This novella had immense potential, but it raced through the story so quickly that it became challenging to immerse myself in the plot or care about the characters. The lack of character development made it difficult for me to connect with the characters, especially in the chapters following Malachia, which I found particularly hard to engage with.

Initially, the first few pages had me thinking, "This novella will be making best-of lists in 2025," but as the story progressed, I found myself losing interest. The fragmented chapters left me craving more depth and exploration.

While I did appreciate certain elements—like the newspaper sections and their recurring mentions of teeth—other parts, such as the footnotes, felt unfinished, and I struggled to grasp the intentions behind them, a feeling that grew stronger as the footnotes nearly vanished as the story progressed.

Novellas like these are tricky. There's certainly a niche audience out there who will appreciate the abstract horror and mixed media approach, but if you're not part of that target group (like myself), this read may come across as confusing and ultimately unsatisfying.

I believe it would benefit from a bit more substance behind the weirdness. I love a strange plot, but at times, this felt like it was “being weird for the sake of being weird.”

Thank you to Unbound for providing this book for review via NetGalley.

thank you NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this in return for my honest review! ❤️
the book follows two main characters - noah, an everyday joe who has unknowingly been employed at an eldrich horror-esque newspaper company; and malachia, who works for the congregation, who finds her entire city of silence empty. the story follows these two trying to figure out what in the heck is happening around them.
now i would like to preface that i really dont enjoy giving low ratings to indie books, but i cant lie and say i enjoyed this more than i did. i would also like to preface i am a vibe-rater first and foremost, but even though the vibe of this book was great, i did find there to be quite a few issues holding me back from enjoying it more.
i want to start with the positives of this book. firstly, did not expect lgbt+ rep going into this! i am always a sucker for rep, even if it is incredibly inconsequential. i enjoyed that in the world shiveley created, gender & attraction doesnt matter when you’re working a job of lovecraftian horror. i love when in horror/fantasy being queer is not an issue at all.
i also am a sucker for mixed media in books!!!! the random newspapers at first were just pretty to look at & i skipped them, but then i realised “hey i want to read these” and they were cool! also i have no idea why my brain originally decided they were just for aesthetic and had nothing to do with the plot. why did i decide that. i found the mini-stories(?) in the newspapers super intriguing, especially moss-girl. wouldve loved to know what happened to her though </3. the fact the newspapers, although they could stand on their own, tied into the overall story by showing us what type of company printed matter is, letting us get freaked out before noah is even aware of who he’s working for.
speaking of noah, god was he funny! honestly he carried this book. his humour was honestly the biggest thing that kept me intrigued. instantly in the first chapter with his likeability, his “everyman” characterisation and his wit i was sold on him. this kind of faded with time, but i cant lie and say simply because of how great a character noah was, i thought this would be a 4-star book.
and now i have to discuss why it wasnt… and the main reason is malachia. i had absolutely no idea what was going on with her plot. i dont mind when a book introduces concepts unique to this world, but when concepts such as the “mansion of silence” and the “third silence movement” and the “congregation”... i mean hey if its shown not told that works! i promise im not that dumb needed things spelled out that explicitly. but there was no showing or telling. i could not piece together what was happening until i was like >85% finished this which does not make for an enjoyable reading experience! and i only had this issue with malachia’s chapters. noah works as he also has no idea what is going on like the reader, but with everything weird occurring being pretty normal for malachia, it felt like i, as the reader, was left behind in terms of background information.
also malachia was essentially a noncharacter. that might be because i had actually no idea what she was yapping about 95% of the time… because it was all context that was missing. idk when i was reading her chapters my heart was not in it, i was waiting to get back to noah’s fresh hell.
i think that is the book’s fundamental issue. it does not explain its unique concepts. gun to my head i could not summarise this book without a guide. not because i wasnt concentrating, but because i was incredibly confused. im so serious i cannot tell you what malachia was doing this entire story. like i can TELL you, but what was her goal? anything beyond surface level, i cannot tell you a single thing. noah’s story was a bit easier to grasp, but at some points i was still lost. honestly though with noah’s story i found it easier to just be along for the ride because he was so bewildered with what was occurring, as was i. malachia seemed like it was just another monday for her, which meant i felt like i was being dragged through the entire story with new concepts being added when i had just figured out what the city of silence or congregation actually was. i think the actual story of this world defo needd more fleshing out.
the other major drawback of this story is that it feels like it doesnt know what its trying to do. at some points it felt like weird horror, other times it felt like dark fantasy, and at other times it felt like a magical realism x horror novel. this book kind of reminded me of piranesi in a way, with the reader also having no idea whats going on but is along for the ride. noah is also kind of like the titular piranesi, in that they are both silly goofballs which make the book great. but the plot in this novel kept pulling me in so many different directions, and in <200 pages, we dont have time to be doing this much.
i think this book’s fatal flaw is not having more pages. i think if there were more pages, a lot of the “issues” i had whilst reading this would have been resolved. i still had a good time, and i can definitely say this book is unlike anything i’ve ever read before! sadly i do think its hiccups are too prominent for me to have overlooked whilst reading this, and as they negatively affected my enjoyment, i cant look past them.

I tried! But I had to DNF this. I really liked the wonderfully weird first chapter and was hooked to find out more, but then the parallel story (which I couldn't care less for) appears and I'm snapped out of the whole thing. I considered just reading the first storyline and ignoring the second, but the low ratings on this one made me reconsider and quit altogether.

I knew this book would be quirky, but it was a bit much. There are pages of "ads" that I don't think are well suited for Kindle readers. I got to 15% of the book and I had no idea what was going on in the novel. That is why I dd not finish the book.
This may be a better read if it was not in electronic form.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I was hoping to find that this was the weird horror novel of my dreams, but unfortunately it was simply not meant to be. I found that this book ended up jumping around far too much for anything cohesive to come out of it, and the different mediums confused it more than made it fun. The newspaper sections were good, but they just couldn't save the rest of the book.

It was like this book was trying to be House of Leaves but just couldn't get there, with too many ideas all at once and just a huge amount of mindless content across the story. I would have found this book a lot better with a coherent thread. The cover and the concept really drew me in, but the payoff was just not what I was looking for.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc of this novel. I will make this short and sweet. Although this should have been a hit for me, it wasnt. The premise is super interesting and the cover...my goodness the cover! I am a sucker for eyeballs. 10 out of 10. However, where this book fell short for me was its pacing and its readability. I just didnt like it as much as I hoped. 2.5 STARS

I spent about 70% of this book thinking “what is going on?” And that this is a more confusing version of the night vale. BUT once things start clicking into place after that it was easy to finish, it seemed a lot of unnecessaryness in the beginning but the end made a great start to what could be an amazing story.

Noah and malachia are from opposite worlds, literally. Noah is just looking for a new job, nothing special, but from the strange interview to the terrifying first day on the job he quickly realises he doesn’t know anything about what the world entails. Malachia is in the city of silence when she finds herself completely alone, she searches for answers from a talking true deity which leads her to through unimaginable circumstances and eventually into Noah’s world.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley

It was… interesting. I enjoy comedy horror books but this wasn’t the best. The two main storylines were intriguing but jarring, and didn’t fit overly well with each other, I'm afraid to say

Unapologetically weird and funny. I don't think this will be a book for everyone, but Jordan swings for the fences here, and I think it lands really well. Two main character arcs that seem incredibly disparate and slowly coalesce, and interspersed with all of this is a selection of newspaper articles and ads which tell their own weird stories. Body horror, humor, and general strangeness create a story that is very ambitious.

I do think the epub so formatted in such a way that it makes the story a little harder to follow, and I'm looking forward to rereading in print because I think the mixed media aspects and footnotes will be a little easier to wrangle on paper. But I enjoyed it nonetheless and I truly appreciate the author's desire to just be weird.

This book was really interesting. Though confusing at times, the description and body horror was really captivating and it felt really easy to get lost in the two main characters' journeys. Lots of genuinely spine-chilling moments.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in experimental horror!

I did notice some issues with formatting and footnotes, though not sure if this was just from the way the e-book downloaded to my Kindle.

Wow, this was so weird and fun to read! It has that combination of cosmic horror and amusing everydayness that I'm used to in something like Welcome to Nightvale. But this is definitely more queer, more violent, and more evocatively out-there. Some cool use of experimental visual elements to the text, like House of Leaves. Really just its own neat, messed-up thing though. If any of this sounds up your alley, check it out!

Great modern Horror story very unique.
Couldn't stop reading.
The characters where very enticing.

Well. That was something. It took me an age to get through this novella and, honestly, it was a struggle. The whole thing felt like a fever dream which didn’t make sense, the use of two protagonists was fine but that’s the nicest thing I can say. This novella felt like it needed to go back in the oven for a lot longer before release. One word. Don’t.

This book was quite enjoyable, but I found myself wishing it were longer. As a fan of splatterpunk, I was excited to dive in, and while it delivered much of what I was hoping for, it also fell short in some areas.

The writing was excellent, it was descriptive and gritty, perfectly matching the book’s tone.

However, I wanted more from the story. I was hooked from the first few pages, but the book’s brevity meant it felt like it rushed through the plot faster than I would have liked. The choppy, short format left me craving more depth and exploration, which affected my overall rating.

Overall, it was a fun and engaging read, but I’d love to see a full-length version that allows for more space to develop and flesh out the story.

The book I ended up dnfing as I just could not get through it I get what the author was trying to do however I found the story’s to be over complicated and hard to follow however I feel like with some fine turning their writing could be amazing!

"Hot Singles in Your Area" by Jordan Shiveley is a brilliantly inventive and darkly humorous exploration of modern dating and online culture. Shiveley's sharp wit and keen observational skills are on full display, creating a narrative that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. The book deftly balances satire with genuine moments of introspection, offering readers a fresh and nuanced perspective on the search for connection in the digital age. Shiveley's characters are vividly portrayed, each bringing their own unique quirks and insights to the story. With its clever writing and insightful commentary, "Hot Singles in Your Area" is a standout read that will resonate with anyone who has ever navigated the complexities of relationships in today's world. This book is a must-read for fans of contemporary fiction looking for a blend of humor and depth.

DNF 25% in

Unfortunately i didn’t know where this book was going, i wasn’t intrigued and i couldn’t really follow the plot since i was reminded in my mind that those were words on paper, I in fact had to reread some sentences and still i didn’t understand a thing.

I initially requested this arc because the plot was really interesting and i was in an horror mood but i was disappointed, maybe this is just how i felt and somebody else will love this arc.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this e-arc and i’m sad i couldn’t finish this book.

I really did not enjoy this book, and rating it is difficult. I can see where this might be someone's favorite, but to me the writing style was too confusing. The digital publication of the book interjected mid-sentence with images and graphics, making it difficult to follow a train of thought. While the newspaper clippings were interesting, they were the only good part of the book. It is unfortunate to say, as I think this had great potential, but the execution was poor and the structure very convoluted and needlessly hard.

Hot Singles in Your Area is a debut novel that emphasizes body horror and centers queer characters. It’s author Jordan Shiveley got their start on X (formerly known as Twitter) with an account that appears to be connected to the book (?). Truthfully everything in this review is a bit of a question mark because there was so much of the book that I did not understand.
Hot Singles in Your Area alternates between two main characters—the first character introduced is Noah, who pursues a job listing for the media company Printed Matter and is immediately struck with the strangeness of the position he is being offered. The other main character is Malachia, who comes from a magical world where she seldom comes across other humans. One day she finds that everyone in this world has vanished, and the two main characters find their paths crossing despite their very different starting points.
Down to the sentence level, this book does not make sense. Sentences reference information that has not been revealed to the reader, the footnotes are confusing and miss the mark of what seems to be intended to be humorous. There is also the integration of the job listings printed by the fictional company of the novel that are not placed strategically by rather are pages upon pages that split up sentences in the middle of a thought.
While I love the experimental format of their book, it was a risk that could have had a high payoff but ultimately failed miserably. I would love to see a similar format explored in a book where the footnotes, rather than being tangential commentary, actually lean into the academic format they mimic. I could imagine a story more along the lines of Penance by Eliza Clark that uses an archival theme being better suited for this structure.

f you are looking for weird, I guess this is weird. The entire book felt like a perfectly normal and boring person taking a selfie making a stupid face and captioning it "I'm sooooooooo weird." I definitely enjoyed Noah's story more than Malachia's. I can tell Shiveley was going for a lighthearted, cheeky narrative, which is great in a lot of books (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy cones to mind), but it didn't do anything to help this book.