Allie Rowbottom – författare

*** A COSMOPOLITAN BEST SUMMER READ ***'I'm in awe'Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters'Devastating and alluring'Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually'Impossible to put down'Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs'Smart, sad, sexy'Philippa Snow, author of It's Terrible the Things I Have to Do To Be Me_____________________________Los Angeles, 1982.Best friends Jude and Winnie are eighteen and working at a strip club. Soon they progress to modelling for Penthouse and Hustler, then to shooting hardcore porn.Dazzled by the drugs, sex and parties their new life offers, they are also beset by sexism, bitter competition and the precarity of life on the margins. When their friendship ends in recrimination and a dramatic act of betrayal, Jude goes missing and Winnie can find no trace of her.Thirty years later, newly divorced and down on her luck, Winnie is ready to face her past. Determined to solve the mystery of what happened to Jude, she sets out to brave the dark underbelly of the adult industry. What follows is a gutsy, propulsive look at sex and power that builds to an unforgettable revelation about love._____________________________PRAISE FOR LOVERS XXX'Allie's writing possesses a rare combination of deep compassion, prescient insight, and just plain coolness that I'm in awe of.' Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters'Lovers XXX is Persona set in the 80s porn world - thrillingly literate; thrillingly sleazy.' Lili Anolik, author of Didion and Babitz'You're thrown right into Lovers XXX and it doesn't stop. Allie writes about desire, survival, intimacy and exploitation with a kind of feral tenderness. She turns stick-ups, strip clubs and motel rooms into a fever dream that makes ruin look romantic. Impossible to put down!' Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs'Exciting and gritty without feeling lurid, and a moving ode to the value of a female friendship. It's a knockout.' Publishers Weekly'A propulsive and surprisingly tender novel.' Grazia'An extraordinary, sordidly exciting, fascinating and original story . . . biting but archetypal, sleazy and uneasy, dangerous and ambitious.' Bidisha'Smart, sad, sexy, and at times surprisingly sweet . . . it casts a humanising spell, transforming the women at its centre from mere naked flesh into something more like real flesh and blood.' Philippa Snow, author of It's Terrible the Things I Have To Do To Be Me'Pulsing and propulsive, Lovers XXX is a fever dream and love song.' Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

*** A COSMOPOLITAN BEST SUMMER READ ***'I'm in awe'Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters'Devastating and alluring' Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually'Impossible to put down' Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs'Smart, sad, sexy' Philippa Snow, author of It's Terrible the Things I Have to Do To Be Me_____________________________Los Angeles, 1982.Best friends Jude and Winnie are eighteen and working at a strip club. Soon they progress to modelling for Penthouse and Hustler, then to shooting hardcore porn. Dazzled by the drugs, sex and parties their new life offers, they are also beset by sexism, bitter competition and the precarity of life on the margins. When their friendship ends in recrimination and a dramatic act of betrayal, Jude goes missing and Winnie can find no trace of her.Thirty years later, newly divorced and down on her luck, Winnie is ready to face her past. Determined to solve the mystery of what happened to Jude, she sets out to brave the dark underbelly of the adult industry. What follows is a gutsy, propulsive look at sex and power that builds to an unforgettable revelation about love._____________________________PRAISE FOR LOVERS XXX'Allie's writing possesses a rare combination of deep compassion, prescient insight, and just plain coolness that I'm in awe of.' Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters'Lovers XXX is Persona set in the 80s porn world - thrillingly literate; thrillingly sleazy.' Lili Anolik, author of Didion and Babitz'You're thrown right into Lovers XXX and it doesn't stop. Allie writes about desire, survival, intimacy and exploitation with a kind of feral tenderness. She turns stick-ups, strip clubs and motel rooms into a fever dream that makes ruin look romantic. Impossible to put down!' Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs'Exciting and gritty without feeling lurid, and a moving ode to the value of a female friendship. It's a knockout.' Publishers Weekly'A propulsive and surprisingly tender novel.' Grazia'An extraordinary, sordidly exciting, fascinating and original story . . . biting but archetypal, sleazy and uneasy, dangerous and ambitious.' Bidisha'Smart, sad, sexy, and at times surprisingly sweet . . . it casts a humanising spell, transforming the women at its centre from mere naked flesh into something more like real flesh and blood.' Philippa Snow, author of It's Terrible the Things I Have To Do To Be Me'Pulsing and propulsive, Lovers XXX is a fever dream and love song.' Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege - but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism and mysterious ailments.More than 100 years after that deal was struck, Allie's mother Mary was diagnosed with the same incurable cancer, a disease that had also claimed her own mother's life. Determined to combat what she had come to consider the "Jell-O curse" and her looming mortality, Mary began obsessively researching her family's past, determined to understand the origins of her illness and the impact on her life of Jell-O and the traditional American values the company championed. Before she died in 2015, Mary began to send Allie boxes of her research and notes, in the hope that her daughter might write what she could not. JELL-O GIRLS is the liberation of that story.A gripping examination of the dark side of an iconic American product and a moving portrait of the women who lived in the shadow of its fractured fortune, JELL-O GIRLS is a family history, a feminist history and a story of motherhood, love and loss. In crystalline prose Rowbottom considers the roots of trauma not only in her own family but in the American psyche as well, ultimately weaving a story that is deeply personal, as well as deeply connected to the collective female experience.