Library Journal - Audio
01/01/2022
Remy and Alicia are an unhappy couple in their 20s. They both work unfulfilling restaurant jobs, have no real interests, and are not sure what they want to do with their lives. The only thing that seems to unite them is a shared obsession with Jen, a former coworker of Remy's who has become a low-level influencer. They dissect her social media posts, investigate her boyfriend, and roleplay being Jen in and out of the bedroom. When a chance encounter leads to Jen inviting Remy and Alicia on a surfing trip to Montauk, their obsession with her twists and curdles. Alicia invents a large-scale art project to impress Jen's friends, and bringing it to life awakens something dark and strange. The book starts off slowly, peopled entirely with characters it's hard to become invested in—if they have so little interest in their own lives, why should listeners care? But things get weird very quickly after Remy and Alicia come back from Montauk, and listeners who stick it out are in for some fun. Casey Turner's narration is a little flat, but fittingly so for a group of people whose primary emotions are ennui and disappointment. VERDICT An optional purchase.—Stephanie Klose
Publishers Weekly
05/03/2021
Morgan’s witty if uneven debut attempts a fantastical combination of millennial ennui, obsession, and shape-shifting horror. Remy and Alicia are a barely functioning 30-something couple who both work as servers in different restaurants and share a Brooklyn apartment with a roommate. Remy and Alicia’s relationship revolves around the beautiful and confident Jen, a former colleague of Remy’s, who runs her own jewelry business. The couple receives alerts whenever Jen posts on social media, and they spend most of their time drinking and analyzing Jen’s posts. Alicia also role-plays as Jen as part of their sexual relationship (“What would you do if Jen were in the shower right now?” Alicia calls from the bathroom). The pace picks up when Remy and Alicia join Jen, along with her boyfriend and a few other friends, on a weekend surfing trip to Montauk. As the couple’s fixation on Jen becomes more dangerous and absurd, the lives of several characters, most notably Remy, are permanently altered. There are a few early signs of a horror plot (in Montauk, Remy thinks he sees a giant beetle outside the window, then hears screams), but the gory transition in the final act feels abrupt. Morgan does a great job with the obsession theme, but otherwise this is a bit too messy. Agent: Alexa Stark, Trident Media Group. (July)
From the Publisher
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE WIRED Best Summer Reads NEW YORK TIMES Most Anticipated Books of July REFINERY29 Best Books of Summer LITERARY HUB Most Anticipated Summer Novels NYLON Best Summer Reads HARPER'S BAZAAR Best Books of Summer POPSUGAR Best Books of Summer BUSTLE Most Anticipated Summer Books ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY Best Books of July THE RUMPUS Best Books of the Year DEBUTIFUL Best Books of July
“A Touch of Jen is bananas good. Funny and sharp and surprising and bittersweet. Just [three chef's kiss emojis]." —Carmen Maria Machado
“A satirical, ferocious, shape-shifting novel…What started as an acerbic millennial sex comedy grows the gnashing mandibles of supernatural horror with a spiritual self-help twist…The structure is unconventional and disorienting, but Morgan manages each breakneck turn without spinning out of control. There’s an almost fanatically concrete simplicity to her prose that makes the storytelling absurd and unnerving and consistent in effect — like someone smiling at you without blinking, showing too much of the whites of her eyes…chimeric and deliriously original, emitting an eerie power.”—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“Morgan has created a fabulous monster here, legitimately Frankensteined herself a wicked, unflinching, dynamite novel out of razor-sharp dialogue, toxic social media culture, and the nonsense notion that the self is just another brand to be endlessly plumbed for content. Wildly hilarious and absolutely terrifying, A Touch of Jen is truly a touch of genius. I loved every minute of it.” —Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of WITH TEETH and MOSTLY DEAD THINGS
“Beth Morgan's perfectly unhinged debut novel is a twisted delight you'll devour within a day…You'll laugh, you'll scream, you'll strongly consider making your Instagram private.”—REFINERY29, Best Books of Summer
"A Touch of Jen is hipster noir, acerbic social parable and slasher gore-fest: as if Patricia Highsmith, Chris Kraus, and Ann Quin all crashed a Hamptons beach party, and John Carpenter dropped in with some weed."—Tom McCarthy, author of REMAINDER and SATIN ISLAND
"The funniest (and most twisted) book of the year."—Tony Tulathimutte, author of PRIVATE CITIZENS
“Morgan's got swagger. A Touch of Jen will draw you in with its electric rhythm and razor-sharp wit, but it will make you stay with its wild, beating heart. I came for the blood-thirsty monsters, I left moved by Morgan's deep understanding of the day-to-day absurdity and pain of 21st century existence. A banger of a debut and the arrival of a bold new voice in fiction.” —Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of PIZZA GIRL
“Um, holy shit. Or maybe it’s better to say: unholy shit. Whether you’re on a post-vaccine rampage or not, this novel will be the most fun you’ll have this summer: a millennial comedy of manners that, just at the point where these things usually fizzle and disappoint, takes A Turn and morphs into a weird horror novel… I don’t want to tell you any more, so look, just trust me on this one.”—Emily Temple, LITERARY HUB
“Morgan masterfully brings dark comedy and psychedelic horror together at a slow-burning pace. Her mundane but over-the-top characters and brilliant dialogue add to the surreal and fantastical tone of this spellbinding book.”—BOOKLIST
“An ambitious debut which captures the loneliness of the internet age in deft strokes.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“This deliciously vicious novel, Beth Morgan’s debut, is probably best described as what might happen if Ingrid Goes West took place atop the Hellmouth of Sunnydale. The one bright spot in Remy and Alicia’s faded relationship is their mutual obsession with Jen, a beautiful former coworker-turned-influencer. When they encounter Jen in real life and get whisked into her orbit, what seems like a dream come true gradually turns into a psychedelic nightmare.”—HARPER'S BAZAAR, Best Books of Summer
“If a cross between Sally Rooney’s books and The Talented Mr. Ripley sounds intriguing to you, look out for this debut novel…supernatural and very funny and spooky and weird.”—BOSTON.COM
“A darkly funny novel.”—ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Morgan drops plenty of zany twists into readers’ laps, and the latter part of the novel takes on a speculative dimension”—NEW YORK TIMES (Books to Look Out For in July)
"a twisted, brutal, and legitimately frightening tale of a parasocial relationship so toxic, it has interdimensional consequences. Reading this made me so happy I don’t have an Instagram."—Layla Halabian, NYLON MAGAZINE
“A thrillingly acerbic fable, and the perfect novel to pick up the next time you feel vaguely ill after spending too long on Instagram.”—WIRED, Best Summer Reads
“A bold, wild ride that takes our collective dependence on social media head on.” —POPSUGAR, Best Books of the Summer
“Beth Morgan takes on social media and para-social relationships in this twisty debut novel.”
—BUSTLE, Most Anticipated Books of Summer
“Must-read…a biting, smart, and challenging novel.”—SHONDALAND
“darker and more ironic than other entries in the genre…Morgan suggests that authenticity can be just as hideous as its opposite….it succeeds where similar works have faltered by deflating the fantasy of the real. The fear of living dishonestly, it appears, has made it easier than ever to justify sacrificing others on the altar of our own self-actualization.”—THE NEW REPUBLIC
“Gripping…A novel about how Instagram leaks into our lives, changing and shaping how we inhabit our selves…Morgan’s narrative develops a darkly spiraling pace, simultaneously exposing and blurring the distinction between fantasy and reality…an exploration of how contemporary culture has made self-actualizing structuralists of us all.” —ELECTRIC LITERATURE
“This novel captures so much of our internet thoughts in a readable and electric frazzle… Like Buñuel, Beth Morgan recognizes that erotic desire is funny in the way it degrades subject and object…A satire on the terrible neo-liberal morass we co-occupy, unable to touch intimacy. The laughs come fast, and the message is low-key freaky and haunting. This one is for the kids.”—ENTROPY MAGAZINE
“I quickly became addicted to this sharp, upsetting novel … A Touch of Jen explores the gulf between aspirational content and real life, with notes of both hyperrealism and a psychological thriller. —GLAMOUR, Best Books of Summer
Library Journal
07/30/2021
DEBUT The first novel by current MFA student Morgan follows Remy and Alicia, millennials who live in an apartment in New York City. Remy is cynical, and Alicia is insecure; both work unfulfilling food service jobs and bond over critiquing others, particularly their perfectly nice roommate. Their sex lives include role-playing based on Remy's beautiful ex-coworker Jen, whom they obsessively follow on social media. Alicia meets Jen for the first time when she and Remy run into her at an Apple store. They accept Jen's offhanded invitation to a surfing weekend at her rich boyfriend's house in Montauk, where fantasy and reality begin to mix, and Remy's and Alicia's obsession with Jen expands. After a tragic twist, oddities increasingly appear in the narrative until it transforms from comedy to horror. Morgan's straightforward prose is propulsive, providing continuity to this shape-shifting story. VERDICT This is an original, genre-bending story that morphs from social commentary into something violent and fantastical, reminiscent of the television series Black Mirror. Recommended for readers looking for something surprising to spice up their summer reading.—Nancy H. Fontaine, Norwich P.L., VT
Kirkus Reviews
2021-05-05
Remy and Alicia’s relationship, founded on a shared fixation with Instagram-savvy hipster it girl Jen, enters strange new territory when Jen becomes a part of their off-screen lives.
Remy and Alicia are two 30-something restaurant servers trying to make it work in New York City. Their relationship is founded on their shared ennui, biting critiques of their peers, and obsessive interest in Jen, a social media savvy, globe-trotting former co-worker of Remy’s who is out of their league but never off their minds. Their obsession with Jen’s perfectly Instagrammable authenticity (gleaned from her social media feeds, which they compulsively scrutinize) oscillates between a kind of bitter hero worship and an increasingly involved sexual and lifestyle role-playing that casts Alicia as Alicia-as-Jen and Remy as a stranger, the gardener, even sometimes himself. When a chance encounter with the actual Jen at an Apple store results in an offhanded invitation to join her and her wealthy boyfriend, Horus, on a surfing weekend at Montauk, the already dotted lines between Remy’s and Alicia’s true selves and the selves they have crafted around their fantasy Jen become even more fragmented. This is particularly true for Alicia, whose self-image is significantly impacted by childhood trauma and whose social gymnastics among the pitch-perfect millennial hipster tropes she encounters at Montauk are as painful as they are funny. Back home in the city, Alicia enters a deepening spiral of Jen-obsession, but just when Morgan seems set on a deep dive into Alicia’s vulnerability to society’s constant pressure to display the most authentic version of an invented self, the plot takes a dramatic twist. The last third of the book is embroiled in the kind of gore usually reserved for less introspective literary genres, with sometimes mixed results.
An ambitious debut which captures the loneliness of the internet age in deft strokes in spite of a slightly confusing end.
