I needed a couple of days to write about this book because, when I finished it, I knew I had enjoyed it, but I wasn’t quite sure what exactly I had liked about it or what had worked less well for me. It has been a long time since I picked up a recent book and started reading it simply because I liked the synopsis, without anyone recommending it to me or having seen it on social media. And yet, I devoured it in two days.

The book follows a writer who, several years after publishing a successful novel, is on writer's block. One day, she Googles “how to write a bestseller,” and the first result is a Reddit post that answers: “Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.” So she decides to find a gay person who can serve as inspiration. She searches “meet gay men near me,” and the first result is, obviously, Grindr. Through this, she meets a young gay man struggling with addiction and starts writing about him, exploiting his misfortunes behind his back. That’s where the title Fruit Fly comes from: a fly that seeks out and feeds on things that are rotten.

And that’s how the book begins, with a lot of dark humour. Although it becomes less prominent later on, that sense of humour remains throughout much of the story. Fruit Fly deals with some pretty heavy and difficult topics, in fact, I’d recommend checking the content warnings before reading it, but it’s written almost like a YA novel, which makes it incredibly easy and quick to read. At the same time, it manages to deal with topics like addiction and chemsex in a fairly realistic and grounded way. In fact, the book itself jokes about how real life isn’t Euphoria.

I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly well-written book. It has some structural issues, and the prose isn’t especially deep, but it does leave you with some very interesting ideas and sentences to think about.

What I particularly love is the way it handles <spoiler>Mallory’s abusive relationship. As readers, we can recognise certain patterns, but because the story is told in first person, she normalises them herself and isn’t necessarily aware of what is happening. I also really like how this relationship eventually becomes the central conflict, when Mallory initially seems to be the character who is the most comfortable, with an easier and seemingly more put-together life.</spoiler> I also like that we get to see both sides of the story and, especially, the development of both main characters.

I think John Silver does a great job of creating characters who feel real, with believable actions and reactions. None of them feel completely good or bad, which makes it easy to understand where their decisions come from, even when you don’t agree with them.

My biggest criticism is the pacing. I think the book could have benefited from a bit more editing: some scenes feel repetitive, and some moments could have been shortened without losing anything important. The epilogue, in particular, feels far too long. The story is already resolved, but it keeps going for quite a while, leaving the door open for a potential sequel that, at this point, I’m not particularly excited about.