Irina is an explicit fetish photographer with an obsessive bent that seems to continue growing. Her best friend is a little too into her and she doesn’t have any other friends to speak of, just random men she picks up for her tool and trade. When she’s offered a gallery spot a destructive tail-spin occurs as she is forced to delve into her past and relive her trauma while telling the story of how she came to be an up-and-coming artist, to working at a bar, broke, fairly alone, and set to a destructive pattern she only knows how to accelerate into, not out of.

What this book does really well is transplant the male gaze and privilege into Irina, whose power comes from her attractiveness. The rest is her asking like a predatory straight white man. Assuming consent, inverting the power dynamics in society, and playing off the masculinity of the men she pokes and prods and poses in her photography. It’s clear she’s heavily traumatized and her reaction to it is to reclaim some power by becoming a part of the trauma cycle inflicted on her—only repurposed to target the type of man that harmed her in the first place, presumably.

She’s definitely an unhinged woman character in her unreliability and the way in which she claws back agency, even to her own detriment. We don’t know what is or is not real, especially as it goes on. But what can be known if she obviously is crying out for help with her actions, despite her power and willingness to harm others, she is squarely dismissed as a somewhat wild but ultimately only beautiful woman. Her only use is sex and ownership to society, despite how harmful and dangerous she is.

The real horror is that the privilege she manages is an isolating thing that allows her to spiral and perpetuate harm, as she is never held accountable for her actions though wanting to be. Her being “just like a man” in that way is a nail well struck here, I think. She is constantly rewarded for doing and being a terrible person.

It could have done with being slightly more intricate with the visual motifs and I thought more things would be wrapped up. Who was the anonymous patron? What was or was not “real” could have been a much more fun puzzle, but seemed beside the point, unfortunately. There are many things eluded to, but then elided. I was hoping for something a bit more comprehensive, I think.