A verbose, unique slice-of-life novel which reminded me of Fight Club (for its visceral unwillingness to shy away from the gross) and Money (for the sometimes unlikable characters, and break-neck pace of interior narration), but which remained stubbornly and gloriously feminine.

Ruth, or Baby if you're naughty (and she is), is a character entirely of her own: a bed-rotting, girl-dinnering, drug-abusing, stripper with at once a solid and entirely malleable sense of self. Stuck in a life that is full, and going nowhere, where she is both loved and unloved, suffocated and lonely, desired and repulsive, Ruth increasingly loses control, whilst perhaps gaining more power than ever before.

A bizarre read, which will stay with me for a long time. I am not totally confident on my star rating here, but I recognise an entirely unique, bold, and confident writing style when I see it, so if for nothing else than Newell's exceptional grasp of language and voice, 4 stars.

For fans of sugar baby and new animal! I really loved it

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to review

4.5 stars!

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I enjoyed this trippy, dreamy little novel a LOT! I don’t think I fully grasped the ending (were we supposed to?) but I enjoyed the ride there so much that it barely matters.

Ruth, or Baby, is a stripper and dominatrix living with her (amicable) ex boyfriend and their dogs in San Francisco. Newell works/worked as a dominatrix, so her depiction of the sex work industry is imbued with such a staggering authenticity. It felt like reading someone’s diary, almost voyeuristic. I absolutely loved Ruth, her vulnerability. The way Newell described her relationships with Dino (who mysteriously goes missing later in the book), the pups, Ophelia, was just so alive. You feel like you know them. And her nights at the club and shifts in the dungeon were just fantastique, glitter practically falls out of the pages. It’s gritty and tender, hard and soft, I just loved it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced reader's copy and the opportunity to this early. Review has been posted on Waterstones and Amazon.

🪩 Soft Care / Brittany Newell 💋

Wow, that was a wild ride! I’ve seen some reviews of this book that describe it as “vibes over plot”, and whilst I think that’s true - the vibes are strong due to the lush and vivid writing - there is still plot. It just doesn’t come together in a neat bow at the end.

The reader essentially witnesses the slow unravelling of Baby, a sex worker whose drug dealing, cross dressing ex boyfriend suddenly disappears, leaving her alone in their home.

As Baby searches for him (metaphorically rather than physically) she descends further into San Francisco’s underground of dive bars, strip clubs and BDSM dungeons. As she sees Dino (the ex) in different men, she starts to reevaluate their relationship and her life over the past five years, leading up to her 28th birthday.

The book explores themes of loneliness, desire, love and childhood trauma. It sounds heavy, but moves through in a dreamlike state with Baby such a self-proclaimed “easy going” person that she doesn’t dwell on the bad things that have happened to her - mainly because she thinks she’s too average to be desirable if she shows her true sadness.

The book is tender, brutal and unsettling. There’s blankets and dogs and hand dipped candles… but there’s also aching loneliness, a suicidal client named “Nobody”, restless dawns and lost friendships.

I really enjoyed this book and found the fantasy element could be extended to so many parts of it.

It’s dark and light and luscious. I surprised myself as I usually like a conclusion, but with this book everything that came before was worth the open ending, which also worked in the context of the story and our unreliable / spiralling narrator.

This book gives sexy vibes throughout, it is enjoyable. However, it felt a bit under-edit and I think the execution can be better. Not so much of a storyline but I believe that's intentional. I often find it confusing and wanted to find answers. Unfortunately I found Dino's reappearance not making sense, and the ending linking to the book title slightly contrived.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc.

This is a dazzling, raw, and unfiltered fever dream.
Soft Core follows a sex worker navigating the disappearance of her boyfriend. But don’t expect a thriller.
Instead, it unfolds as a hypnotic stream of consciousness, slice of life where memory, desire, and survival blur into an intimate, unreliable narration.

I'd recommend it to readers who are drawn to introspective storytelling over plot.

This is a messy book - gloriously, intentionally, messy - like life, and love, itself. First, I must say that Newell can write: her prose is zippy and smart; she knows how to use similes and metaphors so that they illuminate her writing: 'they wore their fantasies like girdles, an everyday secret' - catching that sense of restriction and liberation, of what's hidden beneath the surface, behind the mendacities of social identity; or the layered used of 'soft core' from its sex work category to the perfume worn by Baby in its heart-shaped bottle - to the importance of vulnerability as the only true basis for intimacy.

I'm always fascinated by books that explore sex work and the corollaries of power, consumption, gender and the gaze. But the best look beyond the surface of what it means to be, here, a stripper or a dancer (I'm thinking of [book:No Touching|57732481] which plays in a similar space) so that the club or, later, the BDSM house are sites of revelation beyond their surface and literal function.

With wonderful textual control, we follow Ruth through love, friendship, desperation and breakdown. We're never quite sure how far we can believe her, especially as she starts seeing Dino in all the men she meets, and there's a ramping of tension in the last quarter or so of the book that had me feverishly turning the pages.

And where we end up - no spoilers - is an ending that is also a beginning and an opening. I loved, loved, loved this book and have immediately put Newell's debut, [book:Oola|30199417], on my TBR.

Many thanks to 4th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley - I'll be surprised if this isn't one of my books of 2025!

Soft Core by Brittany Newell captures an endearingly flawed character well and the writing is vivid and fresh.

Ruth is a stripper called baby, she’s living in a shared flat with her drug dealer ex boyfriend dino, when all of a sudden he goes missing. While waiting for Dino to come back to her, she makes a new friend who turns out to be connected to someone she knows.

I’m not 100% sure this book was written for the likes of me. That being said I have thought about it since finishing and for the most part I did enjoy it. I’m just not sure if that’s because it’s left so open and I didn’t get the answers I wanted or because it’s stuck with me more than I thought it would.

It’s a bit like a fever dream, I’m not sure what was real, what wasn’t, what actually happened and what didn’t.

If you don’t mind a book that leaves everything to your interpretation then you will love this, but for me I need them questions answered.

Thank you so much to @netgalley and @4thestatebooks for giving me the opportunity to read this for an honest review.

3.5 stars
I did enjoy this, although I do think the marketing is very misleading. It's not a 'hunt' for her missing ex boyfriend. It's a slice of life stream of consciousness style literary fiction. I liked reading from her pov as I do like an unhinged narrator. I just thought as the book kept going on that it got a bit lazy and sloppy. Do NOT read this book if you can't handle loose ends when it comes to plot, as this book has a LOT of that. If you go into this book with the right expectations, I think you'll enjoy it. A 20 something woman dealing with being lost and grief and the tribulations of sex work.

don't go into this expecting any sort of self-reflection. this book falls exclusively into the category of vibes, no plot, no emotional growth. unfortunately, that made it very much not for me.

Started good but then didn't really seem to go anywhere... Nothing happens but yeah the vibes. Nothing happens but yeah the vibes

Newell's writing is lush and vivid and stark. Sometimes I wanted to look away, but found myself compulsively reading because I needed to know where it was going. Baby meanders a lot, there's the background mystery of Dino's disappearance, but there's no urgency to this plot line. And it's as much about all the other sex workers Baby meets - a tapestry of their lives - as it is about Baby herself. This book is not for readers who need to be driven by plot, but if you like vibes, juxtaposition and frankness, then 'Soft Core' is for you.

Not quite what I expected and didn't really pick up a pace in the way I wanted it to. The writing style is what engaged me. It's also the main reason I stuck with it. In terms of plot, it felt a bit flat and circular. On the plus side, I appreciate a raw but tender look at working in clubs and what that means for the inner life of our protagonist.

This book is a flourescent bubblegum cocktail mixed by an unreliable narrator served in a glittering downward spiral.
I loved every second of it - the blend of graphic descriptions and characters not meant to be dainty make it honest and all the more beautifully flawed.

Started well but then didn't really seem to go anywhere enjoyed the read and the journey but didn't do anything for me. I obviously missed something.

While reading it my thoughts kept running away somewhere, I often got distracted which is due to the fact that this book was simply not interesting, nothing really happened. I didn't like Ruth. I don't know, maybe it's just my personal feeling, maybe others will like it more.

I wanted to love this one so much, but it just fell short for me unfortunately. It's not the worst book out there, but it isn't a favourite of mine. The story is intriguing but the way it is written wasn't for me.

Soft Core by Brittany Newell took me on a journey that I wasn’t entirely expecting, but ultimately, I found myself enjoying it more than I initially anticipated. This novel is a slow burner, one that starts off at a steady pace and gradually builds, which was a bit of a shift for me in terms of how I expected the story to unfold. While there were moments where the pace seemed to drag, overall it was worth it.

This is a book that might not immediately grab you but has a quiet, reflective charm that grows on you as the story progresses. It isn’t without its flaws—chiefly the dragging pace at times—but it ultimately delivers a solid, heartfelt experience.