This is a spoiler-free review!
I was really drawn to this book from the summary, and was hoping to dive into a literary fiction work that would provide an interesting exploration of sex work, relationships, and the disappearance of an ex-boyfriend. However, despite the precipitous of the summary leaning on being Ruth's search for her missing ex, Dino, he seems to hardly be a topic of conversation once he vanishes into thin air. His presence is certainly felt in the beginning of the book, when he is not missing, but the second he is nowhere to be found, Ruth does little more than shoot him a couple of texts before moving on with her life.
Ruth is lost, young, and unsure of herself at the deepest level. Her work as a dancer and amateur BDSM dabbler leads her down multiple paths, whether it be doing untoward tasks for money, sending emails to a mystery person asking to die, or embarking on a fake friendship with the daughter of the man she used to have an affair with. She is riddled with thoughts of what her life used to be like and what it could have been had her life not gone in this direction. The fact that she is only twenty seven, the same age as me as I read this book, puts her situation into a more prominent world view. What if these events happened to me? What if my ex-boyfriend was there one night and gone the next?
The fantasy of a better life or alternate paths plague Ruth as she hops from one client to the next in an effort to occupy her nights, however the pressure of being desirable to men who frequent the establishment she works at seems to weigh heavily on her, even when she is not at work. Before Dino disappears, he plays a prominent role in helping Ruth develop her Baby persona, from selecting attire to giving her suggestions on how to seduce. It honestly would have been a more compelling story if Dino did not disappear, and instead if we had followed them both through this time in their lives and see the impact he had on her psyche as everything likely would have progressed further down the rabbit hole.
I found Ruth to be more than truthful in some scenarios than others, and while she seemed to march to the beat of her own drum, she definitely allowed outside influences to play their part on changing the course of her life. As she begins to become more undone as the story goes on and she digs herself into deeper holes, readers are left watching her derail relationships and embark on journeys that may come back to bite her. The more she seemed to fall, the more I wanted her story to be over - she is not a bad character, but rather the frustration of watching her ignore red flags one day and sprint towards them the next made me feel like I was watching a roadside accident. The side characters certainly helped aid in Ruth's development, or more accurately, her unraveling, and they provided this environmental shift in her way of living and thinking.
Newell's novel needed some more grit and shock value - readers go into this expecting one thing and come out unsatisfied, craving the depravity that was promised. As a literary fiction fan, this did not reach my expectations, and while I do think the story had some interesting components at times, it is a story that you read once and do not have to return to. The allure of the cover and synopsis draws you in but by the end, you are just as unsatisfied as Ruth.
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