Book Review: Patricia Wants to Cuddle is perfect holiday-reading fare
Samantha Allen, author of Patricia Wants to Cuddle
- Patricia Wants to Cuddle
- Samantha Allen
- Faber £8.99
What are we thinking as we scroll through our stories and updates on social media?
How much we enjoy the updates? How exciting it is to get a glimpse of the lives lived by newly minted influencers?
Or maybe it’s jealousy at how perfect their curated personas are. And even how we’d love to see them get their comeuppance.
That’s something that was offered by Louise O’Neill in her best-selling last year (tagline: 'Not everyone we put on a pedestal deserves to be there').
Samantha Allen gives us something similar in but mixes in gory just desserts and leaves little to the social media imagination.
Plot-wise, think reality TV show meets meets , a brilliant series, currently in its second season, about a group of girls who are stranded in a remote setting where something sinister seemingly lurks beneath the surface.
In , dark shadows are evident in what should be picture-perfect shots for Glamstapix.
That’s the platform co-founded by Jeremy, the titular ‘Catch’ (America’s most eligible bachelor) on the world’s biggest reality show, which is down to its final four contestants when we join.
The action and perspective shifts between those final four, all with their own defining characteristics, luckily for us as readers and for their prospective social media followers: There’s Christian influencer Lilah-Mae Adams, fashion vlogger Amanda Parker, auto show model Vanessa Voorhees, and HR rep Renee Irons, who seems too smart to be on this show, too old — no one over 30 has ever made it to the end — and, if she makes it into the final, she’ll be the first black woman in Catch history to make it that far.
But maybe she’s just being kept around to make the show, and Jeremy, look better in the eyes of viewers.
We also see the action through the eyes of jaded producer Casey, who knows the show has gone downhill in recent seasons but still loves and lives it.
With questionable morality, she is a dab hand at cajoling the exact action and confrontation she knows will get viewers talking.
She has to deal with the argumentative final four when the cameras aren’t rolling as well as an alcoholic host who gets an executive producer credit but offers little more other than still looking great in a suit.
As if that isn’t enough, Casey has a no-strings-attached thing with one of the cameramen, for whom that doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. It’s enough to drive her over the edge.
They all find themselves on the mysterious Otters Island, a place once teeming with tourists before the disappearance of three female hikers in 1994 and other dark occurrences.
As the show looks to cut corners to keep the money rolling in, there are plenty of financial reasons as to why they’re filming the penultimate week of the Catch here rather than in Japan.
— a misnomer of a title — adds in elements such as messageboard posts (“So the Catch is going to pick the tiny blond girl with the perfect tits. Shocker.”) that quickly attract amateur sleuths and old blog posts to up the impending ante.
This debut novel by Allen is short and perfect for holiday reading. Though the characters are 2D, you’ll still get dragged into the action — just like they do!
