I enjoyed this, though not quite as much as the blurb would have me believe I would. Patricia Wants to Cuddle hits all the notes that make reality tv such a guilty pleasure, and marries that to a pretty great monster premise, all set in the gorgeous woods of an island off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. If your book club is searching for a riotous read, then we have to point you towards Patricia Wants to Cuddle. . . . A little horror, a lot of comedy, and a charming queer romance—this sounds like a great summer read to us.” - Abbie Martin Greenbaum, Dandelion Chandelier Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen is this incredible, hysterical, quirky thriller of a novel that weirdly gets a whole lot of things right about behind-the-scenes reality tv.” - Connor Brennan, contestant on The Bachelorette Season 17 and Bachelor in Paradise Season 7 But anyway: While nothing overtly horrific happens in the first half of the novel (other than the prologue, where a dead animal is discovered by an Otters Island resident), things start to take a turn for the terrifying at around 50% of the way in during the show’s glamping excursion at the top of a mountain. Amanda, the ditzy fashion blogger and frontrunner of this season of ‘The Catch’, is violently dragged out of her luxury yurt by a female Sasquatch and not long afterwards, everyone is thrown into a panic when they realize she’s missing. Renee should be thrilled to have been chosen as one of the final four contestants in The Catch, the world’s biggest reality show. But now she, the other contestants, and Jeremy ‘the Catch’ have arrived on the remote, wooded island for the final show, Renee begins to wonder if there’s something wrong. Is she taking a bigger risk than she realised?

Having just finished a series of stories featuring the final girl trope, I loved the fresh way Samantha Allen connected the horror final girl to the Bachelor-esque final girl. Though this book is rather light-hearted (even in spite of the harsh events) I walked away with a lot to think about this connection. Pacing-wise, there's a lot of buildup, too. We're halfway through before anything horrific happens (if you discount crimes against fashion and common sense), and then the journey downhill to the ending seemed just too fast. I don't want less of that great prologue though, because it genuinely was fantastic. The second half of the book just should have been about half as long again - build up some suspense, draw out the distance between the gorier moments, and definitely give us a lot more of what exactly is going on at Otters Island. We get answers; but they're a sketch where I wanted the full picture. I had high hopes for this one— The Bachelor meets a creature feature? yes, please—and Samantha Allen delivered: I devoured it in one sitting . . . Part satire, part gleeful horror, part lesbian love story, I had as much fun reading this as Allen clearly did while writing it. A delightful, surprising summer romp that I dearly hope gets the silver screen treatment.” —Eliza Smith, Lit Hub

Advance Praise

Patricia Wants to Cuddle was an amazingly fun read. This is one that I'm still thinking about even after I finished it and I love it more with each passing day. This book is one you don't want to pass up on. You'll regret it if you do. This is the lesbian Sasquatch novel you’ve always wanted . . . this is the most badass book imaginable. . . . The publisher describes it as 'viciously funny' but I thought it was also kinda sweet. I’d give Patricia a cuddle.” ―Molly Odintz, CrimeReads (Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022) That includes Renee, too, she supposes. Maybe she’s read more books than the other girls, but whenever she catches herself feeling superior, she remembers she made the same choice they did to come on this show. Whoever they were before, they’re heading to the same place now. Ultimately, they’ll all be flattened into pixels and LEDs, reduced to the stuff of sorority house small talk and boxed-wine-fueled internet debates. And as she and the other contestants begin their final challenges, they slowly start to realise that the island they've been taken to is hiding a terrifying secret - one that could make the final Elimination Event all too real. It is great to encounter my favorite parts a second time; within the last twenty percent of the book, the figurative language involving a weathervane and a turkey absolutely slay me.

If your book club is searching for a riotous read, then we have to point you towards Patricia Wants to Cuddle. . . . A little horror, a lot of comedy, and a charming queer romance—this sounds like a great summer read to us.” —Abbie Martin Greenbaum, Dandelion Chandelier Amanda probably never did her reading. She looks like the kind of girl who would have copied off of Renee. And Renee would have let her. What makes a novel like Patricia so vital is that it reminds us just how fun literature can/should be, in this case with all the hallmarks of a “beach read,” that double-edged recommendation. And yet the sentences in Patricia are supple and smart throughout, the characters deep, human, growing more complicated as our views into their interior lives and histories expand across the novel.” - Ryan McIlvain, Los Angeles Review of Books Most of the time when you sell a short story collection, which I did in 2018, [publishers] will be like, “That’s cute, but do you have a novel?” So what originally happened, of course, was I did not have a novel, but I was like, “Sure, yes.” And then I wrote a pitch for a novel on a train between Clapham Junction and Balham. That won’t mean much to you, but that was not a very long train [ laughs]. Unsurprisingly enough, that was not the novel I actually ended up writing and publishing. And then I came to this, which had essentially been a short story idea I wanted to write as my treat for finishing a novel. There’s this quote I loved from the book about how every couple loves discussing their “personal mythology.” It really resonated with me. Do you think that’s a uniquely queer experience?The contestants of a reality television dating show compete for love— and their lives— in this pulse-pounding and viciously funny fiction debut from the GLAAD Award-winning author of Real Queer America. This book was not what I was expecting at all and it was fantastic. Perhaps one of the most eccentric books that I have ever read. Parts were really funny and bizarre. And when I say bizarre, I mean way off in left field bizarre. Bizarre in a way where I loved it the more I thought about it. Even the dating show parts were hilarious. Every damn thing about this was pure love insanity. Totally worth the read.