Soft Core
A Novel
by Brittany Newell
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Pub Date Feb 04 2025 | Archive Date Mar 04 2025
Description
A young woman’s madcap search for her missing ex-boyfriend takes her into the sexual underground in Brittany Newell’s savage, tender Soft Core.
Ruth is lost. She’s living in a drafty Victorian with her ex-boyfriend Dino, a ketamine dealer with a lingerie habit, overdosing on television and regretting her master’s degree. When she starts dancing at a strip club, she becomes Baby Blue, seductress of crypto bros, outcasts, and old lovers alike. Plunged into this swirling underworld of beautiful women, fast cash, ungodly hours, and strangers’ secrets, Baby’s grip on reality begins to loosen. She is sure she can handle it—until one autumn morning when Dino disappears without a trace.
Thus begins a nocturnal quest for the one she still loves—through the misty hills of San Francisco; in dive bars and bus depots; at the BDSM dungeon where she takes a part-time gig. Along the way, she meets Simon, a recluse who pays her for increasingly bizarre favors; a philosophizing suicide fetishist named Nobody; and Emeline, the beautiful and balletic new hire who reminds Baby of someone . . .
A brutally funny, propulsive story of power, fantasy, love, and loss, Brittany Newell’s Soft Core is an ode to the heartbroken and unhinged, to those whose appetites lead them astray. It is a hallucinogenic romp about a girl coming undone, whose longing for friendship, romance, and revenge will take her over the edge and back again.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
“Soft Core is a beautiful fever dream, a cotton candy nightmare, a love story stuffed inside a wadded nylon stocking. It’s a novel that wants to get close to you. It wants to bite your neck; it’s the actual promise of a hickey. I can’t remember the last book I read that was even half as tender. Soft Core is a slippery, captivating pleasure. I ate it up.” —Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth and Mostly Dead Things
“Brittany Newell’s prose is too elegant to be called raw, but the oomph, the heart, makes everything feel so real. I love this world and this narrator, the risks she takes, the story she tells, simple yet so seductive and just teeming with aliveness.” —Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave
“Soft Core drew me in like a whirlpool—a wild spin into loneliness and desire.” —Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9780374613891 |
PRICE | $28.00 (USD) |
PAGES | 352 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
This book felt so real I forgot it was a novel until I was halfway through. Every line of it is a perfect balance of being surreal and totally believable. Unlike anything else I’ve ever read. A total melancholic joyride through a strip club!
Totally judged a book by its cover when requesting this - and boy did it pay off. (Let's hear some commotion for the illustrator). I really liked this. It had it all; a touch of body horror, vivid use of kink without it being a smut novel and a sense of human loss. There was a well-used use of mystical realism thrown in, which made the overall plot interesting.
wowowo I absolutely loved this one!!! its like if 'New Animal' by Ella Baxter and 'The Guest' by Emma Cline had a baby - both polarizing books but I mean it as a high compliment bc those were both favs as well. I think this one might be a mixed bag though - I could see a lot of people not really jiving with it as much, but thats ok because the girlies that get it will get it....
this book was a wild ride, a lil bit of a fever dream that jumped around in time and followed our protagonist Ruth as she kinda loses her mind in present-day, following the disappearance of her ketamine-dealing ex-boyfriend. at one point I was kind of frustrated with it because it felt like it wasn't following a solid plot but once I accepted that and just went with it, I started really enjoying myself. I loved being in Ruths (or 'Baby's) mind, I loved her perceptiveness, her wit, her self-awareness, how unhinged she could be and often was. I loved the settings - the strip club, the dungeon, the drafty victorian, San Francisco at large. I loved all of the weird ass characters and how many of them ended up being quite endearing in the end. while a lot of themes were explored, I think this book examined human loneliness in such a beautiful and honest way. I really had such a fun time with this one, I didn't want it to end, though I do think it ended at just the right time.
I'm v curious to see how this is received once it's released and I hope to see people loving it as much as I did!
thanks netgalley and FSG for the arc!
Brittany Newell is a powerhouse of an author! This story takes the reader on a literary deep dive into the main character’s mind and emotions. This is the emotional ruin of a woman whose profession revolves around pleasing others, yet at the end of the day, she battles loneliness. Ruth, aka Baby, is a character who struggles with emotional priorities. Is it better to trust in love or lose faith in the whole process? Is it better to seek comfort from who/what you know or from a stranger? From reading the description of the book, one might assume that it will be a thriller or even an erotic thriller. This is not the case. This book is so thought provoking that it may leave the reader feeling as delirious as the main character. There are moments that are left up to the reader’s interpretation and may make you have to dive deep into dissecting the situation. Newell paints a vivid picture of the main character’s daily life being a sex worker and maintaining unfulfilling relationships. Ruth’s is a person that attaches themselves very strongly to people but yet these attachments are surface level and self-serving (like her relationship with Emeline for example). I love the structure of this book and the way it was written. If you want to jump into the life of someone who is struggling to attach themselves to what is real and valuable, this is the book for you. It is definitely a heartbreaking yet fun, chaotic yet structured and vivid yet blurry read.
I would like to thank Net Galley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for this ARC. Thank you to Brittany Newell for their creative and addictive writing. I can’t wait to read more from this author.
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