Daisy Buchanan

'Extremely funny, touching and wonderfully refreshing on women and sexual desire' Marian Keyes 'You will be intoxicated by this witty and honest exploration of female desire' Elle 'As filthy as it is funny, you won't be able to put it down' Dolly Alderton 'Insatiable is a story about loneliness and trying to fit in, about our desire to be loved and included, how it's easy to confuse being wanted with being used. It'll draw people in with the shagging, but people will stay because they're rooting for Violet.' Evening Standard A Grazia, Stylist, Cosmo, i paper, Red and Independent book of the year for 2021 Stuck in a dead-end job, broken-hearted, broke and estranged from her best friend: Violet's life is nothing like she thought it would be. She wants more - better friends, better sex, a better job - and she wants it now. So, when Lottie - who looks like the woman Violet wants to be when she grows up - offers Violet the chance to join her exciting start-up, she bites. Only it soon becomes clear that Lottie and her husband Simon are not only inviting Violet into their company, they are also inviting her into their lives. Seduced by their townhouse, their expensive candles and their Friday-night sex parties, Violet cannot tear herself away from Lottie, Simon or their friends. But is this really the more Violet yearns for? Will it grant her the satisfaction she is so desperately seeking? Insatiable is about women and desire - lust, longing and the need to be loved. It is a story about being unable to tell whether you are running towards your future or simply running away from your past. The result is at once tender and sad, funny and hopeful. * 'Filthy, funny, and raw, Insatiable is utterly addictive' Louise O'Neill 'Come for the absolute filth and stay for the empathetic and sensitive way that Daisy Buchanan writes about all the chaos and conflict of being a young woman in a hard-edged, hard-faced world.' Red 'A piercing insight into the unreal demands modern women place on themselves and told with real humour and energy, we love this book so much' Stylist 'A raucous unravelling of female desire and bodily pleasures, in all their maddening complexity' Emma Jane Unsworth 'Few books out in the early half of the year are as flat-out entertaining as Buchanan's fizzy, filthy story of a young woman's sexual awakening.' i paper 'I'd call Insatiable Jilly Cooper for the Instagram generation, but that wouldn't do this book justice' Lauren Bravo 'Daisy brings characters to life like no other writer, pumping them full of humour, vulnerability and sexy sexy sex' Lucy Vine 'Gloriously rude and brave about the nature of women's desire' Sophia Money-Coutts 'I raced through this funny, filthy and utterly compelling debut about female sexuality, ambition and vulnerability... I'm still thinking about it long after turning the final page.' Daily Mail 'I can't believe this is a fiction debut - she writes stories like she's been doing it for fifty years' Laura Jane Williams 'Insatiable is an unashamedly filthy and yet deeply sensitive exploration of female desire, aspiration and vulnerability, and Daisy is an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.' Hannah Beckerman 'It reminded me of Bridget Jones's Diary - if Bridget were bisexual and Daniel Cleaver were a couple who were into group sex.' Julie Cohen 'Erica Jong for the Instagram age.' Keith Stuart 'Intelligent, observant prose that gives a snap-shot of life experienced by millennial women.' Kate Sawyer 'Like going for a drink with your wisest and smuttiest friend' Jessica Moor

‘A frank, funny account of 21st-century lust’ Independent

Insatiable

Laura Dobie

In all honesty, I thought that working for a start-up sounded quite cool, and quite sexy. I didn't really understand that sometimes it means working for people whose business acumen' might well have been picked up while watching The Apprentice with the sound off. I didn't know that it meant I might have to wait days, or once, horribly, three weeks, after our official pay day to get my monthly money, because of 'cash flow - an excuse, presented with an airy frequency, by senior management, who suspiciously seemed to acquire brand new Macbooks at the same time. I didn't realise that while the words were all new and thrilling - passion and synergy, energy and commitment - the meaning was the same. You work late, you eat at your desk, and you won’t let anyone’s stapler get empty.

My shirt is covered in tiny zebras. When I left my flat, I loved the zebras. Now I am furious with the twee, stripy fuckers. I'm going to burn this shirt.

In need of entertainment, and out of anthropological curiosity, I distract myself by watching Max. He is like a children's TV character, an Eeyore if the Hundred Acre Wood was populated by the Viet Cong, Mr Magoo with an anger management problem.

I felt briefly ashamed of ever finding Izzy's Instagram insufferable, of every laboured sigh I'd released over each #yummymummy caption. Why are we so stupid? Why don't we realise that when people are trying so hard to perform and perfect their lives, it's usually a sign that they don't really like living them?

It's as if Sasha has entered my brain and switched all the lights on. I've never thought this way before. Growing up, I was told that ambition meant working as hard as you possibly could, no matter how unhappy it made you. I believed that I was a failure, because I earned so little, and that must mean my job wasn't as 'good' as anyone else's. I thought it was better to be miserable at a glamorous-sounding start-up than happy in a cafe or a supermarket. Perhaps this is why I fell for Lottie. In her weird way, she was the first person to make mne question what I was allowed to want - she showed me that it was OK to be greedy, for sex, success and status. But is that still what I want? Do I want those things on her terms?

Sometimes, when I come, it's like falling into a bottomless black hole. I'm so overwhelmed by pure sensation that I feel nothing, and I revel in the escape, the chance to fully detach from my body and mind, even for less than a second. But this time, it's pure white light. I've been shot into a galaxy of luminous, trailing stars.

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