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Lovers XXX

About the Book

Lovers XXX

Set against the neon-lit porn world of 1980s Los Angeles, a raw and evocative portrait of sex, friendship and the perilous edge of liberation for two young women --- from the author of AESTHETICA.

For fans of Mary Gaitskill, Emma Cline and Rachel Kushner.

Los Angeles, 1982. Eighteen-year-old Jude, newly out of reform school, is searching for her best friend, Winnie, when she falls under the spell of an older man with a motorcycle, a needle and a taste for danger.

What begins as an escape spirals into motel rooms, stickups and drug binges. Jude eventually finds Winnie, now Velvet, dancing at a Sunset Strip club. Together they imagine a future --- bartending, writing, building a life of their own --- but the same world that offers glamour and freedom threatens to consume them. Survival means navigating men who promise love, power and escape --- always at a cost.

LOVERS XXX is a cool-eyed re-creation of the world of ’80s adult filmmaking, and a hypnotic novel of friendship, self-invention and sexual identity beyond binaries. Above all, it is a singular love story between two vulnerable, defiant women.

Lovers XXX
by Allie Rowbottom

  • Publication Date: June 2, 2026
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Soho Press
  • ISBN-10: 1641297301
  • ISBN-13: 9781641297301