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Olive just wants people to open up. As a radio host, she interviews writers about their works-in-progress, probing for insight; as a friend and a sister, she’s hungry for closeness. She has a habit of recording people without their knowledge, just to hear the world reflected back at her. Olive is approaching her mid-thirties, coddled by her mother and perpetually single, when she meets Theo. He’s a surgeon – he literally cuts people open, which fascinates her – and, with a quick wit and a charming gap between his two front teeth, he seems to adore her. Theo relishes her curious mind, upending everything she’s come to expect from men.

They fall for each other quickly, dizzyingly, but Olive can’t get enough. She struggles to comprehend where she stops and Theo begins. As their relationship intensifies, so does Olive’s resentment of the physical and emotional boundaries between them. So she tests those boundaries: first by recording their conversations, then by recording their sex. Next, on a night there’s no coming back from, she unzips his body and nestles between his organs while he sleeps. Once she starts, she can’t stop – and as she climbs inside Theo, Olive has some disturbing revelations about intimacy, trust, and her own long-repressed memories.

Funny, sexy, razor-sharp and deliciously unsettling, Open Wide pushes the boundaries of genre and it might just push you, too. This absurdist and devastatingly vulnerable novel is for anyone who craves an intimacy they can’t quite reach, taking our fear and craving for connection to new heights.

© Jessica Gross 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025