Perfume & Pain
By Anna Dorn

Astrid Dahl is having an existential crisis in her mid-thirties. She recently met Ivy in a lesbian Zoom writing group and finds herself falling in love, despite all of her red flags.

Neurotic and impulsive, Astrid battles feelings of inadequacy with an amphetamine, weed, and alcohol combo she has dubbed the Patricia Highsmith.

Astrid’s self-destructive behavior could risk her losing a film adaptation of her book and maybe even her agent, but with a nosy new neighbor, all she wants is an escape.

As someone drawn to trashy and tragically self-destructive characters (I’m not projecting, you are), I admittedly did find this to be a page-turner, but not without its own glaring faults. Particularly biphobic and generally hateful comments. The main character is extremely reductive and judgmental of basically the entire LGBTQ+ community, which made this story tough to swallow at times.

I wanted to like this more than I did. The book comes across as very personal for the author, like maybe she was trying to work some things out. Overall, meh.

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