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Samantha Allen
Samantha Allen writes fiction with a distinct voice. Readers enjoy her unique stories, including "Patricia Wants to Cuddle."
Patricia Wants to Cuddle
Synopsis
On the latest season of the Bachelor-style reality show The Catch, four remaining contestants are flown to a remote island in Puget Sound to compete for the affection of a smug tech entrepreneur. They are braced for manufactured drama, staged rivalries, and the usual made-for-TV heartbreak. What they are not braced for is Patricia — a lonely local desperate for connection — and the very real danger that begins picking the cast off one by one.
Samantha Allen's debut novel is a horror-comedy that skewers the vapid machinery of reality television while quietly telling a tender love story between two women trying to rise above an intolerant town. As the polished dating-show veneer cracks, the book careens toward a last-woman-standing showdown, blending creature-feature thrills with sharp social satire.
Told partly through posts from a Catch superfan site and secret letters written by a teenage girl in 1972, Patricia Wants to Cuddle is a fast, funny, genuinely unsettling romp — named one of the best books of 2022 by NPR and others — about spectacle, loneliness, and who gets to be seen.
Genres
Characters
The final four womenProtagonist
ReneeProtagonist
One of the four finalists on The Catch, more self-aware than her fellow contestants.
The BachelorSupporting
PatriciaSupporting
A misunderstood local on the island, desperate for connection.
JeremySupporting
The self-satisfied tech-entrepreneur bachelor the women are competing over.
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