Sounded intriguing but ultimately was not for me—although I thought the campus novel was a great site to interrogate power dynamics and the extent to which women can be toxic, abusive, etc, I found this book weirdly paced and the plotlines unsatisfactorily resolved (although I very much enjoyed the last chapter).

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

2 / 5 stars.

Ah I really wanted to love this. The premise is brilliant and I was so excited by it. Alice and Walt are students who dream of being as famous and respected as their bestselling author and tutor Sofie but there are rumours around Sofie's methods of producing great writers and how far she pushes them.

For me, I couldn't connect with the characters. I found Alice and Walt unlikeable and I just didn't care about them. I was hoping to be more gripped throughout, I found it quite slow in pace in parts and it lost my attention at points - it lacked an oomph and I felt it should have been a bit more explosive. Great premise but the story didn't quite reach it for me.

Bad Fiction follows Alice who is in Sofia Muller’s creative writing class. Alice alongside her friend, Walt want Sofie to guide them to become bestsellers and great writers. Sofie is a bestselling author and known for making people into better writers. There are rumours about Sofie though and the question is how they will impact Alice and her potential success.

This book has a really great beginning and I was very intrigued to read this. I enjoyed the conversations in this around female predators and the power dynamics between professors and students. I enjoyed the writing and for the most part the story was intriguing. I did kind of lose interest in this around 60% in and I just don’t think this went far enough. I did enjoy the ending but I do think this was just a little too flat. That said, this author shows a lot of promise and I can see them being successful.

2✨
Thank you NetGalley, Rebecca Sarah Ley and HarperCollins for providing an eARC in exchange for my honest review - Bad Fiction publishes February 26th 2026.

Bad Fiction follows Alice and Walt who sign up for Sofie Muller’s prestigious creative writing class. Alice craves greatness and Sofie Muller can shape writers into stars, but at what cost?
As Alice falls deeper under Sofie’s spell, she’s forced to confront how far she's willing to go for the success she’s always wanted.

I was really excited to get into this book as the blurb sounded so intriguing. From the get go you’re instantly suspicious of Sofie’s behaviour at the bookstore. Rebecca does a great job of making you question everything written and what it really means.

However as the book went on I was left feeling frustrated with all of the characters.
I found it incredibly hard to root for any of them, even with their individual storylines, they were all frustrating and I wanted to shake them to give them a wake up call!!

How Alice let Molly continuously treat her, which had a very unsatisfying resolution was disappointing. I found Alice very unlikeable with her treatment of Walt (the audacity of her asking why didn’t you tell sooner, given her response to him?!?) and her naivety.

Jo and Sofie was one of the most frustrating elements. Although I initially was proud that Jo had left Sofie, and we hear the reasons why later in the story, it was then even more frustrating seeing the way she allowed Sofie to treat her and voluntarily put herself in so many positions she shouldn’t have been in when she had stood strong to get a divorce in the first place.

I kept reading and waiting for things to work out and it never did. No justice was given which left me really disappointed. I loved the premise of this book but it unfortunately wasn’t for me.

Bad Fiction by Rebecca Sarah Ley is an immersive novel in an academic setting that explores the thorny issues of consent and authorship.

There's lots of interesting material here about a famous creative writing tutor who takes advantage of the febrile and vulnerable relationship between students and mentor but the shape of the book feels baggy and as if it takes some time to find its direction. It's also hard to believe in such a villainous creation as Sofie: while it's interesting to overturn the usual gender dynamics, Sophie is just so openly manipulative as well as stupid enough the leave clear evidence of her crimes in a drawer in her office.

It feels as if the book can't decide whether it wants to be a fast-paced page turner or something more thoughtful and literary - and ends up landing, unsatisfactorily, somewhere in between. The writing could be edited more closely too: 'I finally bit into my sandwich. The cheese was rich and tangy and the ham was pleasantly synthetic, like a child's snack' - why do we have to waste our time reading about a pedestrian ham and cheese panini as if we wouldn't have any idea what this was unless the book describes it for us?

So a good central idea but I'm not sure the execution really runs with it sufficiently.

2.5 stars