Praise for Lovers XXX
An Open Book Club Pick
A PEOPLE Best Book of June
“The definitive literary valley porn novel.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“This unctuous tale of liberation, the performance of sex, and friendship told against the neon facade of 1980’s Los Angeles has just the right amount of grime and the right amount of heart.”
—Forbes
“Lovers XXX is a reckless joyride into youthful longing and hedonism, and their bruising flipside. In its humane, heady portrayal of lives on the margins, and its evocative sense of place, it recalls the films of Sean Baker and the novels of Emma Cline – and is presided over by the ghost of Eve Babitz.”
—The Guardian
“In this provocative exploration of the golden age of porn in 1980s L.A., two teenage girls navigate the patriarchy and their own autonomy while forging a deep bond.”
—PEOPLE
“Beaches meets Boogie Nights in Allie Rowbottom‘s latest novel, Lovers XXX, a porno chic romp through 1980s Los Angeles with a turbulent sapphic romance at its core.”
—Interview Magazine
“Pure, coked-up American romance... Similar to the doomed Paris affair of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick and Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa, Rowbottom gives her readers the forever off-tempo, neon true love of heroines Winnie and Jude over the span of several decades.”
—New City Lit
“The weight, the desperation, the need to carve out a place apart. It is here that Lovers XXX finds its own space, a liminal territory between past and present, between whom the characters wished to be and whom they have had to battle to become.”
—David Ulin, Alta
“Like a corset, [Lovers XXX] is laced with cruelty and pleasure, often overlapping, indistinguishable from one another and threateningly so—a meditation on how women navigate these constraints of a hostile world, many of which persist 40 years on.”
—Emily Leibert, The Whitney Review
“Rowbottom’s portrayal of the porn demimonde is exciting and gritty without feeling lurid, and the novel doubles as a moving ode to the value of a female friendship. It’s a knockout.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“A glamorous, sun-drenched Los Angeles epic set in the early ‘80s, during the so-called Golden Age of pornography . . . Raw and moving, [Lovers XXX] explores the intimate and complex friendship between two adult film starlets as they navigate sex, drugs, and life on the neon-lit margins.”
—Playboy
“In Allie Rowbottom's new novel Lovers XXX, glitter and grit collide.”
—V Magazine
“Rowbottom's sophomore outing offers a powerful, vivid, visceral look at the heyday of the adult film industry from the perspectives of the women who populated it.”
—Booklist
"If you loved Boogie Nights, but wish it had way less Marky Mark and way more sapphic romance, then this is the book for you! Allie Rowbottom’s saga of the halcyon days of VHS pornography is both a love letter to sexual expression and a cautionary tale of capitalist exploitation, with gorgeously crafted set pieces and an effervescent energy."
—CrimeReads
“The book’s strengths – plot, structure, character, sentences – combined with its emotional intensity show Rowbottom’s adroitness as a writer. The book is not just a technical success—it has heart.”
—Zona Motel
“Lovers XXX is Persona set in the '80s porn world—thrillingly literary; thrillingly sleazy.”
—Lili Anolik, author of Didion and Babitz
"Lovers XXX tackles the sticky subjects of female sexuality, objectification and desire with a smoothness that appears effortless. Allie Rowbottom’s writing has a rare combination of deep compassion, prescient insight, and just plain coolness that I’m in awe of."
—Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters
“You’re thrown right into Lovers XXX and it doesn’t stop. Allie writes about desire, survival, intimacy, and exploitation with a kind of feral tenderness. She turns stick-ups, strip clubs, and motel rooms into a fever dream that makes ruin look romantic. Impossible to put down!”
—Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs
“Allie Rowbottom’s Lovers XXX is a fever dream and love song—an ode to the gritty places we find solace and sustenance and glimpses of sublimity. Pulsing and propulsive, it’s about the way it feels to wake up in the morning next to your best friend, and the ache of reading her diary and finding a stranger there. It’s a ballad in the old sense, with guns and betrayal and wounds carried across decades, but its heart belongs to its women . . . This book is bold and bleeding at once, just like its characters, drawing on old genres—the Western, the ballad, the sleepover secret, the dirty flick, the apology, the torch song—to invent something utterly new and beautifully haunted.”
—Leslie Jamison, author of The Gin Closet
“Smart, sad, sexy, and at times surprisingly sweet, Allie Rowbottom’s Lovers XXX does for the stars of adult filmmaking what her previous novel Aesthetica did for cosmetically enhanced influencers: It casts a humanising spell, transforming the women at its centre from mere naked flesh into something more like real flesh and blood. Beneath all that silicone and slickness, Rowbottom locates a warm, beating heart.”
—Philippa Snow, author of It's Terrible the Things I Have to Do to Be Me
