Soft Core, Brittany Newell
Soft Core, Brittany Newell
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Soft Core
A Novel

Author: Brittany Newell

Narrator: Christine Lakin

Unabridged: 10 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/04/2025


Synopsis

A young woman’s madcap search for her missing ex-boyfriend takes her into the sexual underground in Brittany Newell’s savage, tender Soft Core.

Ruth is lost. She’s living in a drafty Victorian with her ex-boyfriend Dino, a ketamine dealer with a lingerie habit, overdosing on television and regretting her master’s degree. When she starts dancing at a strip club, she becomes Baby Blue, seductress of crypto bros, outcasts, and old lovers alike. Plunged into this swirling underworld of beautiful women, fast cash, ungodly hours, and strangers’ secrets, Baby’s grip on reality begins to loosen. She is sure she can handle it—until one autumn morning when Dino disappears without a trace.

Thus begins a nocturnal quest for the one she still loves—through the misty hills of San Francisco; in dive bars and bus depots; at the BDSM dungeon where she takes a part-time gig. Along the way, she meets Simon, a recluse who pays her for increasingly bizarre favors; a philosophizing suicide fetishist named Nobody; and Emeline, the beautiful and balletic new hire who reminds Baby of someone . . .

A brutally funny, propulsive story of power, fantasy, love, and loss, Brittany Newell’s Soft Core is an ode to the heartbroken and unhinged, to those whose appetites lead them astray. It is a hallucinogenic romp about a girl coming undone, whose longing for friendship, romance, and revenge will take her over the edge and back again.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About Brittany Newell

Brittany Newell is a writer and performer whose work has been published in Granta, n+1, The New York Times, Joyland, Dazed, and Playgirl. She published her debut novel, Oola, at the age of twenty-one. She lives in San Francisco.

About Christine Lakin

Christine Lakin is an acclaimed audiobook narrator and Earphones Award winner, recognized for her engaging performances. In addition to her work as an actress—famously playing Alicia "Al" Lambert on the sitcom Step by Step— Christine has narrated more than 200 audiobooks, as noted on Audible. Her narration skills have earned her industry praise, including 14 Earphones Awards, several Best of Year awards, and an Auddie nomination.Christine is inspired by the inner lives of the characters she voices, mood and tonality of the writing and plot twists.Her style ranges from dramatic and emotional to wry and comedic. She loves working withaccents and assuming the personalities on the page when necessary.


Reviews

Goodreads review by leah on February 02, 2025

I love an unhinged woman / unreliable narrator book as much as the next girl, but this felt a little flat. Despite its synopsis, the story doesn’t focus much on Dino’s disappearance or Baby’s search for him, instead it’s more of a slice-of-life book following Baby’s everyday life as a sex worker. It......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on January 01, 2025

You're telling me a queer dominatrix wrote a tender portrait of sex work that's published by FSG? Fuck yes. Soft Core absolutely lived up to my expectations. Our protagonist - Ruth by birth, but Baby by profession - lives with her ex-boyfriend. When he suddenly disappears without warning, Baby moves......more

Goodreads review by Meagan✨ on April 29, 2025

Entertaining Audiobook- Soft Core is less a traditional novel and more a descent, an immersive, vibe-heavy character study that lives in the headspace of its narrator, Baby. Brittney Newell crafts a disjointed, moody portrait of a young woman whose reality blurs between performance, desire, detachme......more

Goodreads review by Wynter on March 20, 2025

8/10 stars. Listen - this is a book for the Vibes girlies only. If you’re a Plot girlie, you gotta sit this one out. I see a lot of negative reviews under this book from people who were expecting more from it and I understand why; the synopsis made it sound like more was going to happen. But don’t b......more

Goodreads review by Books Amongst Friends on March 19, 2025

Like many others, the cover of this book immediately grabbed my attention. Then I read the description and thought, This has to be a must-read! Or so I thought 😩. I think I’m in the outlier of readers that feel a disconnect going into this book expecting something different. I was hoping for a “madca......more


Quotes

Advance Praise

"Soft Core is a beautiful fever dream, a slippery, captivating pleasure, a love story stuffed inside a wadded nylon stocking. It’s a novel that wants to get close to you. It wants to bite your neck; it’s the actual promise of a hickey. I can’t remember the last book I read that was even half as tender. I ate it up."
—KRISTEN ARNETT, author of With Teeth and Mostly Dead Things