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PLEASE SEND HELP by Gaby Dunn

PLEASE SEND HELP

by Gaby Dunn & Allison Raskin

Pub Date: July 16th, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21653-3
Publisher: Wednesday Books

A budding journalist and a television intern share their lives via emails and texts in this second installment chronicling a long-distance friendship.

The internet comedy duo Dunn and Raskin (I Hate Everyone but You, 2017) continue the story of besties Gen and Ava, now college graduates. Queer Gen moves to small-town Florida to work at a local newspaper; straight Ava moves to New York City to intern on a TV show. Gen searches for a gay scene, develops a flirty friendship with a straight woman that goes sideways, and befriends a homeless man—and in publishing his story, exposes the shelter for LGBTQ discrimination. Ava develops feelings and gets romantically involved with her supervisor despite knowing his history of seeking relationships with subordinates. The girls’ friendship alludes to economic differences, as Gen worries about student loans while Ava remains financially comfortable. These fast-paced, often funny exchanges cover everything from sexuality to feral cat adoption, but the hyperbolic humor that may make friends laugh doesn’t always translate coherently to the page. Some of the portrayals of queer desire veer uncomfortably close to perpetuating negative stereotypes of predatory and unethical behavior. Main characters are assumed white.

The frenzied misadventures of this duo almost congeal into a comic look at the challenges of friendship in a digital age but never quite deliver depth.

(Fiction. 14-18)