Kiss, Marry or Kill: 13

If you loved Scamanda this book is for you; the dinner on repeat this summer; a simple boundary tip; what's a bouba?; are smash rooms worth it; and what's the deal with aspartame really

This is my weekly series for subscribers only, where I’ll share things that caught my eye this week in a fun and flirty way (kiss), a sustainable way (marry), or a not-so-good way (kill). And yes, this trendy game is technically “f***, marry, or kill” but we run a family-friendly-ish show around here.

Kiss (things I like right now)

Confidence, by Rafael Frumkin. This book is why I love browsing physical bookstores. I wouldn’t have found it via any algorithm, but it was a “staff pick” in my local Barnes and Noble, and I’m so glad I noticed it.

Confidence is queer love story meets con man meets MLM. If you’re a fan of Scamanda, Emily Paulson’s Hey, Hun, or Anna Delvey, this work of fiction wraps all of these themes into one a high-stakes, bitingly funny story in which I immediately became deeply invested. (One review described it as “Theranos but make it gay.”)

If the scam itself—the “Bliss Mini” and “Synthesis” and “the Farm”—were the whole story, I would have loved this book. It’s a runaway train! It’s ripped from the headlines! It’s almost too unhinged, which turns out to be the perfect amount of unhinged.

But it’s Orson and Ezra, the main characters, who sunk this story deep into my psyche. I’ve spent hours wondering if Orson was charmingly shallow and free-spirited or deeply, disturbingly manipulative. I’ve spent even more time thinking about Ezra; the purity of his character juxtaposed with the wildly illegal and highly unethical plans he created so effortlessly. They hurt people. They helped people. Their whole lives were a house of cards resting atop an earthquake fault slicing down the middle of Placebo Effect forest. And still… the distinct lack of black-and-white throughout this book is a big part of why I’m still contemplating it today.

Finally, Confidence includes queer love, but is not a queer love story. Frumkin (a self-described “queer trans-masc individual”) allows his characters’ sexuality to simply exist, something that still does't happen often enough with LBGTQ+ characters. Frumkin writes, “That was really cool for me, because let’s normalize queerness; let’s normalize these gay relationships. It felt really good to have that in there.”

Though fast-paced, perfectly situated in time, and fantastically compelling, Confidence is equal parts tender, vulnerable, and if you’re willing to go there, profound—and that is what I loved the most.