The Worst Kind of Want

Dark, seductive … Noirish and sexy, this provocative novel explores what it’s like to be a woman on the edge, and what happens when dreams are deferred for too long. - Esquire

A Book you have to read ASAP … Womanhood. Death. Sex. A risky flirtation with a teenage boy. In Jacobs’s latest novel, she weaves together desire and disaster as a burned-out 40-something throws herself into the nightlife of teenagers in the heat of the Italian summer. Sounds like … she predicted my future? - Cosmopolitan

An unconventional - and disastrous - love story, as death-steeped, sultry, and delicious as the ancient Italian cities in which it’s set - Lit Hub

Liska Jacobs’s work captivates in the present because it reflects the trauma of the past… Jacobs takes us on a wrenching journey into the catacombs - Alta

Jacobs’s intoxicating second novel is a love letter to Italy and an evocative study of grief and desire … Jacobs’s haunting portrait of one woman’s transformative and, ultimately, tragic summer will linger with readers. - Publishers Weekly

Jacobs sets her narrator on a dark psychological journey in sweltering, sun-bleached locales … Darkly compelling - Booklist

Liska Jacobs’s psychologically tense novel The Worst Kind of Want deftly explores matters of age and aging, of modernity and women, as seen through the lens of forty-something Cilla’s propulsive desires. In this sharply written feminist noir, Jacobs takes readers on a thrillingly doomed journey amid the simmering heat of an Italian landscape - a captivating portrayal of self and want.

This crispy biscotti of a novel is about a producer who goes to Italy, has a scandalous relationship, and decodes not just the meaning of life but also the meaning of death, sex, dance clubs, and emoji. You’ll feel indecent reading it in public - Vulture