I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher in return for an honest review. This review is based entirely on my own thoughts and feelings.

Overall rating : 2*
Writing skill : 2*
Noah's story: 3*
Malachia's story: 1*


I normally like a 'weird' book, ones that are completely out of the norm, but this just felt like it was being strange for the sake of it.
Noah's story was intriguing and I could follow it and appreciate what the author was trying to do.
Malachia's story however was just too confusing, I had to re-read some sentences many times and still couldn't process what they meant. There were about 10 pages with one word repeated over the whole page, and I just felt it was unnecessary.
I felt like we didn't need the stories to alternate each chapter, they could have been written as two separate short stories, one after the other. with a combined chapter at the end?! I don't know, maybe I just missed the point.
Disappointed I dint click with this book, as I really wanted to, but it wasn't for me.

the premise of this sounded like something that was going to become a new favourite but there was just something about it that didn’t hit right for me.

i LOVE a weird book but this felt like it was trying to be strange and different just for the sake of it, and it didn’t actually add anything to what was going on. the writing style was just not for me and i am so sad about that.

*Hot Singles in Your Area* is a unique blend of horror and comedy that dives into bizarre realms filled with tentacle plant ladies, demons, and alternate worlds. Jordan Shiveley crafts a narrative that is both satirical and adventurous, delivering an experience that is as puzzling as it is entertaining.

The story is told from two distinct perspectives: one character navigates our mundane world, while the other explores a fantastical city shrouded in eccentricity and mystery. The protagonist seeking a job that doesn't involve cleaning up blood and urine finds himself in an absurd advertising role, while his counterpart grapples with an unsettling loneliness in her magical yet deserted surroundings. The collision of these arcs creates a narrative that is occasionally goopy and filled with dark humor.

While Noah's journey is accessible and relatable—especially for anyone who's endured a desperate job search—Malachia's storyline can be a challenging read. Some reviewers noted that the complexity of her world can be overwhelming, requiring multiple readings of certain passages to grasp their meanings fully. The use of repetition, particularly with sections featuring just one word, struck some readers as unnecessary, detracting from the overall flow.

The alternating chapter format has sparked debate, with some feeling that the stories could have been more effective as standalone pieces. Others appreciated the blend of perspectives, suggesting it enriches the experience. However, a common sentiment is that the conclusion feels abrupt, leaving readers craving more detail about the characters’ fates and adventures.

Visually, the book's unconventional format includes advertising sections and chapters that envelop the narrative in darkness, adding to its abstract feel. For those who enjoy experimental storytelling and body horror woven into a satire of capitalism and bureaucracy, this book will likely resonate.

Ultimately, *Hot Singles in Your Area* presents a distinctive reading experience that caters to a specific taste. While some may find its quirks delightful, others might feel it's strange for the sake of strangeness. If you're open to abstract formatting and enjoy diving into bizarre worlds, this book is worth a read, though be prepared for its challenging yet intriguing journey.

this sounded like something i would love based on the synopsis but i really did NOT click with this writing style. it goes for a silly comedic tone and the sense of humour was a bit cringe for my taste. glad I gave this a try but i quickly realized i wasn’t the right audience for this.

This could have been so good. The ideas were good, there was some good imagery, the atmosphere was unnerving and bizarre, but the execution just didn’t work.

It felt as though the author was trying too hard to make things weird, and forcing too many elements into the book that just detracted from the story.

I did like both Noah and Malachia’s storylines, but neither felt well developed and when they came together it just didn’t work for me. The ending petered out and resolved nothing. Sometimes I like that in an ending, but this was just frustrating and seemed like the author didn’t really know how to end it.

The footnotes were distracting and not particularly relevant, funny or informative. Again, the author seemed to be trying too hard to enforce a mythology that wasn’t developed enough to be meaningful.

The newspaper sections were a nice addition although their placement was strange (mid-chapter and sometimes mid-sentence). This may have been down to it being an electronic advance copy and formatting issues. I would say that even if the placement is correct in the advance copy I read, these articles would probably work better in the physical book than ebook format.
The articles/adverts told their own stories, with little glimpses of bizarre horrors, which was pretty cool.

I wanted to like this so much more…
(I do, however, love the cover art.)

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an advance copy to read and review.

This book sounded amazing! But unfortunately it fell short for me. I’m not sure if it was a combination of the formatting on the kindle plus the writing style, but it was pretty rough to get through and it didn’t make a lot of sense at times. I am going to give it another try on the actual print because I think it will make more sense with the real formatting that was meant to be!

As a fan of the author's eldritch dating satire Twitter account "dread singles," I was excited to dive into "Hot Singles in Your Area." The book follows Noah, who takes a mysterious job at a newspaper, and Malachia, wandering a bizarre, bone-filled city. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm quickly turned to frustration. The narrative is fragmented and often incomprehensible and experimental elements like footnotes and repetitive text feel gimmicky rather than meaningful. The book's attempts at weirdness and horror come across as forced, and I found myself struggling to finish what turned out to be a disappointingly unreadable novel, despite its promising premise and my initial excitement.

SO FUN and unique and weird and a bit scary - honesty would recommend to anyone who might like to read something unusual and brand new for the genre.

I’ll start with the positives for Hot Singles in Your Area, I liked the cover. I love reading spooky books in October and the eyeballs on the cover really drew me in. Sadly, I think that’s going to be the one positive thing I say in this review.

Noah starts a new job at Printed Matter, a shady newspaper with a hidden secret – but why can’t he remember his training videos? Why did he give some of his blood and what actually is his job? Elsewhere, acolyte Malachia is trying to work out where everyone who inhabited the City of Silence went.

Mercifully this book is short, which meant I could plow through it for a review without having to DNF it - had it been any longer though, I would have done. Having finished it, I can’t actually tell you much more about the book, the setting, the characters or the plot than the very rudimentary summary paragraph I have written above. I’m all for creating a fantasy world and the idea of a skeletal place with rituals needing bone dust sounds great, but part of that world building has to be shared with the reader. You can keep things close to your chest, or drip feed information to us, but when I’m 50% of the way through the book (or actually, at the end!) and I still have absolutely no idea what’s happening in Malachia’s timeline, then you have quite a serious issue with the writing.

Noah’s timeline is a little more straight forward – he starts a new job and it all gets a bit weird, I was hoping that Noah would be the conduit for the reader– his plot learning about the world that Malachia inhabits to give us a perspective from his eyes. However, his story is fragmented as he can’t seem to remember anything that happens to him, and in the end it isn’t linked to Malachia in any way at all.

I know that I’m reading an ARC copy, and we are often told that it isn’t the finished product and to give grace for typos etc. However, the purpose of an ARC is to give it to readers in order to generate hype and buzz around the book for publication day, so you’d expect a publisher would want to give the best possible version to be reviewed. The formatting in this book is so bad that it’s unreadable at times – some of that is the fault of the publisher and the ebook format that they haven’t edited for, and some of this is the writing structure. The footnotes are not hyperlinked, they are just randomly put into the book, sometimes pages away, sometimes interrupting mid-sentence. The footnotes themselves seem pointless, giving odd book references or referring to something I didn’t understand – I ended up skimming over them. The book has 2 sections that show the newspaper pages of Printed Matter. However, on the Kindle version, these are so badly formatted that you only get a small square of the image per page, so you can’t actually read them. The first one is 113 pages on my Kindle, and I just had to skip though it because I couldn’t read it. The ending also has a memo which could have explained the entire plot, as far as I know, but it was 50 pages and unreadable, so I’ll never know. There’s one point in the book where the word ‘Darkness’ is just repeated over and over again for several pages and then the next few chapters alternate between the plot and the repeating word darkness for half a page (on the smallest font size). This just felt very lazy to me and was unnecessary.

My last note is with the title - it’s an odd choice. It isn’t really relevant to the story, other than the job is with a newspaper and I think it might have been part of the 113 pages of newspaper images I couldn’t read. However, it means it’s a book you feel a little embarrassed to tell people you are reading, you can’t discuss it with your co-workers, you tell your friends and you have to follow it up with – ‘it’s a horror, there’s eyeballs on the cover!’. It also gets blocked by the Instagram algorithm when you try and hashtag it. Just seems like a very silly title when something more relevant could be used instead.

Overall, as you may have gathered, I was not impressed by Hot Singles In Your Area - there might be an ok story in there somewhere, but it needs a major re-write and better formatting. Thank you to Unbound and NetGalley for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for a (very) honest review.

Body Horror. Satire. You Win. The world created and the details that my head picture thanks to colorful writing really made this a fun ride!

LOVED this - the body horror was a lot but thankfully I like that in my horror when it’s done right and this absolutely was.

Spooky, scary, freaky, weird. I am usually not afraid of any of those in a book but this was almost too unhinged for me. I found it hard to follow at times but it was a really good time. If you like weird and are ok being confused, this is the book for you

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this ARC in return for my honest review!

I really wanted to like this one, but it felt like a novella that should accompany something else. It didn’t really have a beginning or ending, but a story that felt like an insert to something else.
The way the book reads is very difficult and the formatting was a poor choice in my opinion. I’m curious to see what the physical book of this would look like and if it would help anything.
I can’t even give you any spoilers because I truly don’t know what happened in this book.

This ended up being a DNF for me at 20%. I thought the plot sounded interesting, but I just couldn't get into it. There was nothing that felt like horror. A large portion of the book is also newspaper articles that were unable to be read in a digital format.

I couldn't finish it. 50% in and the two characters seemingly at the center of the story still haven't met. We have to slog thru the necromancy of a fantasy character as though we understand all of the references made about her practice....
There didn't seem to be much world building or character depth.
In short, I was bored.

Not my favorite. The story felt disjointed and a bit confusing. I don't think I could recommend to people.

The title and cover drew me to this book but I was quite surprised by its content. I found the writing style quite jarring due to the footnotes dotted through it. I actually loved the inclusion of newspaper clippings and enjoyed rooting my way through these. However the story felt disjointed and this was more frustrating than eerie for me.

Hot Singles in Your Area by Jordan Shiveley is a gripping and darkly humorous body-horror novel. The story follows two characters, Noah and Malachia, as they are thrust into strange and sinister circumstances controlled by a powerful media conglomerate. Noah's desperate search for a new job leads him into a bizarre corporate world, while Malachia navigates the eerie, empty streets of the City of Silence. Their narratives weave together in an unpredictable, chilling plot filled with unsettling imagery and biting satire on corporate life. Shiveley's storytelling blends horror with sharp social commentary, making this a twisted yet engaging read for fans of speculative fiction.
The book's unique premise and dark humor set it apart, offering readers an unsettling look at modern society through a lens of supernatural horror.

Thanks to NetGalley and Unbound for the ARC.

While I really enjoyed it, I can see how this book can be for a very specific taste. It's untraditional in its physical format; while alternating between two main characters in drastically different worlds, it also uses images of an advertising section of a strange newspaper, and later, there's chapters that repeat and surround the narrative -literally- in darkness, just the word darkness. I think I get the story, and I like the use of body horror in a satire on capitalism and bureaucracy. Noah's side of the story is relatable, having done the janitorial work before, and gone through that desperate job search for something margianlly better. As bizarre and nonsensical as Malachia's world is, there is a sense of logic to it that I loved digging into. I kinda wish it were a bit longer, specifically with the ending. It feels like it ended when the plot was about 75% through, and then implied the rest of the adventure in the three corporate letters discussing the main characters. I'm not entirely clear on what happened, and it would have been more satisfying to continue reading it from their perspective. If you don't mind the abstract formatting, I'd definitely recommend this one.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6814395083

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/e4c9d12c-376a-4709-9b28-f6a4a6ec4dc8

Check out this review of Hot Singles in Your Area on Fable. https://fable.co/review/e69378b4-d6e0-4a1c-872d-5b42a9a41192/share

Thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. These opinions are completely my own

I got a What we do in the Shadows vibe from the book and I kinda love it. The ads are entertaining as is the addition of comical subtexts. I enjoyed reading.