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Sleep Alone
Finalist for both the Shirley Jackson Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction
Includes a new bonus short story, "With Animals"!
"Instantly intoxicating. Sleep Alone thrives in a lustful, hungry ballad... A classic trinity of sex, blood, and rock and roll." —Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth
For the past six years, Ronnie has worked selling merch for a perpetually touring band. Late nights, sweaty clubs, dingy motel rooms, endless roads—as rough as it's been, there is no other way of life for this band of hungry succubi leaving bodies in their wake.
Until she meets the enigmatic Helene.
Helene is just as restless, just as lonely, and just as full of secrets. With Helene in tow, Ronnie and the band make their way across the Pacific Northwest, trying to outrun not only their mistakes, but the mysterious disease stalking the band, a disease that devours succubi from the inside out.
The hunger is as endless as the road, but maybe Ronnie doesn't always want to sleep alone.
Includes a new bonus short story, "With Animals"!
"Instantly intoxicating. Sleep Alone thrives in a lustful, hungry ballad... A classic trinity of sex, blood, and rock and roll." —Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth
For the past six years, Ronnie has worked selling merch for a perpetually touring band. Late nights, sweaty clubs, dingy motel rooms, endless roads—as rough as it's been, there is no other way of life for this band of hungry succubi leaving bodies in their wake.
Until she meets the enigmatic Helene.
Helene is just as restless, just as lonely, and just as full of secrets. With Helene in tow, Ronnie and the band make their way across the Pacific Northwest, trying to outrun not only their mistakes, but the mysterious disease stalking the band, a disease that devours succubi from the inside out.
The hunger is as endless as the road, but maybe Ronnie doesn't always want to sleep alone.
192 pages, Paperback
Published March 17, 2026
About the author
J.A.W. McCarthy
42 books56 followersJ.A.W. McCarthy is a Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award finalist and author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021) and Sleep Alone (Off Limits Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, PseudoPod, Split Scream Vol. 3, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13 (ed. Ellen Datlow). She is Thai American and lives with her spouse and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest. You can call her Jen on Twitter @JAWMcCarthy, and find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
June 7, 2023
Ronnie is a succubus who, out of her wish to have companions and not be lonely, turns a complete rock band into her kind and starts touring with them perpetually. Like always, they never ever stop or rest or pause and live the full deal with vomiting, drugs, alcohol, pizza, sleeping in vans and cheap motel rooms, the whole nine yards. She takes on the role of the merch seller, but her actual intention is to satisfy her never ending hunger, and of course, all of them are usually hungry for human memories. One day she finds Helene, who is just like her and is hunting to feed also, so she tags along. But her joining the band marks a kind of change and when the guys start getting a mysterious illness, doubts come to Ronnie whether turning the guys ever has been a good idea at all.
Sleep Alone follows the not yet washed out concept of succubae, although in my head I imagined them as some sort of rock star vampires and the difference to vampires wasn’t really that obvious. The whole story was ultimately a little draggy and didn’t really satisfy me in the way that Ronnie never feels completely full either. Huh, maybe I was more influenced by this main character than I thought after all.
I don't know if I missed it, but scanned the book a second time for the name of the band and couldn't find it. I wish the band had a name.
Sleep Alone follows the not yet washed out concept of succubae, although in my head I imagined them as some sort of rock star vampires and the difference to vampires wasn’t really that obvious. The whole story was ultimately a little draggy and didn’t really satisfy me in the way that Ronnie never feels completely full either. Huh, maybe I was more influenced by this main character than I thought after all.
I don't know if I missed it, but scanned the book a second time for the name of the band and couldn't find it. I wish the band had a name.
March 28, 2023
A rock band. A merch girl. Starving Succubi.
One sitting. An enraptured reader.
Ronnie and her band of misfits. Life on the road can be lonely. She’s spent a life lonely, and she refuses to sleep alone anymore. When she meets the enigmatic band, she realises that they are everything she’s been searching for. They tour the pacific Midwest and their youthfulness and zest for life reminds Ronnie of a life gone by. She wants to tap into that once again, live carefree and they make her hungry for it. The only problem is that Ronnie is a Succubi, she’s hungry to feed and she wants these men around for the long term. How easy it would be to turn them…
McCarthy has created characters that are well developed and with enough layers that you just know that it’s going to keep you going through the winter. It’s exceedingly hard to develop characters worth caring about in a novella sized story but McCarthy has excelled where others fail. Oh, and that cover. Well, don’t ask me why but I got the Mystery INC feelings. I was totally here for it!
Ronnie was an enigma to me. When you think of Vampires or Succubi, what immediately springs to mind? Dark and devious creatures of the night? Blood sucking beings that don’t care about picking off victim after victim. Bram Stoker’s Dracula? This was different. Ronnie taught the boys self-control, not only because if they went too far and left corpses in their wake some hotshot detective might put two and two together and get four. They feed to sustain, and Ronnie has taught them to take the victim’s negative memories from them. She sees it as a kindness whilst sustaining their unnatural lives.
When Ronnie spots the mysterious Helene at one of the band’s shows, she knows right there and then that she’s different. Her aura shines throughout, and she knows she needs to make some kind of contact with her. Her eyes…it’s all in the eyes. Little does she know that the connection she feels is something akin to home. They know each other on a deeper level, there is probably no-one that knows the other better.
Unfortunately, when you create something so unnatural, an abomination, such is what the boys from the band have become, it is an uncontrollable variable. Ronnie doesn’t know how they will turn out and so far in the six years that they’ve been together as this new dynamic, things have been good. However, one member develops this really nasty wound at his navel that only gets worse. Is this a sign of things to come or is it simply a feeding session that went wrong?
April 29, 2023
Succubus Ronnie’s driving force is working as the merch girl for her favorite band and keeping her boys fed, even if it means going hungry herself. But when she meets Helene and finds a connection she never before dreamed of, her focus shifts and the band’s hunger becomes an inferno of need.
I really liked the rock and roll world McCarthy created and her take on succubi mythology. Each band member has a distinct personality and relationship with Ronnie. The band’s issues with Helene and their voracious hunger drive the story forward, while the relationships between the characters create the novella’s heartbeat creating a satisfying blend of horror and LGBT romance.
I really liked the rock and roll world McCarthy created and her take on succubi mythology. Each band member has a distinct personality and relationship with Ronnie. The band’s issues with Helene and their voracious hunger drive the story forward, while the relationships between the characters create the novella’s heartbeat creating a satisfying blend of horror and LGBT romance.
March 30, 2024
Sapphic rock and roll succubus horror, what's not to like?? This book covers a lot of emotional ground and builds impressive depth to its relationships despite its short length. I really enjoyed reading about Ronnie and her boys, and I'm a sucker for any story with musicians at its centre.
March 14, 2023
Stop me if you've heard this one before -- a succubi rock band walks into a bar...
No? I hadn't either. A vampire rock band, sure, plenty of times, most recently in Alan Baxter's Tales from the Gulp duology and I'm sure there was at least one vampire rock band in Crystal Lake Publishing's music venue-centered anthology, Welcome to the Show. Even as sexualized as vampires are in horror fiction, the use of succubi in this scenario strikes an immediate chord and presents an opportunity to more directly explore the classic themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with a monster that's certainly more interesting and intriguing than the fanged bloodsucker of old, and which is far too often overlooked.
Succubi, most often presented as an alluring woman, need sex (and more traditionally, semen) in order to survive. This creature so constantly in need of a fix in order to feel alive makes for an immediate and natural parallel for addiction. And fronting as a rock band, well, what better way to get your groove on with some unsuspecting but very willing groupies? Oddly, even the male members of Sleep Alone's rock band are considered succubi, rather than incubi, and each have been turned by Ronnie, their merch girl.
They all tour the country together, going from one backwoods bar joint to another, feasting on their human snacks when it's safe. Some of the bandmates are tired of living like this, constantly on the move and jonesing for a way to scratch their addict's itch, lamenting that "It feels so fucking good, then it feels like shit right after." There's an unspoken desire to get clean in Jack's more overt desire to settle down and raise a family, to the point that his constantly asking Ronnie, "What do you think of this place?" has become a running joke. But when Ronnie meets Helene, another full-blooded succubus like her, and members of the band start getting sick, it's only a matter of time before their imaginings of an endpoint become closer to a reality.
For as promising as J.A.W. McCarthy's premise is, Sleep Alone is unfortunately every bit as familiar. Her succubi feel too much like vampires, to the point that I couldn't help but wonder if Sleep Alone began life as a straight-up vampire story but upon consideration of how saturated the market is with this tired entity McCarthy did a word search and replaced every instance of vampire with succubus instead. Whatever shades of originality a fresher creature like the succubus could have brought to the material is squandered. While sexuality does play a key role, and McCarthy writes about their feedings with quasi-erotic language (while kissing a victim, the "tunnel" at Ronnie's core opens to suck in their essence; the men, more straightforward in getting their fix as seen through Ronnie's first-person POV, offer up blowjobs in the green room, alleys, or filthy bathrooms, although the entire group is sexually fluid and eager to take whatever they can get from whomever they can get it), it never feels like anything other than a riff on a vampire feeding and it's all the more dull for it.
McCarthy's writing is sharp enough to keep the pages turning, though, even if we know all the plot beats well before she gets there. We know that these creatures falling ill will lead to madness will lead to slaughter will lead to reckoning, but it's Ronnie's introspection in between that truly feels substantive. Her one clause in being with these men is that she sleeps alone (she's been sexually intimate with each of them at least once, in order to turn them, but has since become more like a den mother -- Freud would have a field day with this gang), at least until she meets and becomes involved with Helene. It's their relationship that really helps ground Sleep Alone and make it worthwhile, but I also admired Ronnie's relationship with nice guy Jack, which helps offset her increasingly tumultuous relationship with Cillian, particularly as Helene becomes a deeper wedge issue betwixt them all. Kudos, too, for McCarthy's intriguing disease cutting a swath through this surrogate family - it gets marvelously gross as it progresses and feels like a natural statement thematically on all that's come before.
Sleep Alone isn't nearly as unique as I had hoped, and there's sadly little here to differentiate McCarthy's depiction of a succubus from your more run of the mill vampire, but it does offer up a keen look at the humanity beneath the monster. McCarthy's writing is certainly promising and presents here as an author to watch out for. And whatever qualms I had about Sleep Alone aside, I honestly wouldn't mind revisiting Ronnie and Helene sometime later down the road.
No? I hadn't either. A vampire rock band, sure, plenty of times, most recently in Alan Baxter's Tales from the Gulp duology and I'm sure there was at least one vampire rock band in Crystal Lake Publishing's music venue-centered anthology, Welcome to the Show. Even as sexualized as vampires are in horror fiction, the use of succubi in this scenario strikes an immediate chord and presents an opportunity to more directly explore the classic themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with a monster that's certainly more interesting and intriguing than the fanged bloodsucker of old, and which is far too often overlooked.
Succubi, most often presented as an alluring woman, need sex (and more traditionally, semen) in order to survive. This creature so constantly in need of a fix in order to feel alive makes for an immediate and natural parallel for addiction. And fronting as a rock band, well, what better way to get your groove on with some unsuspecting but very willing groupies? Oddly, even the male members of Sleep Alone's rock band are considered succubi, rather than incubi, and each have been turned by Ronnie, their merch girl.
They all tour the country together, going from one backwoods bar joint to another, feasting on their human snacks when it's safe. Some of the bandmates are tired of living like this, constantly on the move and jonesing for a way to scratch their addict's itch, lamenting that "It feels so fucking good, then it feels like shit right after." There's an unspoken desire to get clean in Jack's more overt desire to settle down and raise a family, to the point that his constantly asking Ronnie, "What do you think of this place?" has become a running joke. But when Ronnie meets Helene, another full-blooded succubus like her, and members of the band start getting sick, it's only a matter of time before their imaginings of an endpoint become closer to a reality.
For as promising as J.A.W. McCarthy's premise is, Sleep Alone is unfortunately every bit as familiar. Her succubi feel too much like vampires, to the point that I couldn't help but wonder if Sleep Alone began life as a straight-up vampire story but upon consideration of how saturated the market is with this tired entity McCarthy did a word search and replaced every instance of vampire with succubus instead. Whatever shades of originality a fresher creature like the succubus could have brought to the material is squandered. While sexuality does play a key role, and McCarthy writes about their feedings with quasi-erotic language (while kissing a victim, the "tunnel" at Ronnie's core opens to suck in their essence; the men, more straightforward in getting their fix as seen through Ronnie's first-person POV, offer up blowjobs in the green room, alleys, or filthy bathrooms, although the entire group is sexually fluid and eager to take whatever they can get from whomever they can get it), it never feels like anything other than a riff on a vampire feeding and it's all the more dull for it.
McCarthy's writing is sharp enough to keep the pages turning, though, even if we know all the plot beats well before she gets there. We know that these creatures falling ill will lead to madness will lead to slaughter will lead to reckoning, but it's Ronnie's introspection in between that truly feels substantive. Her one clause in being with these men is that she sleeps alone (she's been sexually intimate with each of them at least once, in order to turn them, but has since become more like a den mother -- Freud would have a field day with this gang), at least until she meets and becomes involved with Helene. It's their relationship that really helps ground Sleep Alone and make it worthwhile, but I also admired Ronnie's relationship with nice guy Jack, which helps offset her increasingly tumultuous relationship with Cillian, particularly as Helene becomes a deeper wedge issue betwixt them all. Kudos, too, for McCarthy's intriguing disease cutting a swath through this surrogate family - it gets marvelously gross as it progresses and feels like a natural statement thematically on all that's come before.
Sleep Alone isn't nearly as unique as I had hoped, and there's sadly little here to differentiate McCarthy's depiction of a succubus from your more run of the mill vampire, but it does offer up a keen look at the humanity beneath the monster. McCarthy's writing is certainly promising and presents here as an author to watch out for. And whatever qualms I had about Sleep Alone aside, I honestly wouldn't mind revisiting Ronnie and Helene sometime later down the road.
Read
March 18, 2023SLEEP ALONE has ample sex, drugs, & rock'n'roll but amidst the debauchery is a story of longing, loss, and love. J.A.W. McCarthy's vivid writing brings nuance to this gory story of a woman who tries to outsmart her loneliness and the reckoning that occurs when her gift becomes a curse.
March 12, 2023
A unique take on a monster you won't see tackled much in horror fiction - McCarthy is an incredible author.
July 8, 2023
Succinct, well written novella that blew me away. The depths of imagination in McCarthy's writing was just phenomenal. She makes an implausible/impossible situation seem real and I was totally wrapped up in the story of this band and their merch girl. I hope she writes a sequel!!
April 9, 2023
I read Sleep Alone in a few hours, I enjoyed it so much. Maybe it was the nostalgia of grimy punk shows, but I kept turning pages to find out what happened next. It came off a little vampiric, but it was fun to read which is sometimes all that matters.
April 11, 2023
I’ve been looking forward to this novella for a while now—and it lived up to my very high hopes! I started reading it a few nights ago and…welp, kept on reading until it was done. I could not set this brilliant, emotionally devastating book down.
McCarthy tackles so much in a brief space: hunger, what we do or don’t owe family, loneliness, desperation, regret, aging, the weirdness of bodies—all in a stunningly entertaining package. If you’re up for a queer horror story of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with succubi, you won’t regret picking up Sleep Alone (out now from Off Limits Press)!
McCarthy tackles so much in a brief space: hunger, what we do or don’t owe family, loneliness, desperation, regret, aging, the weirdness of bodies—all in a stunningly entertaining package. If you’re up for a queer horror story of sex, drugs, and rock & roll with succubi, you won’t regret picking up Sleep Alone (out now from Off Limits Press)!
February 19, 2023
McCarthy’s all grunge, sex, and distortion in her latest offering Sleep Alone. You feel the bass reverberate through your bones, smell the sweat and sensuality of the downtown club buzzing with anticipation, and there—the eyes of someone, or something, coaxing you in as the van door slides open, but by then it’s too late.
February 22, 2023
True to all things McCarthy, Sleep Alone brings a mesmerizing beauty to the grotesque. It is a study on identity and intimacy, how hard they are to square, and all the pain that lies in the gap between the two. Sleep Alone confronts the inextricable connection between hunger and heartbreak, and will leave you wondering whether it was you who consumed the book or the other way around.
May 19, 2023
Sleep Alone hits like a searing guitar solo. Gorgeous, raw and full of emotion. You can feel every beat, every syllable rattle your heart and mind as you become immersed within the story of Ronnie and the band. The prose is exquisite and the story is full of heart and soul. I loved reading this story, and won't ever miss a story from this author moving forward.
April 1, 2023
A rockin ride I read in one sitting. This is a queer, sexy story full of horror and hunger.
May 30, 2026
A story about want, about hunger. The want for companionship, for intimacy, for recognition, for acceptance. Hungers that go beyond the simple life sustaining, that fill deeper needs. There's a reason the word alone is in the title. I was equally intrigued and nervous to read a book about succubi, I am usually not a fan of sex taking a center stage in my Horror but the way McCarthy handled the succubi lore was gentle and so not about carnal lovemaking. In this world, when a succubus takes from their victims the sex act is more of a decoy, the initiator if you will. What they are after is the connection (and isn't that what sex is all about in the end?) and essentially the memories. What they take are dominantly happy memories to fill the void within them. Something that gets mentioned repeatedly is that the best taste a victim can deliver is wholesome childhood memories, that is the hottest commodity and that says so much about what this tale is truly about. Needless to say I quite enjoyed this take on the succubus. It is a bit vampire like, another creature that dances this dance of darkness, desire and loneliness.
You'd think the combination of rock stars and succubi would make the story extra sexy but actually putting those together added some grease and grime. Scents heavily feature into the descriptive side of this novella and they are rarely pleasant, they are visceral and pungent. A band sleeping crowded together in the back of their van is not gonna create a nice smell. Summed up it represents desperation and, again, want for more, for better. For something safer and cleaner but since they stand outside of society for who they are all they have is each other, filth and all. This is also a lesbian story and with that the succubi can carry other subtext if you want them to. But for me this is mostly about loneliness and the desire to find connection.
On an emotional level this hit all the right chords, the world building could have been more expansive though. I think this could easily have been a novel and given us more of these characters and their lives. This would honestly make such a fantastic movie (with hopefully an outstanding soundtrack). The ending is sad, falling apart from people that were part of your life always is. I, too, have some interpretations about how Ronnie (our MC) leaves this story, how she has to cut ties with what gave her stability and belonging for so long to move forward. Seriously, this is such a well written book with a poetic quality that I haven't even mentioned much. Really glad I randomly came across this book, gotta pay attention to what more is coming from McCarthy in the future.
You'd think the combination of rock stars and succubi would make the story extra sexy but actually putting those together added some grease and grime. Scents heavily feature into the descriptive side of this novella and they are rarely pleasant, they are visceral and pungent. A band sleeping crowded together in the back of their van is not gonna create a nice smell. Summed up it represents desperation and, again, want for more, for better. For something safer and cleaner but since they stand outside of society for who they are all they have is each other, filth and all. This is also a lesbian story and with that the succubi can carry other subtext if you want them to. But for me this is mostly about loneliness and the desire to find connection.
On an emotional level this hit all the right chords, the world building could have been more expansive though. I think this could easily have been a novel and given us more of these characters and their lives. This would honestly make such a fantastic movie (with hopefully an outstanding soundtrack). The ending is sad, falling apart from people that were part of your life always is. I, too, have some interpretations about how Ronnie (our MC) leaves this story, how she has to cut ties with what gave her stability and belonging for so long to move forward. Seriously, this is such a well written book with a poetic quality that I haven't even mentioned much. Really glad I randomly came across this book, gotta pay attention to what more is coming from McCarthy in the future.
November 30, 2024
What I loved the most about this book was that I felt like I knew the characters right away, right from the very first page. I did not know what succubi were before but I loved the way this folklore entity was brought into this world or, more specifically, to the world of rock bands and music. We can feel Ronnie's pain and loneliness throughout the book, and see how she feels like everything is always her responsibility. Would she have met Helene if she hadn't turned the band? There is one other question we are left with: Why did Helene's partner get sick right away and the band only six years later?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 26, 2026
Some stories come along right when you need them. Sleep Alone is a story of loneliness, regret, and love. It's also a queer story of sex and rock 'n roll. I absolutely loved it. Can't recommend it enough.
Read
June 7, 2023Are you a fan of rock n' roll and lesbian succubi? Then this novella is for you!
October 22, 2023
3.5 ⭐️ - this caused me to dream I was a succubus and I somehow turned Paul Mescal into one too
July 27, 2024
Fantastic novella that works as a love letter to touring bands who never quite “make it,” but are out at dive bars and small clubs in your city, coming and going in a single night.
June 29, 2023
Perfectly paced, fully engaging, and I love the main character so much! FINALLY someone writes a book about a woman who isn't some young thing. Hooray for us middle-aged broads!
June 6, 2023
CWs: body horror, animal death, sexual content
This book had a really interesting concept that got me invested really fast! I don't usually read horror, but I really enjoyed this book. If you want a short queer horror experience, I would highly recommend it!
This book had a really interesting concept that got me invested really fast! I don't usually read horror, but I really enjoyed this book. If you want a short queer horror experience, I would highly recommend it!
May 31, 2023
Come for the rock and roll succubi (who can resist that?), stay for the amazing characters and heartbreak. This book drew me in and kept me reading, highly recommend!
March 13, 2024
SLEEP ALONE
by J.A.W. McCarthy
This one took me a bit to get through. I wasn’t sure where it was going but once I got about 30% in, I couldn’t put the story down. (Ask the poor people sharing a table with me at the indoor playground as I gasped numerous times over an hour.)
Ronnie tours with the band. She’s not a groupie, no. She’s the Mother hen, the glue that holds the band together, the reason for their being… the way they are. When she meets Helene, not only does she fall for her but they share a very deep, dark secret that will test Ronnie’s friendship with the band as well as her decision to make them what they are.
There is a loooooot happening in this book. From jealousy to LGBT+ representation, McCarthy wants us to question things as she writes. And I wasn’t prepared for the amount of emotion I had at the end. What lengths are we willing to go to to not — SLEEP ALONE.
Amazing! 4.5/5.
by J.A.W. McCarthy
This one took me a bit to get through. I wasn’t sure where it was going but once I got about 30% in, I couldn’t put the story down. (Ask the poor people sharing a table with me at the indoor playground as I gasped numerous times over an hour.)
Ronnie tours with the band. She’s not a groupie, no. She’s the Mother hen, the glue that holds the band together, the reason for their being… the way they are. When she meets Helene, not only does she fall for her but they share a very deep, dark secret that will test Ronnie’s friendship with the band as well as her decision to make them what they are.
There is a loooooot happening in this book. From jealousy to LGBT+ representation, McCarthy wants us to question things as she writes. And I wasn’t prepared for the amount of emotion I had at the end. What lengths are we willing to go to to not — SLEEP ALONE.
Amazing! 4.5/5.
February 2, 2024
I hate to dunk on an indie author but this was a real snooze. The description of the way succubus feed felt like it wanted to be compelling but just grew tiresome to read again and again.
The concept was really interesting but the execution was not great. By the end I didn't give a damn about any of the characters at all. The closest I came to caring about one of them was Jack, who was probably the most compassionate of them all, but most of these characters just annoyed me and I didn't care what happened to them and kind of wanted them all to die by the end.
The last 35 pages felt like a chore to get through. I guess if you're looking for a dull horror book to get you through a family gathering or holiday this might be alright if there are no other options but the execution for me was really laborious.
The concept was really interesting but the execution was not great. By the end I didn't give a damn about any of the characters at all. The closest I came to caring about one of them was Jack, who was probably the most compassionate of them all, but most of these characters just annoyed me and I didn't care what happened to them and kind of wanted them all to die by the end.
The last 35 pages felt like a chore to get through. I guess if you're looking for a dull horror book to get you through a family gathering or holiday this might be alright if there are no other options but the execution for me was really laborious.
September 29, 2026
we have failed alison bechdel.
non spoiler section
this is the worst book i’ve ever read and if i want to give any praise it’s that no book has enraged as much as this. i seriously wanted to be to charitable as this is an indie (?) author, but this book failed my expectations over and over again.
when i reviewed if you could be mine by sara farizan i was pretty harsh and said it bored me to tears, but that had the excuse of being young adult literature with teenage characters,
sleep alone does not have this excuse.
for being centered on two lesbians, it is comical how many times they are shelved for men or men are forced into their intimate scenes. i am a firm believer that sexuality is fluid and that lesbian is not an exclusive label, but this novel seriously made me reconsider my worldview. i did not go into this novel wanting nor expecting this level of heterosexual sex.
in fact, this novel’s treatment of it’s queer & female characters has made me swear off indie queer novellas for the foreseeable future. in my review of carnalis by tiffany morris, i had mentioned how it felt like a non-lesbian writing lesbians at certain points, but the faults of that novella did not prepare me for this. this novel treats lesbian identity as such moot point. our protagonist vaguely references homophobia and is put down for her attraction towards women but that is it. she barely has sex with women outside of the love interest, WHICH WOULD BE FINE, IF THE NARRATIVE ACKNOWLEDGED THAT IT IS FORCING A LESBIAN CHARACTER TO HAVE SEX WITH MEN OVER AND OVER. but no. we just suffer through her recounting her sexual escapades with men with no deeper point on compulsive heterosexuality (or distain for heterosexual men who want to correctively rape lesbians.)
spoiler section
i want to preface this with what i assumed this story was going to be: a merch girl roadtripping with a band she doesn’t really care for meets a cool lady, and the rest of the novel is spent with them falling in love and possibly ruining each others lives.
this novel isn’t that, at all. you get a vague idea of roadtripping but a majority of the novel is spent at shows, i don’t even think there’s a single scene dedicated to silly roadtrip shenanigans which is disappointing but whatever. my deeper issue, which i hinted at in the non-spoiler section is how male focused this novel is. our protagonist, ronnie, constantly calls the band her “boys” (ew), and by the tail end of the novel she is treating herself as a mother to these helpless little boys. which, side note, is incredibly weird considering she has, and continues to have sex with these characters. the author could’ve made this significantly less incestuous by making the characters found family, and not pushing them into a nuclear dynamic, or, if she wanted to explore the idea of incest, she should’ve fully stuck to that and made it more explicitly creepy. i’m not asking for the plot to be spoon fed to me, i just need it to make up it’s mind because it currently reads as some weird psuedo incest shit for zero reason.
another issue i have is how this novel cosplays filth that inhibits the DIY music scene, both hygienically and morally. at worst, you get scenes where characters vomit, bleed, are a little mean, a little creepy, or force a kiss (which everyone does at some point because that’s how succubi feed in this world, so it isn’t treated as sexual assault). if this novel actually wanted to explore filth the characters would be pissing and shitting in weird situations, they would wound their prey in more vile ways and at least one of the band members would be a predator. this sounds gross, and it SHOULD. if you want to talk about how terrible the DIY music scene is, you need to have people doing terrible things. this novel reads like someone who has never been involved with a DIY/Punk space even tangentially, bands are constantly outted for having members who are predators. especially bands who are small to medium famous. killian reads as if he supposed to be a weird asshole predator, but he really never does anything that bad compared to the other characters. i understand ronnie is somewhat of an unreliable narrator, but i don’t think that excuses making all of your characters this soft.
i also hated how often the prose repeats itself. it made me feel talked down to for daring to read this novel. characters features are repeated ad nasueum, and both the memory sucking / physical intimacy scenes made me feel like i was reading the same scene over and over with no new flair.
if being a succubi was supposed to be monotonous, that could be interesting! but this is honestly written like the author couldn’t come up with better ideas before a deadline and let the story go nowhere for chapter after chapter. i think this ties into my biggest criticism of this novel: it’s so excruciatingly boring. when you think a plot thread is going to be explored, or the story is going to change drastically you kind of get nothing, and that keeps happening throughout the entire book.
finally, if i’m being petty, this novel is kind of queerbait. the f/f romance is pretty centered on both the blurb and cover, but again, male characters are f/m intimacy are more prominent within the story. the male characters are also implied to be at least somewhat interested in men, but they kill all of the men they have relations with, and the only exclusively male character dies being made out with by two lesbians, which sort of perfectly summarizes how little characters queer identities actually matter in a tangible way.
(also shocked that the author of this novel is from the pnw, as she refuses to name everett / snohomish county and implies that it is both south seattle and close to the canadian border (???))
non spoiler section
this is the worst book i’ve ever read and if i want to give any praise it’s that no book has enraged as much as this. i seriously wanted to be to charitable as this is an indie (?) author, but this book failed my expectations over and over again.
when i reviewed if you could be mine by sara farizan i was pretty harsh and said it bored me to tears, but that had the excuse of being young adult literature with teenage characters,
sleep alone does not have this excuse.
for being centered on two lesbians, it is comical how many times they are shelved for men or men are forced into their intimate scenes. i am a firm believer that sexuality is fluid and that lesbian is not an exclusive label, but this novel seriously made me reconsider my worldview. i did not go into this novel wanting nor expecting this level of heterosexual sex.
in fact, this novel’s treatment of it’s queer & female characters has made me swear off indie queer novellas for the foreseeable future. in my review of carnalis by tiffany morris, i had mentioned how it felt like a non-lesbian writing lesbians at certain points, but the faults of that novella did not prepare me for this. this novel treats lesbian identity as such moot point. our protagonist vaguely references homophobia and is put down for her attraction towards women but that is it. she barely has sex with women outside of the love interest, WHICH WOULD BE FINE, IF THE NARRATIVE ACKNOWLEDGED THAT IT IS FORCING A LESBIAN CHARACTER TO HAVE SEX WITH MEN OVER AND OVER. but no. we just suffer through her recounting her sexual escapades with men with no deeper point on compulsive heterosexuality (or distain for heterosexual men who want to correctively rape lesbians.)
spoiler section
i want to preface this with what i assumed this story was going to be: a merch girl roadtripping with a band she doesn’t really care for meets a cool lady, and the rest of the novel is spent with them falling in love and possibly ruining each others lives.
this novel isn’t that, at all. you get a vague idea of roadtripping but a majority of the novel is spent at shows, i don’t even think there’s a single scene dedicated to silly roadtrip shenanigans which is disappointing but whatever. my deeper issue, which i hinted at in the non-spoiler section is how male focused this novel is. our protagonist, ronnie, constantly calls the band her “boys” (ew), and by the tail end of the novel she is treating herself as a mother to these helpless little boys. which, side note, is incredibly weird considering she has, and continues to have sex with these characters. the author could’ve made this significantly less incestuous by making the characters found family, and not pushing them into a nuclear dynamic, or, if she wanted to explore the idea of incest, she should’ve fully stuck to that and made it more explicitly creepy. i’m not asking for the plot to be spoon fed to me, i just need it to make up it’s mind because it currently reads as some weird psuedo incest shit for zero reason.
another issue i have is how this novel cosplays filth that inhibits the DIY music scene, both hygienically and morally. at worst, you get scenes where characters vomit, bleed, are a little mean, a little creepy, or force a kiss (which everyone does at some point because that’s how succubi feed in this world, so it isn’t treated as sexual assault). if this novel actually wanted to explore filth the characters would be pissing and shitting in weird situations, they would wound their prey in more vile ways and at least one of the band members would be a predator. this sounds gross, and it SHOULD. if you want to talk about how terrible the DIY music scene is, you need to have people doing terrible things. this novel reads like someone who has never been involved with a DIY/Punk space even tangentially, bands are constantly outted for having members who are predators. especially bands who are small to medium famous. killian reads as if he supposed to be a weird asshole predator, but he really never does anything that bad compared to the other characters. i understand ronnie is somewhat of an unreliable narrator, but i don’t think that excuses making all of your characters this soft.
i also hated how often the prose repeats itself. it made me feel talked down to for daring to read this novel. characters features are repeated ad nasueum, and both the memory sucking / physical intimacy scenes made me feel like i was reading the same scene over and over with no new flair.
if being a succubi was supposed to be monotonous, that could be interesting! but this is honestly written like the author couldn’t come up with better ideas before a deadline and let the story go nowhere for chapter after chapter. i think this ties into my biggest criticism of this novel: it’s so excruciatingly boring. when you think a plot thread is going to be explored, or the story is going to change drastically you kind of get nothing, and that keeps happening throughout the entire book.
finally, if i’m being petty, this novel is kind of queerbait. the f/f romance is pretty centered on both the blurb and cover, but again, male characters are f/m intimacy are more prominent within the story. the male characters are also implied to be at least somewhat interested in men, but they kill all of the men they have relations with, and the only exclusively male character dies being made out with by two lesbians, which sort of perfectly summarizes how little characters queer identities actually matter in a tangible way.
(also shocked that the author of this novel is from the pnw, as she refuses to name everett / snohomish county and implies that it is both south seattle and close to the canadian border (???))
April 5, 2023
One of the best books I've read in a long while. Engaging from page one and difficult to put down.
May 3, 2023
First job, Google succubi, so it's a female demon who appears in dreams to seduce men, usually through sexual activity, drawing energy from the men to sustain themselves, often until the point of exhaustion or death.
OK I'm there, and the angle of the story, well our succubi is Ronnie, a merch girl for a touring grunge band. Ronnie, rather selfishly, has turned the whole band into succubi minions. They play gig to gig, sleeping in the van or the occasional motel, very often leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The minions however don't have the same powers of restraint that their mother has and there's something else, they're rotting from within. Not ideal.
Ronnie then bumps into Helene, another succubi and pretty soon she's toying with emotions as allegiances wane.
OK first off, big fan of the authors writing style and I'm a fan, she writes fantastic short stories. Unfortunately this novella just didn't grab me, the characters were well written but the story wasn't for me. It was the whole succubi thing, it was like knocking on horrors door only to be told your names not down you're not coming in.
The succubi mother’s feeding is described as opening up a tunnel during a kiss and then taking anything from specific memories, talent, feelings, energy, right up to everything, leaving just a sack of bones. Even giving back aforementioned items but for me it wasn't enough, it didn't feel dark or horrific, if anything it was more romanticised. And that opening up a tunnel malarkey, to me opening up a tunnel is either a tunnel of love or something that's going to get me home quicker, sorry but it was a bit cheesy.
Tip of the day.
If someone's about to open up a tunnel on you, go the long way round.
OK I'm there, and the angle of the story, well our succubi is Ronnie, a merch girl for a touring grunge band. Ronnie, rather selfishly, has turned the whole band into succubi minions. They play gig to gig, sleeping in the van or the occasional motel, very often leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The minions however don't have the same powers of restraint that their mother has and there's something else, they're rotting from within. Not ideal.
Ronnie then bumps into Helene, another succubi and pretty soon she's toying with emotions as allegiances wane.
OK first off, big fan of the authors writing style and I'm a fan, she writes fantastic short stories. Unfortunately this novella just didn't grab me, the characters were well written but the story wasn't for me. It was the whole succubi thing, it was like knocking on horrors door only to be told your names not down you're not coming in.
The succubi mother’s feeding is described as opening up a tunnel during a kiss and then taking anything from specific memories, talent, feelings, energy, right up to everything, leaving just a sack of bones. Even giving back aforementioned items but for me it wasn't enough, it didn't feel dark or horrific, if anything it was more romanticised. And that opening up a tunnel malarkey, to me opening up a tunnel is either a tunnel of love or something that's going to get me home quicker, sorry but it was a bit cheesy.
Tip of the day.
If someone's about to open up a tunnel on you, go the long way round.
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