Fruit Fly

🎧This audiobook was gritty and raw with themes of addiction, emotional abuse, mental illness and family impact.🎧The story is told from two points of view - Mallory - an author battling years of writer’s block and her muse Leo, a young man struggling with addiction.🎧The problem? Mallory is going to somewhat unhinged lengths for inspiration and Leo has no idea that she is using him and his life to break out of her writer’s block.🎧Will M. Watt and Fiona Mitchell brought incredible vulnerability to both characters and I was absolutely captivated by their narration! Hands down phenomenal performances.💫Thank you to Spotify Audiobooks for access to a copy of this audiobook via NetGalley. All opinions shared are my own personal opinions.➡️this book is a satirical thriller combining suspense, mystery and danger with dark humor while challenging social constructs.

4.5 ★“relevant. urgent. necessary. only the best books get called those three words all at once. i don’t even think sally rooney’s books were called those things. maybe only books like to kill a mockingbird, and the bible. i did that.”what a tiiiiiiiiiime. the levels of secondhand embarrassment and cringe in this novel are astronomical. mallory is perhaps the most delusional fmc i’ve ever experienced. as painful as it is to watch her be so wildly out of touch, it’s clear we’re meeting her as she begins to spin out. her “picture-perfect” life with her verbally abusive and generally infuriating husband is beginning to shatter when she comes up with the idea to “go gay. go sad. go dark.”after creating a fake grindr account, mallory crosses paths with leo, a young poet, struggling with addiction. from there on out, it’s a race to see who can extract what they want from the other first. from leo, mallory hopes to find the grit her story needs. from mallory, leo wants to score an invite into her home, allowing him to steal as much as he can. this one really kept me guessing, i never knew where it was going to go next.would i recommend it? in the words of mallory maddox, “slay kween yes gawd.” but definitely check the trigger warnings. it gets pretty dark.thank you josh silver, crooked lane books and netgalley for this e-arc🤍

I can’t remember a more unlikeable main character than the woman who’s telling the story. And her foil, a gay drug addict, has nothing going for him that would make me root for him. Altogether not worth the time.

It’s rare to find a story where you’re rooting for more than the main character, but Josh Silver did just that in FRUIT FLY.I didn’t know what to expect in this one, but what I came out with was more than I had anticipated.Mallory and Leo are intertwined in this web of events, though their status in life is far from similar. They’re both trapped, lost, and have suffered at the hands of others whether that be mentally, emotionally, or physically. Both of them are survivors, and the desire to see them come out unscathed kept me on the edge of my seat.For anyone who has ever felt lost, trapped, or the pressure to be something other than your true self, you’ll love how this story comes together.Huge thanks to NetGalley & Crooked Lane Books for this advanced reader copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own, and my review is left voluntarily.

Unhinged. Cringey. Captivating. Insane. And somehow…just normal.Fruit Fly is an intense, unpredictable thriller wrapped around sharp social commentary about acceptance, denial, escapism, othering, and the lengths we go to avoid confronting who we are.What worked especially well for me was how the author balanced an almost impossible story with an unsettling amount of realism. I cycled through shock, disgust, laughter, sadness, anger, empathy, and devastation—sometimes within the same chapter. My jaw was open more with this book than with anything else I’ve read this year.I particularly enjoyed how the past and present storylines of the two main characters connect, adding depth to both the plot and character development while reinforcing the idea that people can share similar feelings even when their circumstances look nothing alike.Be prepared for some unresolved questions and a few storylines that felt like side quests. The point of their randomness may be the point!Disturbing, thought-provoking, and absolutely wild. Fruit Fly is a reading experience I won’t forget anytime soon.