3.5
I'm really not sure how to rate this book. Its not what I usually read. This book wasn't for me but I do see its appeal and I can see people really liking this book. I'm also just realizing that novellas don't usually work for me.
What I liked:
-The representation of toxic/abusive relationship and the cycle that keeps people in them
-The books willingness to push boundaries and venture into the absurd and the gruesome
What I didn't like:
-The prose felt over-indulgent sometimes.
-I got a little lost in some of the absurdity. I feel like it was done for symbolic reasons but I think I just didn't understand it.

I’ll be honest here… I have no idea what the hell I just read. The writing itself was intriguing and poetic enough for me to want to keep reading (this is where the 2 stars come in) but I truly don’t know what… that… was? I kept waiting for something to click, for some bigger underlying message to be revealed, but for me at least, it didn’t really happen. It was just a bizarre story about a toxic couple and the hell people put themselves through to be with someone they want… mixed with things like murder, dogs turning into sea creatures, and a lot of other weird shit. Maybe it was just too cerebral for my pea brain to comprehend, I don’t know, but if someone reads this and wants to try to better explain it to me, be my guest… give it your best shot. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I definitely think there are people who love this sort of book and will in turn enjoy I Can Fix Her, but I’m a romance and contemporary fiction lover at heart and this fever dream was just not my cup of tea.
💬Tropes: Sapphic, Existential Horror, Novella

Johnny is thrilled to spot her ex, Alice, at a small speakeasy one night—though less thrilled that Alice is with another woman. However, when Alice eagerly invites Johnny back to her apartment, Johnny is convinced they can make it work this time. They’ll change for each other. They’ll be better for each other.

But when Alice agrees that she can change, Johnny isn't prepared for the complete shift in reality that awaits her. The next morning, Johnny wakes up to a world where everything feels dreamlike and boundaries have dissolved. Although her time with Alice feels new and strange, a nagging sense of déjà vu creeps in, and a sense of dread grows as Johnny realises the world she knows is slipping away. Everything is changing, but can Johnny truly fix Alice and find the love she craves?

What a ride! I Can Fix Her captures the chaos of a nightmare in a way few books do, making it a thrilling experience for readers who enjoy unconventional, mind-bending storylines. The book intensifies with each chapter, and while it will appeal to those intrigued by the unknown, it may overwhelm those who dislike confusion or experimental plots. Fortunately, the ending offers a satisfying resolution, something often lacking in stories like this.

Both Johnny and Alice are deeply flawed and unlikeable, but by the end, I found myself empathising with both, which was a very surprising development, so kudos to Wilde for that impeccable character development. Their tragic relationship, and the idea that anyone can—or should—be "fixed," is heartbreaking and thought-provoking. It’s an anti-love story wrapped in a bleak hopefulness, with characters that can't let go of a doomed relationship.

Final Verdict: I Can Fix Her is a nightmare of a book that pulls you in, compelling you to finish in one sitting—and then dive back in to uncover the clues you missed. If you’re looking for similar déjà vu vibes, try Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram, or Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin for another feverish tale.

Thank you to #netgalley and Clash Books for an advanced copy of I Can Fix Her.

This book is a gut punch for anyone that has been in a toxic relationship. Rae Wilde goes right for the heart and the throat with this short but emotionally resonant novella that really gets to what it feels like to be hopelessly in love with someone you know will always end up hurting you.

Johnny misses her ex, Alice. That’s not so strange. When she runs into her by chance at a bar, their awkward reunion, also not so strange. But then Alice invites her back to her place, and Johnny accepts, and again, their night spent together and the decision to try their relationship all over again? Completely believable. No strangeness detected. But then she wakes up in the morning, and Alice has a completely different hair style, and her tiny little yappy dog? Yeah, he’s a giant beefy aggressive boy now. AND WE HAVE REACHED STRANGE. Alice and Johnny spend a week together in total, and every day more and more strange things happen, turning Johnny’s life into a bizarre and increasingly violent dream with seemingly no escape. And worse of all, it seems like Johnny is more afraid of letting go of Alice than the terrifying things that are seeping into her reality as she keeps her stranglehold on this relationship.

And that’s the thing about Johnny and Alice. They absolutely should not try again. Johnny is possessive and obsessed with the concept of a relationship with Alice, but doesn’t really love Alice herself. Meanwhile, Alice is selfish and doesn’t truly love anyone or anything but herself. With their powers combined, they’ve created the single most toxic relationship possible, and neither one seems willing to let it go. Even as the relationship escalates to violent, even deadly levels of surrealism, and letting go is the only way out.

I Can Fix Her was a captivating novella, detailing the hidden depth of a toxic relationship between two women in the fallout of a messy breakup. The story was interesting, surreal, but still relatable. The story unraveled at a steady pace, with good timing, and engaging sequences. The horror of Johnny’s situation creeps on slowly, and the ending was somewhat unexpected but again, relatable. I’d recommend giving this a quick read just for the messaging alone, that in the end, in fact, you probably can’t fix her.

Weird, Unnerving, Crazy and Brilliant! 100% not what I was expecting after the first chapter but each day growing more and more strange was amazing!

I was confused at the beginning, but the story became exciting and very in the end. I'd love to read more from the author.

Rae Wilde's "I Can Fix Her" is an extremely bizarre sapphic horror novella about a relationship collapsing again and again, a madness of two resulting in a sort of shared psychosis (and this is to put it mildly). The loop is both mental and metaphysical, centered on toxicity, the persistence of romantic delusions through time, and the iteration of mistakes. It treats of rather sick beliefs about love and the (im)possiblity of change, within the context of a story told in a somewhat thriller format. It reminded me a lot of the way Eric LaRocca portrays queer relationships, but Wilde rests more on plot twists rather than situational grotesqueries. The writing is trippy, weird, and choppy; the imagery vivid but occasionally nightmarish. I'd say that it's essentially a grim morality tale about obsession, without any catharsis or redemption. I recommend it for the ending, which I found insightful and realistic.

In I Can Fix Her, we follow Johnny and Alice, two exes who bump into each other at a bar after Alice returns from Germany, Somehow Johnny ends up back at Alice's apartment, and the realms of logic start to fall down in wakes of their obsession for each other.

This was a delightfully weird little novella that doesn't bother following convention and instead does what it wants to do when it wants to do it. The writing was a pleasant surprise, since I don't always expect books of this size to be as well written as this one is. I absolutely plan on reading more from this author in the future, and I never would have found this book had it not been for Netgalley.

Without saying much since it is so short, if you've enjoyed books like Finna by Nino Cipri and like a good old Groundhog Day premise, I think this may be for you.

I thrilling time loop where love never dies. Or at least, Johnny tries not to let it die. Like being dragged into a situation with two toxic people devouring you, this book makes you feel like you're being sucked in, too.

"Johnny forgets things. But I remember."

This is a fast-paced sapphic horror novella that grips you from start to finish. A fever dream I never wanted to end, beautifully written. I am now officially obsessed with Rae Wilde.

My favorite detail: If you look closely, there's a hidden story within the story.

This is a book about a toxic relationship but leans a tad bit more into the thriller than direct horror genre. It is not as grotesque as an Eric LaRocca but it is along the same lines. This is a novella so the story is striking and gets right to the point. You follow the spiral down of the main character while she is obsessed with trying to make this relationship work. It is an excellent read if you can deal with some rough scenes.

I CAN FIX HER is a complicated dissection of obsession and toxic sapphic love. The narrator(s) roles unfurl as the book progresses and any sympathies I had for her are completely gone by the end of the book. The horror and surreal aspects of the book are very well done and keep you on your toes seeing what happens next. The tone, tension, and pacing are good until the ~ 85% mark when it slows down a bit and I saw where the ending was heading. As for the ending, I am personally not a fan of the choice made, though I think it does fit the overall story and themes.

This was such a trip! Not at all what I expected from the first chapter. I loved every minute of this wild, weird ride.

As a huge fan of sapphic horror, I make it a point to read as much as I can from the genre, so when I came across I Can Fix Her by @_rae_wilde on @netgalley , I knew I had to give it a read. Before diving into my review, I’d like to extend my thanks to @clashbooks for granting me auto-approval for their titles-I’ve yet to be disappointed by any of their publications, and this book was no exception.

The story opens with Johnny encountering her ex, Alice, at a cafe. Despite the pain of their past breakup and Alice's ghosting, Johnny is irresistibly drawn back in. A renewed relationship seems possible, filled with promises and dreams. However, over the course of a single week, the world around them begins to fracture, forcing Johnny to question whether their relationship, and reality itself, can survive.

Initially, I found the writing style a bit jarring. The prose felt choppy, almost as if two voices were fighting to describe the same moment in conflicting ways. This made it difficult to settle into the narrative at first, but as the story progressed, the fragmented style started making sense. The plot picks up quickly, immersing readers in the toxic yet magnetic push-and-pull of Johnny and Alice’s relationship. Structured around a week, with each chapter dedicated to a single day, the book masterfully captures the gradual unraveling of both their dynamic and the reality surrounding them.

Wilde's prose is deeply poetic, and the vivid, imagery she weaves throughout lingers long after. The horror elements are beautifully crafted, blurring the lines between the grotesque and the sublime, creating an atmosphere where even the most terrifying moments carry an undeniable allure.

Towards the end, the story took a turn I genuinely didn't see coming—a rare and welcome surprise!

At its heart, I Can Fix Her is a hypnotic blend of psychological horror and time-bending surrealism, wrapped in a deeply toxic love story. If you’re a fan of unsettling, lyrical horror, this novella is absolutely worth picking up.

Well, what can I say about this book?
This book for me is a first for this type of book. I love the way Rae made it seem like we are losing our minds!
She wrote Johnny well and I enjoyed the storyline.
I loved the mind-bending aspect of the story and it does a good job of depicting jealousy and possesiveness.
I read it within one sitting.
5/5 stars from me ! #netgalley #ICanFixHer

Holy shit. Did not expect to be in tears at the end of this one but here we are. A trip in ever sense. Visceral, inventive, brutally insightful. A fever dream.

Engaging from start to finish, and while it wasn't quite relatable to me in some ways, in others it struck every chord. It's a brutal, yet almost too realistic portrayal of toxic relationships, which are still all too common. And while it's well written, it's also quite nightmare-ish and confusing at times - which is also a good thing in this particular case.
Rae Wilde has her taget audience figured out, that's for sure.

“God may love you, but not better than me”
If I had to be concise I’d say that the toxic sapphic horror novella subgenre has never known a bad book and this continues to be the case. I think this book is best gone into as blind as possible (as I did having been sold only by the comp titles), so if Time War x Things Have Gotten Worse sounds good to you, just stop reading here.

What I liked:
The Writing: My god, the writing. It is exactly what you’d expect when you see the comp titles. The gore and the grotesque of Eric LaRocca combined with the flourish and the beauty of This is How You Lose the Time War. Gripping from the first sentence and it doesn’t let you go until the end.
The Characters: We only get to know Johnny and Alice in glimpses, yet it is enough to build those characters up in your mind and meet them at the point. We get an obsessive ex and her emotionally unavailable paramour stuck in a cycle of hurting each other, we see all the ways they don’t fit together, and how they keep trying to reshape each other into something they are not. At the end the horror is as much their relationship as are the supernatural elements of the story.
The Story: An intertwining of a toxic relationship and time that doesn’t seem to flow as it should done as beautifully as it can be done. I don’t wish to say more to avoid spoilers (and with a novella it is hard to do so).

Who I’d recommend this to: The Sapphic Horror enjoyers, you know who you are.

this one was a short little number about johnny who arranges an encounter at a cafe with her ex alice, desperate to fix the things that went wrong with them. success - johnny does end back at alice's, but stuff starts to go awry when johnny starts losing time, alice's dog isn't the dog that johnny remembers, and the world begins to stutter on a cosmic level.

this was a fun, fast read ultimately about obsessing over relationships and interactions with humans when they don't work out, how the more that we attempt to make repairs the worse things turn out to be. yet we can't let go of that connection - why? why are we as humans so insistent on demanding things from the world that were clearly never meant for us?

needless to say i really enjoyed this one and the hypothesis that we're all our own worst enemies, that sometimes in order to be happy we must let go. i really hesitate to call this one horror, but maybe the point is that the real horror is that we can't always get what we want.