A Touch of Jen

May 3, 2021
Morgan’s witty if uneven debut attempts a fantastical combination of millennial ennui, obsession, and shape-shifting horror. Remy and Alicia are a barely functioning 30-something couple who both work as servers in different restaurants and share a Brooklyn apartment with a roommate. Remy and Alicia’s relationship revolves around the beautiful and confident Jen, a former colleague of Remy’s, who runs her own jewelry business. The couple receives alerts whenever Jen posts on social media, and they spend most of their time drinking and analyzing Jen’s posts. Alicia also role-plays as Jen as part of their sexual relationship (“What would you do if Jen were in the shower right now?” Alicia calls from the bathroom). The pace picks up when Remy and Alicia join Jen, along with her boyfriend and a few other friends, on a weekend surfing trip to Montauk. As the couple’s fixation on Jen becomes more dangerous and absurd, the lives of several characters, most notably Remy, are permanently altered. There are a few early signs of a horror plot (in Montauk, Remy thinks he sees a giant beetle outside the window, then hears screams), but the gory transition in the final act feels abrupt. Morgan does a great job with the obsession theme, but otherwise this is a bit too messy. Agent: Alexa Stark, Trident Media Group.

July 30, 2021

DEBUT The first novel by current MFA student Morgan follows Remy and Alicia, millennials who live in an apartment in New York City. Remy is cynical, and Alicia is insecure; both work unfulfilling food service jobs and bond over critiquing others, particularly their perfectly nice roommate. Their sex lives include role-playing based on Remy's beautiful ex-coworker Jen, whom they obsessively follow on social media. Alicia meets Jen for the first time when she and Remy run into her at an Apple store. They accept Jen's offhanded invitation to a surfing weekend at her rich boyfriend's house in Montauk, where fantasy and reality begin to mix, and Remy's and Alicia's obsession with Jen expands. After a tragic twist, oddities increasingly appear in the narrative until it transforms from comedy to horror. Morgan's straightforward prose is propulsive, providing continuity to this shape-shifting story. VERDICT This is an original, genre-bending story that morphs from social commentary into something violent and fantastical, reminiscent of the television series Black Mirror. Recommended for readers looking for something surprising to spice up their summer reading.--Nancy H. Fontaine, Norwich P.L., VT

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2022

Remy and Alicia are an unhappy couple in their 20s. They both work unfulfilling restaurant jobs, have no real interests, and are not sure what they want to do with their lives. The only thing that seems to unite them is a shared obsession with Jen, a former coworker of Remy's who has become a low-level influencer. They dissect her social media posts, investigate her boyfriend, and roleplay being Jen in and out of the bedroom. When a chance encounter leads to Jen inviting Remy and Alicia on a surfing trip to Montauk, their obsession with her twists and curdles. Alicia invents a large-scale art project to impress Jen's friends, and bringing it to life awakens something dark and strange. The book starts off slowly, peopled entirely with characters it's hard to become invested in--if they have so little interest in their own lives, why should listeners care? But things get weird very quickly after Remy and Alicia come back from Montauk, and listeners who stick it out are in for some fun. Casey Turner's narration is a little flat, but fittingly so for a group of people whose primary emotions are ennui and disappointment. VERDICT An optional purchase.--Stephanie Klose

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2021
Remy and Alicia's relationship, founded on a shared fixation with Instagram-savvy hipster it girl Jen, enters strange new territory when Jen becomes a part of their off-screen lives. Remy and Alicia are two 30-something restaurant servers trying to make it work in New York City. Their relationship is founded on their shared ennui, biting critiques of their peers, and obsessive interest in Jen, a social media savvy, globe-trotting former co-worker of Remy's who is out of their league but never off their minds. Their obsession with Jen's perfectly Instagrammable authenticity (gleaned from her social media feeds, which they compulsively scrutinize) oscillates between a kind of bitter hero worship and an increasingly involved sexual and lifestyle role-playing that casts Alicia as Alicia-as-Jen and Remy as a stranger, the gardener, even sometimes himself. When a chance encounter with the actual Jen at an Apple store results in an offhanded invitation to join her and her wealthy boyfriend, Horus, on a surfing weekend at Montauk, the already dotted lines between Remy's and Alicia's true selves and the selves they have crafted around their fantasy Jen become even more fragmented. This is particularly true for Alicia, whose self-image is significantly impacted by childhood trauma and whose social gymnastics among the pitch-perfect millennial hipster tropes she encounters at Montauk are as painful as they are funny. Back home in the city, Alicia enters a deepening spiral of Jen-obsession, but just when Morgan seems set on a deep dive into Alicia's vulnerability to society's constant pressure to display the most authentic version of an invented self, the plot takes a dramatic twist. The last third of the book is embroiled in the kind of gore usually reserved for less introspective literary genres, with sometimes mixed results. An ambitious debut which captures the loneliness of the internet age in deft strokes in spite of a slightly confusing end.

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June 1, 2021
A seemingly average couple, Remy and Alicia are both obsessed with the same person: Remy's former coworker Jen. They follow her on social media religiously, engrossed by everything she posts. Together, they fantasize about her in the bedroom, doing corny, theatrical role-plays, and then look through her Instagram for more inspiration in the pictures Jen posts from all around the world. When they run into Jen by chance--in person--Remy and Alicia join her and her boyfriend on a high-class vacation to the Hamptons. The trip begins to go haywire when it becomes clear that Remy and Alicia do not fit into Jen's glamorous world. A mundane vacation turns into a manic horror as Remy and Alicia take their obsessive and toxic desire for Jen to the extreme, leading to violence and disturbing consequences. In this bizarre debut novel, Morgan masterfully brings dark comedy and psychedelic horror together at a slow-burning pace. Her mundane but over-the-top characters and brilliant dialogue add to the surreal and fantastical tone of this spellbinding book.

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