Content Warning: This review discusses sexual abuse, coercion, and trauma. The memoir itself contains graphic depictions of abuse that may be triggering. I read Ordeal by Linda Lovelace over the holiday break. Or, more accurately, I devoured it—and it devoured me in return, body and soul, leaving nothing behind. No trace remaining of the woman I was before I read it. It inhabited me. Not in the way great literature does—through beautiful prose that lingers like perfume, or a

Every writer is told to brace themselves for rejection—to develop a thick skin, to expect disappointment, and to accept that the inbox will mostly echo back silence or polite nos. So when my writing partner and I began relentlessly querying literary agents, I braced for the wave of self-doubt I knew would hit. Each time I pressed “send,” I whispered to myself: their decision does not define the worth of our novel. Our book is already extraordinary. We poured our lives into it