BLOB

Maggie Su's debut novel is nothing if not surprising

The Times

This weird but oddly wonderful debut makes for tender but compulsive reading

Sunday Post

Such a wonderfully strange and beautiful exploration of love, compassion and, essentially, what it is to be human. Short but sweet, and a real page turner towards the end

Stylist

While the sentient ball of goo in Maggie Su's BLOB certainly grabs the reader's attention, there is so much more at play in this wondrous novel. Vi, struggling to place herself in any context that makes sense within the world, earnestly leads us into a wild experiment, to turn a blob into the man of her dreams, and I was transfixed by her voice, a weird mix of excitement and dread. A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways.

Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing To See Here

Dark fun . . . In Su's affecting Frankenstein story, the monster's transformation is the least surprising one

Washington Post

A hilariously absurd debut . . . a perfectly apt coming-of-age story about modern romance in your twenties

Elle Australia

Just brilliant - utterly original, charming and funny, weirdly real and really weird. I can't stop thinking about this book and I'm telling everyone I know to read it

Kate Davies, author of In at the Deep End

A rollicking fun, funny, poignant coming-of-age story, filled with honesty and delight

Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

BLOB follows a young woman who discovers a sentient blob and tries to turn it into her ideal boyfriend. Now this is art! This is literature! More books about women dating weird objects they found in the street, please. BLOB hive rise up

Lit Hub

Comic, quirky and unlike any other novel

Woman & Home

Maggie Su's debut is tender, compulsive reading

Evening Express

An inventive, utterly unique debut. BLOB is not only a deliciously creepy, deeply entertaining take on modern relationships, it's also a moving look at new adulthood, and the inherent vulnerability that comes along with figuring out exactly who you're meant to be

Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light

Unique, heartfelt, and hilarious, BLOB is a delightfully inquisitive meditation on relationships and identity. What responsibility do we have in the creation of our relationships? What do we bring and leave behind? And what repercussions exist when we force ourselves into an identity instead of nurturing our real selves? This winsome book pulls off the impossible feat of examining our deepest existential questions with equal parts tenderness and droll

Ling Ling Huang, author of Natural Beauty

Like a beguiling literary love child of Melissa Broder and Jeff VanderMeer, BLOB enthralls with raw intimacy and Frankensteinian science. This is a novel that dives headfirst into the gelatinous messiness of early adulthood - with its bad jobs, bad boyfriends, and bad decision-making - finding self-actualization along the way. Maggie Su's debut will make you laugh, shriek, and cheer for its wayward, wobbly inventions. BLOB is not to be missed!

Allegra Hyde, author of The Last Catastrophe and Eleutheria

What I love most about BLOB is the way it manages to imbue a zany comic premise with powerful emotion and deep thematic resonance. Maggie Su skilfully manages action, pacing, and tone, and the result is serious fun, both grave and entertaining. If I happened to come across an attentive blob, I would ask it to grow two hands and applaud this fresh, terrific debut

Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback

'In BLOB, Su's prose breathes magic, humor, and empathy into everything it touches . . . You'll want to read this in one sitting, but try to savor it: there are gems of laughter and insight to be unearthed on every page

Renee Branum, author of Defenestrate

BLOB is absolutely charming. Maggie Su's writing is imaginative and funny. Vi is a deliciously messy narrator who will make readers laugh, yes, but also think deeply about the relationship between love and generosity

Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly

Like all the best comic fiction, this delightful book is both laugh-out-loud funny and achingly poignant. I root for snarky, lonely Vi as she wrestles with the risks and rewards of embracing her entire, messy self. What happens to her might be surreal, but it has the deep resonance of truth

Leah Stewart, author of What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw

Su's first novel, about a young woman who constructs her ideal mate (literally), is an entertaining, quirky mash-up of Frankenstein and Bridget Jones' Diary, made more substantive as a clever parable of self-discovery... [A] hilarious-and somehow also touching-debut

Booklist

In Su's marvelous debut, a Taiwanese American woman sculpts a seemingly perfect partner out of a sentient blob... Su's clever conceit provides a catalyst for Vi's revelatory introspection, as she faces her self-destructive tendencies and the difficulties of being human. The result is a top-notch tale of arrested development

Publishers Weekly

A funny and pathos-ridden tale of social awkwardness and self-realization; a modern, delayed coming-of-age... This quirky, funny, pained novel considers the challenge, for any of us, of becoming fully human

Shelf Awareness

Maggie Su's debut novel is the tale of a down-on-her-luck woman, Vi, who finds a pitiable blob of goo with eyes in the alley behind a bar. She gradually molds it into a dreamy human-shaped love interest but finds her own angst harder to contain.

New York Magazine

Funny, original, and charming

Interview

Comical, quirky and enjoyably unpredictable, BLOB is unlike any other novel you'll read this year

Woman's Weekly