pagesofjulia

This mind-bending novel examines the nature of love and the social conventions that govern relationships and asks where limits should be drawn, if at all.

Jessica Gross (Hysteria) staggers and challenges readers with her sophomore novel, Open Wide, starring a socially awkward protagonist who finds love and dives in very, very deeply.

Olive compulsively records all the hours of her life, “collecting sounds the way other people collect stamps.” She records diegetic sounds, which she uses in her work as a radio producer, and conversations, which she plays back–to study what went right or wrong, to soothe or arouse herself. She has long yearned for romance when she meets Theo, a handsome colorectal surgeon. He agrees with Olive’s proffered metaphor: people’s insides look like pink pasta. Olive can’t get enough. She wants to spend every night together. She wants to “climb inside” him.

Alongside their deepening love affair, Olive reveals to readers her relationships with her sisters and mother, through which Gross also explores boundaries (or lack thereof) and obsessive love. “My mother had climbed inside of me. My little self, filled with her bigger one. Her daughter, who was not supposed to be the vessel, but the one contained.” However, Theo is not parent or child to Olive but partner, so their intimacy is different, Olive tells herself.

Olive’s first-person narration of her bizarre story is an inspired choice that makes readers privy to her fears, confusions, passions, and rationalizations. By the final pages, which reveal what has changed in Olive’s surreal world, readers will feel dizzy with her perspective and its consequences. Open Wide is a tense, engrossing examination of the bounds of love.

This review originally ran in the August 8, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish news.

Stay tuned for my upcoming interview with Gross.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: misc fiction, Shelf Awareness, speculative fiction |