This was definitely a dark and strange read that had me questioning perception and logic. It makes you question time, reality, and toxic love overall.

It’s hard to describe this book without giving too much away. It’s a literary horror novella with sci-fi elements. I recently read In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado and I’m very intrigued by this fictional story of intimate partner violence. There’s a Choose Your Own Adventure section in Carmen’s memoir that gives the reader an appearance of choice just to show them how the relationship’s toxicity was inescapable. That’s what I’m reminded of while reading this novella. Rae Wilde writes the fever pitch of these two main characters (lesbian exes) week long reunion lyrically and presents you with wonders and tragedy in equal measure. It was easier to experience the train wreck of their time together with a shape shifting dog present. But only a bit. 3.5 rounded up for giving us more Queer experiences in the Weird. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC!

I've been reading a lot of books lately that end with terrible patterns starting over and I think that's something we're going to see a lot in this era of humanity. We keep making the same mistakes thinking that this time it will be different. That can be something as big as governments and wars and as intimate as our relationships.

This relationship results in cosmic destruction. It's a hell that Johnny chooses.

It's hard because the more that's revealed about Johnny's intentions from the first page to the last, the less it matters. She is caught up in a toxic relationship with Alice, someone who will never love her, but enjoys using her. Neither is blameless, and yet you can't help but be sympathetic to Johnny and her desperation. This is the darkest shade of love taken to the nth degree.

Tense, bloody, tragic, and infuriating.

pretty much read this in one sitting, which is rare for me. i really enjoyed it! i think the weirdness and disorientation helps capture the emotions of the main character and really puts you in her headspace. man do i love a time loop

What a fast-paced and interesting novella! It took me a chapter or so to get used to the writing style, but by the end, I enjoyed it. It's hard to give any specifics since the book is so short, and I recommend going in as blind as possible. If you like sapphic horror with a deeper message than what's on the surface, you will dig this!

I’ll be thinking about this little book for a LONG time. It lends itself to reading in one sitting- the prose is tense and compelling with excellently crafted body horror

This was the best type of insane, a brilliant fever dream!

First and foremost, I think it would be best to get into this book knowing as little as possible! That being said, if you love absolutely insane little books in which you have no idea what's happening, this one's for you! You might think you know what you're reading at the beginning, but when you get to the second chapter, or rather day, called Tuesday, you'll quickly realize that you're about to lose your mind. This was clever and surprising in the best possible way. We're following Johnny and Alice over the course of one week, seeing each other after a while, months after their breakup. Johnny can patch their relationship back up, she can fix herself to become better for Alice. She can even fix Alice... right? Well, you'll have to see for yourself!

With magnificently bewitching writing style, the author has woven a short tale that at its core is not short at all. It is a temporal paradox in which anything and everything is possible. It is a story of deeply infatuating love, the kind that can battle time itself. Maybe. Maybe not. It is also a story of denying yourself a proper life for someone else who may or may not care for you the same amount. An absolutely insane journey that I wholeheartedly recommend!

PS: Once you finish reading, go back and read only the bold words sprinkled throughout; it's a stunning little writing experiment that takes the story to another level.

I Can Fix Her follows Johnny after she spots her ex Alice at a local cafe. While she is still angry about their breakup, Johnny can’t resist her shot of a second chance with Alice. They spend the night together, making plans and talking about their dreams but come morning, bizarre things begin to occur.

This is an absolute fever dream.

I think that’s the best way to explain this book without giving anything away.

I have seen multiple people use the book Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke as an example of what to expect and all I will say is that they are spot on.

Bizarre Queer Horror, let’s keep it going!

Thank you to NetGalley and CLASH Books for providing me with this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I Can Fix Her is a cosmic fever dream of a novella. The story begins with Johnny, randomly running into her ex, Alice, at a cafe. The two had a rocky relationship, and a rough split, but Alice invites Johnny back to her apartment and Johnny agrees to go, both hoping for a better second chance for each other.

The first night over is hopeful and a fresh new start, even though Johnny has a sick feeling of deja vu and keeps getting desperate calls from a random phone number. She wakes up to discover little things have changed around Alice and around the apartment.... and as the week goes on things keep getting more and more bizarre.

This is a propulsive little story that packs a lot into its limited page count. I think I could have enjoyed this a bit more had we had a longer time with the characters (I can't get into exactly what I wanted to experience more of without spoilers), but this was a great look into how devastating an unhealthy relationship is, and how it can wrap us in its tentacles, and how we embrace that toxicity all in the belief that we can fix things if we care hard enough.

I Can Fix Her is a fast-paced novella where nothing is what it seems and nothing can be trusted, including our main character. I uttered “wtf” several times throughout. We are caught in a nightmarish landscape of obsession, complex relationships and blurred lines. Thank you so much to CLASH Books and NetGalley for the ARC. You can pick this up when it publishes June 03, 2025!

What in the unholy fever dream did I just read?

I Can Fix Her is like if you take stalker levels of obsession, promises of change, and the concept of time in a blender and leave it on so long the blender explodes. And then a dog named Lucy, who has doubled in size since yesterday, comes in to lick up the mess. This is cosmic horror at its finest.

Seriously, this book is intense. It started out pretty regularly: girl re-meets girl after 6 months apart and they decide to catch up, very cute, very normal, but it quickly descended into a chaos I only half knew to expect so I was still pretty caught off guard. And as the story fell into unhinged territory, I didn’t just sit on the sidelines, I fell right in with it. I had a great time, but the fact remains that my brain has been altered and I am forever changed. Thanks, Rae Wilde!


***Thank you for the ARC! I am working on a photo for Instagram and my blog and will come back to share links when I’ve posted them a little closer to the release date!***

I CAN FIX HER is the latest deliciously diabolical work from one of my fave authors, @_rae_wilde. People, it’s really freaking great. It starts with Johnny watching her ex-lover Alice (and Alice’s new lover) in a cafe. There’s also a mysterious observer/narrator watching the scene play out. What starts as a story of someone stalking their ex soon evolves into an extraordinary world of cosmic horror, as the rules of reality are unpicked, and Wilde delivers scenes that are horrific, awe-inspiring, terrifying, and beautiful. I CAN FIX HER is a beautifully told tale of denial, and the hurt we can inflict on ourselves and each other in relationships gone wrong, refracted through staggering, apocalyptic horror. Wilde very deftly balances the terror with the heartache. Additionally, Wilde herself has said that with this book, she really wanted to show that lesbians can be evil too. I can’t of course speak for any evil lesbians out there, not being one myself, but I think with this novel, Rae Wilde stakes her claim as queen of the evil lesbians. One of my absolute favorite reads of the year. Many thanks to @clashbooks for the arc — this comes out June 9th, please preorder this one, it hurts real good!!

This was a pretty apt metaphor re: being in a toxic relationship where you're both your worst selves. I felt like something was missing from Alice's end of the equation, and would have liked if what she chose to do was similarly scaled up in proportion to how Johnny escalates the situation. I'm not sure how much else I can say without spoilers, but I wanted Alice's choices to be a little more intense.

As for the surreal events that take place around their relationship, those were cool. I enjoyed the imagery of the universe's dreamlike collapse, and the implications it had for the characters. The prose was lovely, and I was drawn in while I was reading it, but in hindsight I'd have appreciated it if some of the characters' choices had been a little bit more deliberate.

There is a lot to like about this book, and I really wish it was easy to do partial stars on more platforms. I enjoyed the imagery and language, but if this is meant to be a story of mutually assured destruction, then I wanted more from Alice, and from the emotional climax of the narrative. The choice to make some of these scenes more passive than active pulled the narrative punch a few times.

While the tone is very different, I kept thinking of "Bloom" and "In the Dream House." Wilde (whose work I've read under another pen name) is a talented writer, and I appreciate how she lets her FMCs be monsters when they need to be.

Thank you to NetGalley and CLASH for the ARC.

Half of it was an allucination, but in a very good sense. This book blew me away, I enjoyed myself immensly (as much as you can when you turn into cannibalism). It was weird, monstrous, mechanical, twisted and it gave me more than what i was expecting. The style is brilliant and lucid, so on point. The loop that makes you want to scream because there's no way out, it's suffocating and claustrophobic. LOVED IT!

A dreamy yet nightmarish novella about a toxic relationship and an examination of what we demand from others.

Johnny sees Alice in a cafe six months after their break up when Alice left for Berlin. Johnny wants/needs/craves Alice. Alice is not quite that committed to Johnny. But Alice invites Johnny back to her apartment and after a night together, they decide to try again. Meanwhile, Johnny is getting calls and signs from someone who must speak with her and this 3rd POV is desperate to get through.

Thus begins a week of spiraling mania and dream-like cosmic confusion and violence as Johnny loses herself in her need to possess Alice.

Trippy and lovely, intimate yet universal, Wilde shows us how what we feel for and demand from others can be unrelated and untethered to who that person truly is. It is a lyrical, mind-bending, boundary-flexing and dark descent into obsession and need and impossible demands.

I flew through this book and then stared into space. Wilde made me think, and cringe, and introspect. Then I went back and reread the story again.

I never do that. It was that disturbing yet mesmerizing.

Okay..... I have no idea how to start this or what to even say. This was good... like really good.. The writing is absolutely beautiful. I was quite invested in the story and what was going to happen to Johnny. I really enjoyed the ending. I think it's fitting and very very real. This book made me feel like I accidentally took one too many Benadryl and started hallucinating and I mean that in a good way.

A toxic love story in the middle of such a delectable bizarre fever dream

Johnny runs into her estranged ex, Alice, at a local cafe with a strange feeling of déjà vu. They agree to back to Alice's place to talk things over and maybe rekindle their love. Johnny spends the night, and by the next morning, things have already started to change around her. Throughout Johnny's time with Alice, reality begins to rapidly unravel around her, and what was real yesterday begins to dissolve and shift

An absolute fever dream in the purest definition of it and absolutely done in it's best possible way. This book starts out as one story and begins to metamorphose in your hands into something mind-bending and unrecognizable by the end. I had so much fun reading this book and if you're a fan of dark and bizarre stories cannot recommend it enough.

Thank you to CLASH Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this early so I can provide a balanced review. Opinions are always my own. “I Can Fix Her” by Rae Wilde is sapphic sci-fi/horror novel that has a little bit of “Single White Female” in it or maybe even “Jennifer’s Body”. The story has magical realism vibes and a narrative about a relationship between two women that has heavy themes of obsession. The story focuses a lot on the idea of loops and patterns in relationships and what effect our choices really have to change those patterns.

Because of the brief nature of the book, we don’t necessarily get to know the main characters, Johnny and Alice, very well, but the pacing of the plot is satisfying and the twists come at the right time. You get information when you need it, and it doesn’t leave you guessing in a frustrating way. Still, I wouldn’t have minded even just an extra few pages to give us a little bit better of a sense of character. I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say that the weirder and more bizarre the book got, the more I liked it, and I almost wished it would’ve gone even farther into the absurd.

The language is very descriptive and poetic. There’s a lot of visual imagery, particularly in the middle sections, and you could feel the tension and the pressure in the room. Though Wilde does take time for some indulgent prose (in a good way!), the story generally is extremely economical and efficient with language. Again, for being as short as it is, it manages to pack a lot of action into every single page. I particularly enjoyed the ending, especially the very last sentence. Would be perfect for fans of books like “Bloom” by Delilah S. Dawson.

‘Why can’t you need me in the same way?’

Rae Wilde’s ‘I Can Fix Her’ is a meditation on duality and metamorphosis akin to Julia Armfield’s ‘Our Wives Under the Sea’.

If you like your gore and Body Horror shot through with surrealism, then give yourself over to the narrator and their interjections, and see where Wilde takes you.

Her writing seems hardly to touch the ground at first – light, pattering along like a train of thought. But given pause, Wilde’s style reveals itself to be intensely imagistic, folding motifs back upon themselves with scrumptious prefigurement, and bleeds suspension of disbelief for all it’s worth.

Deeply absurd at one moment, achingly poignant the next (‘All that love she feels for Alice, and she doesn’t even know where she keeps her glasses.’), tone paces structure throughout, never missing a beat of cohesion, allowing Wilde to rhapsodise bleakly about love:

‘Within Johnny’s chest, an organ pumps blood, fast and hard and desperate. She would hand it over to Alice, slimy and thumping. She thinks she already has.’

This is a supremely fantastical exploration of futility, which bears the imprints of Armfield’s ‘Private Rites’ and ‘Salt Slow’ both, and warrants five stars from me just the same as those:

‘Johnny is reduced to trembling atoms. Bones seem to chatter and clink together. Her blood is kinetic, nerves sparking with disabling electricity, her muscles useless, rigid, for all the microscopic scurry within.’

There is such remarkable brilliance in the second half of the book that I wanted to cite as flavour, but I don't want to overleap any spoilers. Suffice it to say that Johnny undergoes all the imperative suffering of the anti-hero:

‘She has never felt so weak or so small, so meaningless in the face of destructive power that is not hers. […] For the first time, she understands fragility.’

Dinky, this might be; frivolous, it’s not.

A huge thank you to CLASH Books for the treat of this!

[Quotations from the text might have changed prior to publication.]

What a beautifully imaginative tale. I absolutely loved how slowly the world unravelled, as the truth behind the relationship of the two characters did too. Bizarre in the most hauntingly creative way - it was just enough to keep you hooked into the story without making it hard to follow. I didn't expect the theme of horror to be present throughout but it was woven into the writing in a glorious juxtaposition to the initial romance. I felt every single shift in the surrealist imagery used and it left so much to interpretation which kept me re-reading passages and wondering the meanings of things as I read through. I really enjoyed the length of this book as it perfectly complemented the surrealism - I feel that any longer and it would've become tangled. I do think that it might not be a book that everyone picks up and enjoys as much as I did as there are some elements of uncertainty and questioning but for me, it was really gripping.