First published 2025
Alex Lyons has simple rules for reviewing Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows. Five stars or one star. Nothing else matters. On opening night, he watches Hayley Sinclair's performance and knows exactly what rating he'll give. He also knows he wants to sleep with her. Hayley wakes up in his apartment the next morning and finds his brutal one-star review of her show on the kitchen table. She doesn't know which stings more: the professional humiliation or the personal betrayal. Hayley fights back by turning her show into a viral attack on Alex himself. She exposes him as the entitled son of a famous actress, a serial cheater, and a man who uses his power to hurt women. Alex refuses to apologize. As his reputation crumbles, he tells his version of events to his colleague Sophie. She finds herself drawn deeper into the mess, unsure what to believe. The story reveals how art and power collide, how men and women see the same events differently, and how performance bleeds into real life.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction
Vibes: darkly-comedic, emotionally-charged, introspective, tension-filled, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, he-said-she-said, toxic-relationship, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
304 pages · Paperback · Viking
Content warnings: emotional-abuse, sexism, sexual-content