Nymph: A Novel

by Stephanie LaCava, Carlotta Brentan (Reader)

A young woman from a long line of assassins, lives her life with the ardent mission to avoid the trappings of any enduring romantic love, while keeping one on the pursuit of an untimely death for herself.

Not yet thirty, Bathory, or 'Bat' to those near to her, has assembled a peculiar Model, sex worker, linguist and scholar of Latin. But nothing in her lively job history employs the singular traits she inherited from her strange family, chief among them an uncanny ability to sidestep seemingly certain death(s). An appropriate atavistic instinct, for someone from a long line of assassins and spies. Her clan are assassins of a romantic bent, her parents issuing theories on love galore. However Bat is set on swerving any enduring romantic loves, and she's set on dying young. Now, if she could only avoid that one alluring figure from her father's past.

A thriller, a love story, and a dynamic examination of class, violence and connection. The images we make to share and those we strive to conceal, alienation and salvation, magic and technology, LaCava's bold new novel is propelled by the compelling violence one can seed in contradiction.

Genres: Fiction, Library Science, Thriller, Audiobook

1 pages, Audio CD

Published November 25, 2025

About the author

Stephanie LaCava is a writer in New York.

Reviews

[Danielle Chelosky · Rating 1 out of 5]

sloppiness masquerading as mysteriousness; laziness masquerading as detachment. the book is practically incoherent

[Lordes · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm so happy this book is over

[The Poor Person's Book Reviewer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Try hard edginess with robotic writing and lazy storytelling. I’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt that they were trying something new but it just didn’t work. The idea of a 7 year old with an expertise in Latin and a 4D sixth sense of awareness is so absurd that this really would have worked better as a full blown action pulp. P.s Kobe died in 2020 which means a lot of this takes place in the future, right? (should of added some SF)

[raniera]

Sometimes the writing felt like cool and elusive but the dialogue kept taking me out of it and anytime there was a description of the main character throwing her hair up or pulling on a lover’s hoodie I felt like I was reading 1D fanfic instead of a litfic book published by verso

[Emmi Freeman · Rating 1 out of 5]

25/25: Listen. I had 20 pages left in this book and could not finish it that’s how much I didn’t like it and it didn’t make sense. I wanted to finish my reading goal, let’s pretend that I did. Happy 2025!

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Idk why this is described as a thriller. Should be called a flopper.

[Mark Ortiz Ortiz Ortiz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Follows Bathory from childhood to her young adult life in the Big City, juggling her life as a Latin linguist, lover, and assassin.

I'll make this short and sweet: I don’t know WTF this book wanted to be. At first, I was following — Bath is learning about her parents’ secret espionage life and inherits her love of Kobe Bryant from her father. But once she gets to the city, I literally have no idea what was going on. The dialogue feels lazy; I often wasn’t sure who was speaking ,which I’m not always opposed to, but the story’s direction went absolutely nowhere. It all culminates in some kidnapping that leads to... again, nowhere. I think the story was supposed to focus on her failed romantic relationships, but... I honestly don’t know.

It’s a 1/5 ⭐️ for me. I don’t think I’ve ever given a book a 1. I can usually find something to bump it up to a 2,but not today.

[Jonathan Lukas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird book. The writing is very descriptive and author is clever writer on a sentence by sentence basis. But I have no idea what I just read. It an unfinished story that isn't explained well - the back cover of the book explains more of the story than the actual read. Do not recommend.

[Harry Smith]

i uhhh. look. idk.

[Gorrit-Cor Lootsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Odd and nonsensical, that about sums up my experience reading Nymph. On a sentence level, it has these striking moments and descriptions. You feel like you're riding this wave towards a profound destination. On a paragraph level, it starts to get a little wobbly. Questions arise as to who is speaking and why something is happening. Chapter by chapter, the nonsense starts to pile up. Why do we spend one scene with our heroine in 'peril', only for it to seemingly never have happened in the next? This structural problem translates to the whole as well, questions are raised but never answered. People are not what they seem but never with any consequence. Bathory is either the most adult child or most childlike adult I've ever had the pleasure of following. 


I can't say I didn't enjoy reading this novel. It's just that in the end, the sum is a lot less than its parts.

2.5/5 stars

[Ashuvini]

verso let themselves go

[Zee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high expectations for this book but honestly, I'm extremely disappointed. This read like a pretentious, edgy, Wattpad fanfic; in the bad way. For some context, there's a scene where the main character says she always keeps a copy of whatever book she's reading in Latin; a dead language that you can find almost no reading material in. Also another scene where it is stated that they are in the kitchen while also describing the character going around her room? It was confusing, dull, and took itself way more serious than it actually is. With a bunch of interlinked moments where nothing actually happens.

[James Ray-Bissell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This probably needed at least another 100 pages to feel remotely like a complete story. Mystery by the means of omission/under cooking the story isn't really that compelling to me.

[Joel Curry · Rating 2 out of 5]

What the hell sure

[Anna Truelove · Rating 1 out of 5]

I genuinely can’t believe this was published.

About 40 characters and plot lines too long to be fleshed out in under 200 pages. Literally nothing made sense.

[Billie Errington · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like someone tore out half the pages. Also - the blurb is written from the end point of the story and doesn't bear a huge amount of resemblance to the plaot (perhaps because there's a lack of plot)

[Caroline · Rating 1 out of 5]

prose really didn’t make sense most of the time. i was locked in til about 70 pages and the rest was read just so i could finally finish a book after a few weeks 😭

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange little book. Not a thriller nor a romance (as marketed). Chock full of both good and bad writing. As I said: strange.

[John Oakley · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5. Good premise and story, execution that wasn’t quite for me. Too many moments of the author saying something that’s meant to be profound but is too vague to have power, or moments of the author intentionally not saying something for effect, to no effect

[Jaeha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wordy at best; distasteful at worst

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It felt like the author was trying to drop some heat but it ended up being juvenile. The description was too good I HAD to pick it up but I was definitely catfished. I didn’t hate it, and it was a quick read which I will always appreciate, but it lacked character/depth/interesting content. As each chapter passed I kept expecting it to hold up to my own expectations, only to be disappointed by the end. I’m happy I still read it though. The cover was too cunty for me to ignore.

[Laura Treganowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nymph was wrapped in mystery and the darkness. The first half was captivating and then it fell off a cliff for the second half missing large chunks of time and plot. Confused.

[Annette Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Expect the unexpected in Nymph, a compelling read that's somehow wonderfully off-centre and full of mystery, intrigue and enigmatic assassins. The provocative writing style and somewhat detached narrator/protagonist had me hooked fromnthe start. Great book!

[Claire O'Riordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is the worst book i’ve ever read. like the plot is interesting but i wish someone else wrote it because what the author was trying to do just did not work. garbage :)

[Charlie · Rating 1 out of 5]

isn't anything

[sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve read all of Stephanie LaCava’s fiction now and I think I’d say all of them are bad. She’s someone I keep trying with because her work outside of fiction is interesting to me - especially her involvement in the publishing of Zoe Lund’s poetry - and yet each book has been a disappointment. Nymph drew me in due to Uschi Obermaier on the cover and its increased publicity with book clubs like Library Science, but this is probably her worst yet. While I thought her previous novels were trying too hard at a sort of ‘cool girl’ aesthetic (very Sylvia Plath meets Alexa Chung), this one was also completely nonsensical. I doubt I will read another of LaCava’s books but I will continue to follow her on Instagram, her life looks very cool.

[grim_mall_gorth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephanie is unrivalled in terms of the way she's able to structure sentences and put words together, genuinely think she's a 1 of 1 and am so glad she's out there taking risks. Very refreshing in 2025. I'll respect anyone who takes a risk with their work.

[Kaleela Lauder · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be fair, a lot of the sentences were really good. The issue is none of them strung together to make a comprehensible story. I could not give you a summary of what this novel entitled, I have no fucking clue what I just read. Sorry gal.

[Sarah Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

im sorry, i judged a book by it's cover in a hyper-optimistic way. i don't like writing bad reviews, but don't read this.

[Eve Kahama · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book has great potential. however, sentences and paragraphs made no sense. felt like I was reading half finished thoughts.