Please Fear Me

When I tell you I couldn't put this book down and pretty much read through it without stopping I mean it. I really enjoyed this one. Violet, who is one of the performers, was such an interesting character to me, and for some reason, I wanted to know everything about her. Smidge is an amazing main protagonist and so entertaining to read about. I loved the tension between the characters and the whole concept. The eerie persona around the ringmaster and how they move around the book and interact with characters kept me reading. These three characters had such interesting dynamics and relationships with one another and I really enjoyed reading it. It was a gripping book that was well-paced and had interesting and complex characters and topics to explore.

Tired of the verbal abuse from her mother’s addiction, 15-year-old Smidge leaves California in search of something bigger, something better. At a shelter, she joins forces with Violet—“born into a world that perceived her incorrectly”—happy to follow her direction as they navigate the oddities and difficulties of the new world around them. They may not have a lot but they have each other. Lost and looking for a place to call home, they come across a circus where Violet quickly falls under the spell of the enigmatic ringleader while Smidge remains skeptical and concerned about the “sins” of her past.

Since my first true book love, <I>Water For Elephants</i>, I have this deep nostalgia and curiosity for circus stories so when I saw this book’s description I knew I had to read it. It didn’t disappoint. On the surface it’s a story about misfits, drifters, and outcasts but it is so much more layered than that. This story is full of heart, chaos, the unknown, and the unexpected. It surprised me in the best way possible.

It’s a weighty novel but more than anything, it is deeply heartfelt while it explores the complexities of love and family, blood and otherwise. Both girls have extensive wounds and insecurities from trauma created by their families which shines through on nearly every page. Readers witness both Violet and Smidge struggling to find any sense of identity or belonging.

“As the days pass here, I’m learning that the circus is a great place to be if you don’t know what you want.”

This book is a profound study on addiction, love, family, friendship, and belonging. There were places where I wanted a little more exploring and I couldn’t help but notice a couple plot holes but otherwise, this is a fiercely tender debut novel and it moved me in ways that I didn’t expect.

Thank you Fairlight Books and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Available 09/05/2024!

*Quote from advanced readers copy and subject to change before publication*

This book wraps a plastic bag around your head and asks you to breathe. It’s punchy and smart, dark and real, carving out the feelings of teenage girlhood and stretching it out across the page. It doesn’t slow down or wait for you to catch up, if you want on you have to jump.
The hypnosis of idols and the hunger of young infatuation in this world of circus acts and advantage takers will make your jowls slacken and salivate, turning each page faster and faster as you sniff out the heart and clamp around it with force. The beginning will enlighten you and the ending will shatter you like the exit wound of a bullet. Smidge’s story looks unique from afar but many of us hold the same pieces inside of ourselves.
Love has done something interesting with the genre of dark contemporary fiction, as well as the genre of queer fiction. She has taken both of these pieces and twisted it into something entirely unseen, ripping apart the venn diagram trap that queer contemporary fiction often falls into — the queer life = dark life intersection — and making them separate wholes. She fosters a reading environment where there is no disclosure about queerness, no long-winded discussions on someone’s identity, it just simply is. As a queer dark fiction lover, this new world Love participates in is freeing. I am disappointed that this is a debut, only because that means there isn’t more of Love to devour right now.

Please Fear Me is a compelling debut that navigates the turbulent waters of trauma, addiction, and the quest for belonging. Through the eyes of the protagonist, Smidge, we are thrust into a world where reality and fantasy blend seamlessly, reminiscent of the atmospheric allure found in works like The Night Circus.


The novel begins with Smidge's harrowing decision to escape her mother’s verbal abuse and addiction, propelling her into a journey of self-discovery. Smidge's path leads her to a shelter where she meets Violet, a character as enigmatic as the circus they eventually join. Their bond is the heart of the story, showcasing the complexities of friendship, loyalty, and the need for connection in a world that often feels hostile.

The writing is evocative, capturing Smidge’s inner turmoil and the surreal landscape she traverses. The first half of the book is particularly gripping, delving deeply into Smidge's relationship with her mother and her initial encounters with Violet. The emotional depth and the vivid portrayal of their struggles create a powerful narrative that keeps readers invested.

As Smidge and Violet become entangled with the circus, the plot thickens with layers of intrigue and suspense. The circus itself is a character, imbued with a sense of eerie magic that both captivates and unsettles. The ringmaster’s presence adds a dark, mysterious element to the story, challenging Smidge’s perceptions and pushing the narrative into darker territories.

However, the novel is not without its flaws. Some readers might find the ending somewhat unsatisfying, as it leaves certain character arcs, particularly Violet’s, feeling incomplete. The lack of closure may be intentional, reflecting the unpredictable nature of the characters' lives, yet it leaves a lingering desire for a more definitive resolution.

Despite these minor shortcomings, Please Fear Me"is a thought-provoking exploration of the human condition. It delves into themes of addiction, identity, and the intricate dance of relationships with a raw honesty that is both refreshing and poignant. The narrative's non-linear structure, while occasionally confusing, adds to the sense of disorientation that mirrors Smidge’s own journey.

This is a devastating novel. The title alone embodies the aching desperation that pervades this story.

There isn’t much plot in this story, and the jacket copy covers pretty much all of it. But there is constant movement, never staying put long enough to set down roots, feel comfortable. This is a story that you sink into, maybe against your will. It is full of searching, of trying to create meaning, create family, but with a constant hum of menace that is never totally silent, even when our characters have moments of joy. There is constant and deep longing, exploring what it means to love someone so intrinsically, so violently, that you don’t have language to express it, not even to them. It looks at love and relationship as something somehow both intrinsic to the human experience and yet also alien, unexplainable. As is the performance art our characters create, it is about binding, and being bound, and yet realizing that there is an intoxicating sense of contentment that might come from those chains.

The writing is really strong, drawing you into this world and making you feel complicit, not letting you look away. The story is all told in the first person, and so our outlook is singular and unique, always observing but not judging. The prose effortless floats between the past and the present, giving us the backstory as we need to know it, showing the nature of trauma and suffering, cyclical, if not an actual feedback loop. There are moments of grace and poetry in the prose, but it never feels like it is trying to be something it isn’t. We are constantly in the heart of this child, aged far beyond her years, and the wonder and awe and terror of being there feels like it is conveyed with every word.

“Violet and I were the same in this way, something I understood even back then. We were always reaching for anything that would take us somewhere else and absolve us of all that had happened where we had already been, as if departing from ourselves could be perfectly physical. As if other places had anything that would make us different from what we were.”

(Note I read an ARC, so there is the potential for quotes to change).

Since there is very little plot to speak of, this story rests on the strength of the reality of the world and the characters, are they are both beautifully painted here. The world feels painfully really, with every sharp edge just waiting taste blood when we aren’t paying attention. There is an almost otherworldly quality to it, but that is because it is a world we don’t want to believe in, devoid of the safeties and comforts we pray for. In comparison the characters feel more like watercolors. They have depth to them, not just our protagonist but all of the secondary and tertiary characters that we find in her orbit, but there is still something fuzzy about them, a bleeding around the edges. This is deliberate, as the characters are nebulous and shifting, learning what it means to take up space, seeking out how to be solid.

If I were to criticize it, our try and explain why it didn’t receive perfect marks, it would have to be that I felt like there wasn’t a strong enough sense of journey with our main character. If we disregard all the flashbacks and memories, and only look at how she changes in the present-tense narrative, it feels like there could have been a different type of transformation, there. There is change and growth, especially in the very final chapters, but it feels like this journey has already started when we meet her, she tells us about it, and we just see its extension. Her decisions about her mother and her ideas of family and relationship, her ideas of survival and support, trust and love and betrayal, these are all things she has been thinking of when we meet her, we don’t see the moments of change. We see the world move around her, the environment magnifying or diminishing certain hopes or expectations or outlooks she may have, but never fundamentally changing her. This isn’t a story about dramatic or drastic revelations, it is about learning who you have always been, for better or worse, and then making decisions about what it means to be that way. In that regard the journey we do get makes sense, but it would have nice to have seen a little more of it happening, seeing Smidge’s understanding of herself shift and grow based on what was happening around her, instead of what was happening around her just reflect things she had already come to know about herself. Granted, we do see the character’s childhood and other experiences in flashback and hazy memory, and when we compare this to the present day we do get a sense of journey, of surviving battlefields only to be lost in trenches, the story isn’t stagnant, it just felt like our whole time with Smidge is us seeing her convince herself of decisions she has already made instead of actually making those decisions.

Still, the language is beautiful and evocative, a heart-wrenching portrait of what it means to be always grasping for something just beyond your reach. There is development and change, all against a really well-crafted backdrop of loneliness and isolation, a constant thrill of danger serving as the undercoat with occasional brilliant flashes of joy and connection, hope’s feeble gasps into an unforgiving night. I haven’t read the author’s previous short story works, but I can say confidently this is a phenomenal debut novel. It is tender and effective, gripping the reader with both hands and not letting us look away. The characters and the world building are really top notch, letting us recognize Smidge’s longing as our own.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Fairlight Books, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

'Please Fear Me' portrays a teen girl's struggles with self identity and survival while on the run from her abusive mother. It is a beautiful insight into female relationships and vulnerability that keeps the reader on their toes the entire time. This is an amazing debut novel from Jennifer Love, that feels both real and mystical at the same time, where we get to meet the main character and see her develop and mature while staying, at her core, just a scared teenage girl who was forced by the environment around her to grow up too quickly.

Thank you Fairlight Books for providing an arc for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.