to G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley for the advance copy of The Obsessed in exchange for an honest review!

[Talya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obsessed by Lizzie Buehler is a fantastic coming-of-age novel what I think would fit the "weird girl" fiction subgenre. The main character, Astrid, obsesses over everything and becomes intensely attached to people and situations in her life. At first, I was just in shock by all of her strange obsessions and intense fixations. The more I got to know her, I found myself relating to Astrid.
I think I may have been a lot like her in my twenties. I wonder what I would have thought of this book if I had read it 20 years ago. Some of her odd antics felt familiar. Is this a deep dive into a neurodivergent young woman trying to manage both parasocial and mutual relationships? I also spent way too much time trying to analyze things that probably didn't need analyzing.
Astrid is so interesting with her PHd studies and Korean and German classes. Polygots always fascinate me.
I loved that the book wrapped up with the feeling that Astrid is going to be okay. Your twenties are such a messy time of self-discovery, and figuring out who you are. It's a rite of passage. It was fun to follow Astrid on that journey. I would be curious to see how much of Astrid and the author have in common. I recommend this novel to anyone interested in some "weird girl" fiction that will keep you reading until the last page. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

[Reed Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley & G.P. Putnam's Sons for the advanced reader copy! All thoughts are my own:

The Obsessed follows PhD candidate Astrid, who is obsessed with Russian novelist Sofiya Sova. When Astrid's boyfriend breaks up with her, a spontaneous date connects her with a fellow Sova obsessive, Elijah, and Astrid begins to transcribe Sova's novel onto her own life.

First, I think it's a cool look into how relatable and impactful a novel can be on someone's life. I've read many novels myself that, as I'm reading, it sometimes feels ike a biography written about parts of my own life. It's nice to feel so acknowledged by art, whether it's literature, paintings, music, photos, etc. In this case, it's a sort of reversed version where Astrid has read this novel and later the novel's plot feels like it's playing out live in her own life.

The coming of age story in this isn't something that's very relatable to me personally, so at times it got a little slow and disconnected from me, but that's just a personal thing really and I think in general its probably a book many could relate to with dating struggles, the ongoing ennui of academia, and the daily life happenings of the literary fiction genre.

[Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Putnam and NetGalley for the chance to read this book.

Astrid is extremely intelligent and she is also very neurotic, anxious and sometimes just strange. In her first year of her PhD she is newly separated from her boyfriend of 4 years Charlie. With Astrid in the states and Charlie in Japan the relationship soon runs out of things to talk about or any kind of connection at all. When they break up and Astrid takes to Hinge to meet new people it sends her down a path of self reflection and obsessions. Already having been obsessed with “the two Sofiya’s” one her favorite author and the other Charlie’s ex she meets Elijah who she also becomes obsessed with in a way.

The sad thing about the obsessions is that they really weren’t hurting anyone but Astrid herself. You want to shake her while reading like how is she so intelligent but completely unaware of her situations with people and what they are at face value.

If you have ever been in your 20’s or attempted to meet people through online dating or valued someone way more in your mind then they were actually worth there is probably at least one thing here that you can relate to.

In the tune of “weird girl fiction” I mostly enjoyed this book and would recommend.

[Maddy Clio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird-girl lit that's actually not that weird because she's painfully aware of how she's perceived and will never let herself relax enough to be her fully actualized weird-girl self, yet in turn does become the weird girl by trying NOT to be? A darkly hilarious story for the rumination girlies who simply can't get out of their own heads??? SIGN ME UP.

I cannot begin to describe how much I enjoyed this. Reading this felt like someone reached into my brain and pulled out my exact thought process. I want to be Astrid Duffy; I am deeply terrified by Astrid Duffy; I relate, maybe a little too much, to Astrid Duffy. I'm giggling and kicking my feet thinking about how me relating to Astrid mirrors Astrid relating to Eva. I love meta stories!!!

What a fun, addictive, and wild ride this one is, as well as a painfully accurate depiction of obsessive thinking. Sometimes the hardest lesson is to learn when you do and do not have control, and how to tell the difference.

The ending does feel a little rushed and there are a few plot points that don't get addressed by the end. Overall, however, this book was such a special read. I can't wait to see this one out on the shelves <3

[Helen Wu ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this one. I’m always drawn to “odd girl” literature, especially when it’s set in academia, as someone in that world myself. I can also be a bit obsessive, so I was especially curious going in, perhaps even with slightly unrealistic expectations. There’s something about obsessive thinking, intellectual environments, and slightly unhinged inner monologues that usually pulls me right in. This book has all the ingredients, and at times the writing is sharp and observant, with moments of humor and insight that really work. However, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I never quite settled into the story. The pacing felt uneven and often too focused on small details that didn’t add much to the overall experience, and I kept waiting for a stronger emotional or narrative shift that never fully came. I can see what the author was aiming for, and I think this will resonate with readers who enjoy quieter, more meandering character studies, but for me it ended up being a book I appreciated more than I was able to truly connect with. Thank you Netgalley and Putnam for the ARC.

[Caitlin Milliken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having loved The Idiot by Elif Batuman, I was excited to read this book that captured a similar writing style, topic, and tone. Reading the acknowledgements and hearing of the extent of Batuman’s influence and how it mirrored the events of the novel was satisfying! I went into this book expecting the protagonist’s fixation on the Sofiya the author but not Sofiya the ex of her ex. One of those obsessions was generally more important to the plot, especially as her life mirrored Sofiya Sova’s novel. I loved the writing style and the consistent tone and personality given to Astrid. Her academic pursuits and her uncertainty as she pursued them offered nuance to her character. I also liked that her obsessions and mental health struggles didn’t keep her from having meaningful, lasting friendships throughout the novel (outside her romantic relationships). I would recommend this book to anyone who likes literary fiction and literature!

Thank you Putnam Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Quiana Bethea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to netgalley for the arc!

I really enjoyed this book! I loved being inside the main character’s head, the narration was immersive so I felt like I was living her life right alongside her. I also appreciated that the story wasn’t only focused on the main plot. We get glimpses into her schoolwork and translation projects, and even though I know nothing about that field, it was surprisingly engaging. It reminded me why I love reading: getting to learn about things totally outside my own world.

The main character herself was incredibly relatable (sometimes uncomfortably so lol) Her emotional reactions, frustrations, and insecurities all felt real and human. The supporting cast was strong as well! the side characters and friendships added depth without stealing the spotlight.

The pacing was great: scenes moved naturally, nothing felt dragged. I also really enjoyed the writing style and would happily read more from this author in the future.

Overall, a thoughtful, grounded, and engaging read that kept me invested from start to finish.

[Abil Khayr · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Obsessed
by Lizzie Buehler
I thoroughly enjoyed this coming of age debut novel. Told from the perspective of a female graduate student in her mid-twenties, the descriptions of relationships and events ring absolutely on target for the obsessive focus we have probably all felt during some period of our life when we were doing our best to navigate the world.
Astrid is beginning her PhD program, trying to understand relationships with friends and lovers, and obsessed with a series of intriguing coincidences that, for a while, provide structure to her world.
I was easily able to recognize myself in many of the strategies Astrid employed as coping mechanisms, and in several instances chuckled at the absurdity of doing so. The story is developed well, with humor and insight, and the author presents some relatively obscure topics in language that makes them accessible so the storyline is never lost or confused.
The uncorrected advance copy had perhaps a half dozen minor corrections that will presumably be fixed in the published book when it appears in the latter part of July.

[bog.librarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m glad I went into this novel with no expectations. From reading other reviews it seems like people were expecting Astrid to experience a more weird girl thriller-esque mental deterioration into obsession. I actually enjoyed reading about the intense, yet somewhat mundane manifestations of her obsessive behavior. I think that her character felt like someone we’ve all either met or been to some degree in our life. The realistic characterization of Astrid made her actions sometimes very uncomfortable to witness. She was exhausting, self-centered, and often came off as pretentious when having conversations with others, even though her self worth was actually struggling. Some of those text exchanges were actually painful to read. They reminded me of the way my friend used to text her horrible, avoidant ex and that maybe added an extra layer of cringe to my experience. All of that said, I thought the writing was strong and an unlikable protagonist is a guilty little pleasure of mine.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

[Matt Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is extremely well written fan fiction about Elif Batuman. It becomes more than that, but there is a definite fan fiction thread. But doesn’t a lot of literature have a bit of this? Part of why I liked the novel is its transportive. It captures the aimlessness of being a grad student well. The paper or the romantic interest—honestly can we say with any confidence which is more important to worry about; are the skills for one the same as for the other? In a particularly good chapter, Buehler suggests romance and academia are basically one and the same. I’m a fan of this theory.

While Batuman’s writing feels intense and academic, Buehler plays with WhatsApp themes more than kiekergard or whatever so the Onsessed is lighter and more accessible. The novel is very good at excavating the awkward social interactions and the academic nihilism of graduate school. Fans of The Idiot will love the intertextuality and the ways it deals with similar themes about grad school.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this debut novel about a self-proclaimed weirdo finding herself in a PhD program at Harvard. I enjoy a lot of weird women literature and dark academia books (although this isn't exactly dark, maybe just gray?), and this blend of the two genres really worked well for me. I highly recommend it to readers who like this sort of literature!

Astrid is a bit unhinged but I found her to be quite likeable. Her quirks are funny and her thoughts are often hilarious. She has many obsessions, including her fixation on her ex's ex, that drive her into ridiculous situations that are fun to read about. I found the writing wry and clever, and the exploration of mental illness and parasocial relationships was well done. It's a well executed character study that is a fast and fun read.

I look forward to seeing more from this author!

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Putnam for the ebook. Astrid has moved to Harvard to start a PhD program, but her long term boyfriend has just moved to Japan. The long distance relationship quickly fails, leaving Astrid with a light study schedule and too much time to obsess over a small circle of coincidences. Astrid starts dating a medical student, Elijah, who’s at Yale. One reason for the attraction is that they are both obsessed with a fiction writer named Sofiya Sova. Astrid feels that she is living the life of the lead character in her novel. Astrid is also obsessed with her ex boyfriend’s ex girlfriend also named Sofiya. Things become slightly surreal when she finds out that Elijah also used to date her. These neurotic spins keep Astrid from having to think about the life she really wants, until finally she can’t escape it any longer.

[Jossie Ramos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of The Obsessed by Lizzie Buehler!

The Obsessed by Lizzie Buehler had a lot of promise, but unfortunately it did not fully deliver for me. I went in expecting something more unsettling and strange, similar to the offbeat, deeply odd characters found in Sayaka Murata’s work. Instead, the story centers on a girl who is obsessed with an author and with her ex’s ex, who happens to share the same name as the author.

The obsession itself felt fairly mild and self-aware, which made it less compelling. Because the main character understands her fixation so clearly, it never crosses into territory that feels disturbing or intriguing enough to carry an entire book. While the writing was solid and engaging enough to keep me from DNFing, the story ultimately felt underdeveloped and lacking the depth I was hoping for.

[Madeline Church · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars! Desire and academia are two components that compose The Obsessed. These two themes are ones I am drawn to, so if you are also, I highly recommend this read! It was done incredibly well and accurately. Even if the obsession component seems overbearing at times, there's definitely truth in it.

Elif Batuman has written one of my favorite novels, and Lizzie Buehler is very reminiscent of the writing style! It is witty and sophisticated, and I loved every second of reading it. When reading the author's note, I saw that some of the book was based on the author's interaction with Elif Batuman, and it all clicked!

Thank you NetGalley, G.P. Putnam's Sons, & Lizzie Buehler for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The Obsessed is released on July 28, 2026!