Living With B

• The Vibe: Visual art, intense obsession, an a complete, aggressive subversion of the male gaze.
• The Story: Set in Newcastle, the story follows Irina, a cynical, explicit, photographer, who scouts average-looking men off the street to pose for her intense, subversive art projects. When she’s offered a prestigious exhibition in London, her carefully managed chaotic lifestyle begins to violently unravel.

My Take: Irina is a masterpiece of dark wit and sheer terror. She is narcissistic, deeply manipulative, and utterly fascinating. Clark’s writing is so incredibly sharp that you’ll find yourself laughing out loud at things that probably should require a wellness check. If you want a story that grabs you by the throat and refuses to apologize, this is the blueprint.

• The Vibe: Domestic dread, suffocating societal pressure, and literal, visceral hunger.
• The Story: Named “Piglet” by her childhood family, our protagonist is a successful food editor who seems to have it all. She has the perfect life, a beautiful home, and a handsome fiancé. But just thirteen days before their wedding, her finance confesses a massive betrayal, causing her carefully constructed reality to crack wide open.

My Take: Instead of doing what society expects, either cancelling the wedding or quietly forgiving him, Piglet spirals into an insatiable physical and emotional appetite. This book captures the pure claustrophobia of keeping up appearances while your life is actively on fire. It is heavy, complex, and will make you want to scream.

• The Vibe: Feminist body horror meets deeply unsettling psychological thirller.
• The Story: Ji-won is trying her best to survive her parents’ messy divorce, her mother’s subsequent downward spiral, and the casual, exhausting racism of her mother’s terrible new white boyfriend. As the pressure builds, Ji-won becomes intensely, uncontrollably obsessed with eyes, specifically blue eyes, and begins to crave them in the most literal, terrifying way possible.

My Take: My jaw hit the floor multiple times during this read. Monika Kim takes cultural expectations, female rage, and creeping madness and wraps them in a brilliant, stomach-churning horror narrative. It is a stunning, deeply dark look at what happens when a girl is pushed completely past her breaking point.

• The Vibe: Sharp, unsettling, visceral, and entirely unforgettable.
• The Story: After losing everything following her daughter’s disappearance, former actress Lila Devlin returns to Hollywood to rebuild her life with a new skincare company. But when revenge enters the picture, Lila’s pursuit of success turns into something much darker, forcing her to confront grief, fame, beauty standards, and how far she’s willing to go for justice.

My Take: I hear you “Becca, stop it! We know you love it!” But just once more, I have to recommend it! Lila is unhinged, complex, and it’s plot will leave you staring at a wall. It’s brilliant, chaotic, and everything I want from contemporary fiction.

• The Vibe: Heathers meets The Secret History if it were filtered through a vivid, blood-soaked Alice in Wonderland fever dream.
• The Story: Samantha Mackey is an outsider in her aggressively elite MFA program at Warren University. She utterly detests her classmates, a cliquey, insufferable group of girls who all call each other “Bunny.” But when Samantha receives an unexpected invitation to one of their exclusive off-campus “Smut Salons,” she finds herself drawn into their bizarre, sugary-sweet, and increasingly monstrous world where lines between reality and dark imagination completely dissolve.

My Take: Reading this book feels exactly like having a high fever in a room painted hot pink. Awad’s writing is wildly brilliant, toxic, and deeply funny. It captures the terrifyingly intense nature of female friendships and loneliness by turning those feelings into actual, literal body-horror magic. It is the ultimate blueprint for unhinged fiction—if you want a book that will make you question your own sanity by the final page, this is it.