Patricia Wants to Cuddle: A Novel

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At first, Amanda registers it as a dog or a bear, but it looks almost human, its contours twisting into an expression that is equal parts hunger and despair - a deep, almost prehistoric longing. Some kind of monkey? On Otters Island? Amanda yells at the animal.

The contestants of a reality television dating show compete for love—and their lives—in this pulse-pounding and viciously funny fiction debut from the GLAAD Award-winning author of Real Queer America.

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The story starts as a Bachelor-type show that is down to the final four girls. I enjoyed getting to know all the different contestants and seeing the producers working behind the scenes. This final four portion of the show takes place on an island in the Pacific Northwest and the island itself is like a character in the story. It's a little creepy and definitely sets a mildly unsettling tone. There are also some residents on the island who occasionally cross paths with the contestants. Later on in the book, there is a major shift and it becomes a gory slasher horror story. I don't want to give more specifics than that, but please just know that it does get violent and a bit dark so be prepared! I've never read any of the authors other works, but I might have to because wow I absolutely loved everything about this writing - the POV switches, the dialogue, EVERYTHING. Hell, I don't think there's a single main character in this I'd actually want to meet in real life, but I LOVED them! They were all awful, terrible people (with a couple exceptions) but they were also so much fun to read and worked perfectly with the story. I think it also has something to do with the fact that the sea can be many things at once. It can be very calm on the surface, and something can be going on underneath.” So simultaneously lovely and haunting you will be torn by wanting to look closer and wanting to look away, which is fitting, because that’s exactly how I feel when watching the best episodes of reality television. It is, simply put, a delightfully strange and wondrous book, one that takes multiple high concepts and smashes them together, ultimately spinning a story about desire, the things we want, and what we’re willing to do and sacrifice to get them….Singular, strange, spectacular.” - Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Autostraddle Real Queer America is a delight to read...an engrossing journey full of humor, vulnerability, insight, and joy. What results is a beautiful tapestry of, well, the real queer America... Real Queer America is well-written and well-researched, and it's a blast to read, but perhaps its most essential question is that of how complicit 'blue state' LGBTQ people are in dismissing red states as scary places for queers. The whole world is scary, for queers and for everyone. Perhaps Real Queer America will inspire the reader to be more involved in fighting discrimination everywhere."―Rewire

As the weather warms up two things are certain: your social feeds will be filled with bikini beach pictures and Love Island will return for another season. Samantha Allen’s Patricia Wants to Cuddle is the much-needed queer antidote to the heat-induced fever of summer. Her debut novel follows the final contestants of The Catch – a The Bachelor-coded dating show – as they head to a remote island to film the final episodes. But there is an expected guest. Someone or something is catching the contestants’ eye through the forest. Is it another bachelor, is it an ape? No, it’s… GLAAD Award–winning journalist Samantha Allen has written the perfect satire of popular reality dating shows, and you won’t want to put this one down…Patricia Wants to Cuddle straddles its clashing tones perfectly. It’s both a razor-sharp satire of dating shows like The Bachelor and the fandoms that surround them, and a horror story about a remote island and the cryptid who preys on unwitting tourists. Bloody good fun.” —Philip Ellis, Reader’s DigestIn her debut novel, Patricia Wants to Cuddle, Allen combines the two genres to great effect, deftly striking a balance between satire and social commentary, nuanced character studies, the vapid nature of reality TV, horror, and just the right amount and type of humor to bring it all together . . . It’s a wonderful queer story.” - Sarah Neilson, Shondaland The balance between petty Housewives-based melodrama, gore, and identity struggles is wonderfully achieved despite the novel's brevity. Silly fun for the whole family as King Kong meets The Bachelor in Paradise and Naked and Afraid.” —Jim Piechota, Edge Media Network Speaking of campy and unmet expectations - to me, a campy read should make me laugh. It shouldn’t annoy me. I shouldn’t regularly cringe over how obnoxious the characters are. I should laugh. I did not laugh.

I love Samantha Allen! Her voice is an essential part of the movement and a new brand of queer hero for these dark times. In the face of the alt-right and crypto fascists, I say- Queeros Assemble!"―Lilly Wachowski, co-writer and co-director of The Matrix trilogy and co-creator of the GLAAD Award winning Netflix series Sense8 Note: after hearing the audio version, I changed my rating to 5 stars. 5 stars shouldn't be reserved for Shakespeare, for Toni Morrison, for Elizabeth Strout. 5 stars means the book is among the very best in its genre; Patricia Wants to Cuddle is among the best humorous novels being published this century. A comedic approach to horror doesn’t always land, especially when it relies heavily on satire. However, I think Samantha Allen was able to find a good balance with “Patricia Wants to Cuddle” by adding enough campy fun to break up the criticism. She’s particularly good at incorporating dark humor into her descriptions that made me laugh out loud. If it sounds like I'm being harsh, I hope not; this really was a great creature-feature in book form, with characters I cared about. I think it's just easier to be disappointed when something you're really into doesn't quite get all the way to as great as you want it to be?In her debut novel, Patricia Wants to Cuddle, Allen combines the two genres to great effect, deftly striking a balance between satire and social commentary, nuanced character studies, the vapid nature of reality TV, horror, and just the right amount and type of humor to bring it all together . . . It’s a wonderful queer story.“ —Sarah Neilson, Shondaland

Most of the time when you sell a short story collection, which I did in 2018, [publishers] will be like, “That’s cute, but do you have a novel?” So what originally happened, of course, was I did not have a novel, but I was like, “Sure, yes.” And then I wrote a pitch for a novel on a train between Clapham Junction and Balham. That won’t mean much to you, but that was not a very long train [ laughs]. Unsurprisingly enough, that was not the novel I actually ended up writing and publishing. And then I came to this, which had essentially been a short story idea I wanted to write as my treat for finishing a novel. This is the lesbian Sasquatch novel you’ve always wanted . . . this is the most badass book imaginable. . . . The publisher describes it as ‘viciously funny’ but I thought it was also kinda sweet. I’d give Patricia a cuddle.” - Molly Odintz, CrimeReads (Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022) Allen argues that queerness thrives everywhere, perhaps even more so in states like Indiana, Texas, and Tennessee, precisely because there's still so much advocacy work to do. Allen's openness about her personal story--including growing up Mormon, living an angst-filled double life in Provo, coming out as transgendered, meeting her wife in an elevator at the Kinsey Institute, and undergoing surgery to get a vagina--invites respect. She writes with loving curiosity about other people in the LGBTQ community and blends this with national-level reporting on political and historical LGBTQ issues."―Booklist (Starred Review) This book was a wild romp. Part horror, part reality dating show, go into this one with no expectations because it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before. It’s a short and fast paced book. If you’ve ever wanted a tragic ending for some reality dating show contestants, this is the book for you!The contestants are mostly not interested in love; they are interested in publicity, for various reasons of their own. The shooting schedule leaves them sleep deprived on an almost permanent basis, and so given the premise of the show—competition, not cooperation—it doesn’t take long for the women to turn on one another. If your book club is searching for a riotous read, then we have to point you towards Patricia Wants to Cuddle. . . . A little horror, a lot of comedy, and a charming queer romance—this sounds like a great summer read to us.” - Abbie Martin Greenbaum, Dandelion Chandelier I had high hopes for this one— The Bachelor meets a creature feature? yes, please—and Samantha Allen delivered: I devoured it in one sitting . . . Part satire, part gleeful horror, part lesbian love story, I had as much fun reading this as Allen clearly did while writing it. A delightful, surprising summer romp that I dearly hope gets the silver screen treatment.” —Eliza Smith, Lit Hub It takes a while for the plot to build so I'm sure some readers will be very surprised by just how big a turn it is. But I am a huge fan of a big turn and I was all in. The cover is kind of a giveaway (as is the title, in its own weird way) but that really doesn't spoil any of the fun. It's too bad sometimes people have to die, the book shrugs, as any good slasher-style horror does.