BookBrowse Reviews Soft Core by Brittany Newell

BookBrowse:

A San Francisco sex worker fears she's losing her grip on reality after her housemate disappears.

It turns out employers aren't exactly clamoring to hire humanities grads with little professional experience. So after finishing her master's degree, Ruth pivots to a career in a decidedly less academic field: stripping. Despite the occasional creepy client, she doesn't mind the work. What she loves, however, is her cozy home life. She shares a house in San Francisco with Dino, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend, and his three goofy dogs. That is, until Dino disappears, leaving Ruth feeling unmoored. Dino is a drug dealer, so Ruth doesn't want to call the police and risk getting him in trouble. But as weeks go by and he's still gone, her worries begin to spiral. She becomes paranoid, thinking other men she sees around the city are him and wondering why he left her. Meanwhile, Ruth's own life is growing increasingly out of control. An intensely emotional email correspondence with a suicide fetishist starts consuming her free time, her clients' requests are getting weirder, and someone has started leaving her mysterious, possibly threatening, notes at work.

Savvy and scrappy, Ruth has been looking after herself since childhood. Her father died when she was young, leaving her mother largely out of commission with severe depression. Since then, Ruth has had to build her own life from scratch, able to trust only herself until Dino comes into the picture. Her initial entry into the world of sex work is through paid dates with Charlie, an older, married man, while she's still in grad school. As Ruth gets glimpses into Charlie's world, staying at his home when his wife and daughter are gone, she grows envious. Perhaps surprisingly, Charlie's wife is not the object of her jealousy. Rather, Ruth covets the life of Charlie's daughter, a few years her junior. Unlike Ruth, Charlie's daughter Sophia has had her every need tended to well into adulthood. Sophia doesn't need to rely on her sexuality or appeal to men's egos to get the trappings of wealth. She gets to be herself and pursue her own goals and interests regardless of their profitability. Though they haven't met, Ruth can sense that Sophia has the innate confidence that comes from growing up both rich and deeply loved. When Charlie runs into Ruth at the strip club years later, she asks how his daughter is, snidely joking that she can help her get a job.

Socioeconomic class is one of the novel's major themes. Between the strip club and a side gig as a dominatrix, Ruth earns more money than she knows what to do with. In one scene, she dresses up to go shopping and visit a cafe, and muses that to passersby she must look like just another rich girl, and yet she knows she will never belong to that world. Another character crosses class lines in the opposite direction. Emeline, a new dancer at the strip club, has the look and bearing of someone born into money. She rejects the garish colors and overt sexuality of the other dancers' outfits, wearing expensive-looking lingerie in neutral shades. Her coworkers don't trust her, speculating as to why she might be there. Is she an undercover journalist? Did she lose a bet? Or does she simply want the attention of eyes on her, validating her self-image? We learn her story later in the book, but it's clear from the beginning that something about her is different, and many of the dancers find it threatening.

One of the book's most interesting characters is Dino, who defies easy categorization. A decade older than Ruth, he's a drug dealer, yet he's not the stereotypical "bad boy." Dino genuinely cares for Ruth's well-being, letting her live in his home rent-free long after their romantic and sexual relationship ends. He also freely embraces his feminine side. He wears luxurious lingerie around the house, and when he helps Ruth choose her outfits for the strip club, it's with the critical eye of a fashion expert rather than an objectifying male gaze. His three dogs are named after '90s supermodels, and he absolutely spoils them. More than any of the other characters, Dino is at ease with himself and his place in the world. He doesn't seek the approval of others, because neither his income nor his self-esteem relies on it.

This book casts sex work in a refreshingly realistic and humanizing light. It's not a morality tale. Ruth and her coworkers are not victims in need of rescue, but that doesn't mean they entirely love their jobs. Sex work is depicted as a job like any other, and sex workers as complex human beings with a variety of motivations.

Soft Core is sharply witty at some points and quietly heartbreaking at others. Ruth is a likeable character made all the more relatable by her flaws, and by the end of the story she feels like an old friend. Fans of literary fiction will not want to miss this one!

This review first ran in the February 12, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.