"Who did he want in the first place? A girl pretending to be a dog? Or a dog pretending to be a girl?"

Oh. My. God. I could actually not stop with this one. Don't you just love when men try to domesticate women and then reap what they sow? This is female rage incarnate and I am so here for it.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not be fooled by the absolute perfection that is this book cover. It is definitely reflective of the environment our Shy Girl finds herself trapped in, but these soft colors are just a pretty dressing over a very dark time.

Gia struggles with OCD and lost her job. She is facing eviction and is desperate for something to keep her afloat. The obvious choice? A ✨️Sugar Daddy✨️. I mean who doesn't want to just exist as a companion and get paid for it? The issue is Nathan, the first person to message her on the sugar dating app that Gia joins. She latches onto him, immediately deciding he is the one for her. When he shows her what it is that he expects (that being Gia to submit as his pet 8 hours a day and act as a dog), Gia knows she won't say no even if it would be the smart thing to do. Nathan sort of lied though, and is not letting Gia leave him.

It was unbelievable, and yet completely believable, to see Gia / Shy Girl descend from a woman facing hard financial times to a dog with sharp nails and teeth. She is stripped completely of her human qualities, punished horribly for speaking or standing, and goes through full YEARS of psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

It also really made me think about our relationships with animals. Nathan was very willing to do serious harm to Gia, but backed off on harm to an animal? He wanted a pet, but as soon as he truly has one he is disgusted? The insistence that Gia is his dog, and then brutalizing her and mistreating her constantly was indeed horrifying.

Thanks to NetGalley and Galaxy Press for providing an eARC of Shy Girl in exchange for this honest review.

Okay, I will say I'm real into feminine rage but I've never read anything like this. Maybe others don't feel this way but for me this felt like extreme horror, a lot of things I'm terrified of in here. So many thoughts, so many feelings, honestly and truly a rollercoaster of emotions while reading, none of which I don't think I can fully articulate. The thoughts I have are this:

1. Good for her, we support women's right and women's wrongs in this house.
2. I am always in favor of out crazying someone. Oh, you're crazy? Well guess what bitch, I'm completely fucking insane.
3. Having read Night Bitch last year (because I wanted to watch the movie and then hated the book so much I never ended up watching the movie), Night Bitch W I S H E S it was Shy Girl. Shy Girl is exactly (ok, maybe not exactly but I didn't hate it, clearly!) what I wanted and was envisioning when I picked up Night Bitch.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was truly an... experience. Outside my normal genre range, I went in aware it would be an unsettling feminine rage horror but am still left stunned!

Gia is broke, unemployed and being served an eviction notice. She's heard of sugar daddies before and decides this is her next stitch effort to keep her apartment. On the sugar websites she thinks she finds the perfect arrangement, but things go so bizarre very quickly.

I think it takes a special kind of author to evoke such unsettling feelings. I do not love the feelings I'm sitting with, but I understand the purpose of why! I appreciate how the story gets stranger and stranger the deeper in we read. I can't wait to hear more on the discourse of this book once it's released in the horror community!

Thank you @netgalley, @victoryeditingngc and @galaxygrlmia for the advanced e-copy ARC <3

'Shy Girl' follows Gia, a 30-year old who is on the verge of being evicted after losing her job a few months prior. She is struggling with loneliness, mental health and OCD. In order to get back on track, Gia signs up for a sugar baby website where she meets Nathan. Nathan offers Gia an unconventional position: to be his pet for 8 hours a day in exchange for her debts to be paid off. Shortly after agreeing on the position, Gia is forced into years of abuse, manipulation and humiliation.

* READERS CHECK CONTENT WARNINGS! *

I could not put this book down. It is a dark story with many layers of violence, however, it is also a story of fighting for you autonomy and disrupting dominance. This story sits heavy because it forces readers to realize that this sort of violence is happening everyday & targets could be anyone from any background.

A great overview of female rage. I think this book is going to be very very popular within booktok when it is published.

im actually speechless… i cannot tell you how many pages this is cause i ran through them! I couldn’t not out this down it honestly didn’t even feel like i was reading. The first half is hell but a familiar hell that many people like myself have had to deal with but the second half! Omg! I guess in a way it’s the same we’ve been there one way or another but god what a great way to tell the story! This was terrifying and not in a fun way! And I say that as a good thing I wanted to throw up and I was scared to look up in the dark amazing!

The blurb for this sounded interesting because I love reading about characters with OCD, and this turned out to be that plus so much more! It was weird, relatable and delightful.

✨REVIEW: 5/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

🎀Shy Girl by Mia Ballard🎀

💗synopsis: Lonely, broke and depressed with a serious case of OCD, Gia finds herself at a crossroads when financial troubles lead her to Nathan, a mysterious and affluent man she encounters on a sugar dating website. 🫠

💗my opinion: I started this book around midnight and finished it around 2.30am and it was really worth staying up late. 🙂‍↔️💕

Gia, our main character is going through a really bad time; she can’t get a job and is in debt as hell. Apart from that, Gia doesn’t have much external support, and because of her reserved personality she only has one friend… :/

Finally, things change when she meets Nathan, the man who will help her in exchange for a service. So Gia makes a deal with him, a deal that is completely DISTORTED in a few minutes and then begins an abuse of power, manipulation and humiliation (along with many, many other things). 😩

Many scenes left me shocked, the change of Gia, the very difficult and inhuman transition she has to go through.... Uh, all of that was pretty hard to read, and the narrative while beautiful, still maintained a cruel air.

I don’t want to do any spoilers because it’s a wonderful, ruthless and cruel book...but that’s life sometimes. And I think what struck me the most was that Gia’s story is not too far from the reality of what humans can do. 😕

✨Highly recommended if you✨

🥩Like Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder.
🥩Like cruel scenarios and body horror.
🥩Like revenge.

I would like to thank @galaxygrlmia, @netgalley and @victoryeditingngc for the advanced e-copy. <33