Lovers XXX

Set against the neon-lit porn world of 1980s Los Angeles, a raw and evocative portrait of sex, friendship, and the perilous edge of liberation for two young women--from the author of Aesthetica.

For fans of Mary Gaitskill, Emma Cline, and Rachel Kushner.

Los Angeles, 1982. Eighteen-year-old Jude, newly out of reform school, is searching for her best friend, Winnie, when she falls under the spell of an older man with a motorcycle, a needle, and a taste for danger.

What begins as an escape spirals into motel rooms, stickups, and drug binges. Jude eventually finds Winnie, now Velvet, dancing at a Sunset Strip club. Together they imagine a future--bartending, writing, building a life of their own--but the same world that offers glamour and freedom threatens to consume them. Survival means navigating men who promise love, power, and escape--always at a cost.

Lovers XXX is a cool-eyed re-creation of the world of '80s adult filmmaking, and a hypnotic novel of friendship, self-invention, and sexual identity beyond binaries. Above all, it is a singular love story between two vulnerable, defiant women.

Allie Rowbottom is the author of the novel Aesthetica and the memoir Jell-O Girls. Her writing can be found in The New York Times, Elle, Playboy, and Vanity Fair. She holds a PhD in literature and creative writing and lives in Los Angeles.