The Uninnocent
The Doloriad
Books

String Follow

9780374603854
Paperback, MCD × FSGO, 2022
Jacobs  simon %28c%29 jenn byrne creative crop

Simon Jacobs

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Something strange is happening to the teens in Adena, Ohio.


A mysterious force is seeking inroads: vulnerabilities to exploit, friendships to hijack, untapped rage to harness toward its own ends. Who will serve it best? Claire is abrasive and aimless, embarrassed by her privilege. Weak-willed David entertains fantasies of cultish orgies, while Tyler covertly takes up residence in his basement. Greg wages war on the voices in his head, while his sister Beth quietly, furiously unravels. And at the center is the empathetic, naive Sarah. The force wants her most of all. But will she be the key to its success or its destruction?


Eerie, hypnotic, and shot through with dark comedy, String Follow is a razor-sharp suburban gothic that exposes the sweating, bleeding truth of how kids become adults in twenty-first-century America. Simon Jacobs blends the startlingly original and the uncannily familiar, revealing the dark chaos that lurks beneath the surface of Midwestern suburbia.

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Front cover

unstrung-a-viceroy-fanzine

Viceroy lyrics and excerpts by Simon Jacobs

Art and layout by Clara Spars

  • "A work of evil genius that put me in a literal trance and didn't relinquish me until the final page. I loved every insidious second.”

    —Mona Awad, author of Bunny

  • "A deliciously dark modern Gothic that deftly mines the terrors and vicissitudes of the suburban teenager . . . it is Simon Jacobs’s sly and simmering prose that is the most undeniable force, slipping under your skin to haunt you long after the last page."

    —Kira Jane Buxton, author of Hollow Kingdom

  • "A horrific descent into the madness that alternately connects and isolates us. A riveting and unstoppable journey.”

    —Rachel Eve Moulton, author of Tinfoil Butterfly

  • "Daring and stylish [with] flashes of black humor . . . the darkness is so relentless and remorseless that the reader can feel pursued by it, punished. Grim, violent Midwestern gothic—hard to watch, hard to turn away from."

    Kirkus