Cake Time

(Paperback)

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Winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Fiction Award.

A new Novel-in-Stories that New York Times bestselling author Jillian Lauren calls "a delicious indulgence."

Daring yet aimless, smart but slightly strange, Cake Time's young female protagonist keeps making slippery choices, sliding into the dangerous space where curiosity melds with fear and desires turn into dirty messes. In How Not to Have an Abortion, the teenaged narrator looks for a ride from the clinic between her AP exams. In Easy Target, the now-college-grad agrees to go to a swingers party with a handsome stranger. A decade later, in Glow, she is suddenly confronted by the disturbing and thrilling fact of her lover's secret daughter. Ultimately, this unflinching novel-in-stories grapples with urgent, timeless questions: why intelligent girls make terrible choices, where to negotiate a private self in an increasingly public world, and how to love madly without losing a sense of self.

Reviews

Cake Time is a delicious indulgence. Treat yourself to its dark, seductive intimacies and savor the gritty sugar of its unsentimental humor. Jillian Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, and Everything You Ever Wanted

Siel Jus Cake Time is sharply observed and wonderfully contemporary: these complex, flawed, and real characters live in our current world, with all its confusions and opportunity to connector disconnect. Its about the perils and pleasures of intimacy, and its heroine feels as alive as you and I. A compelling and unflinching debut. Edan Lepucki, author of California

Siel Jus Cake Time is an astonishing debut. Jus novel-in-stories is unsettling and fierce and full of loneliness, sadness, and humor. Her voice is so alive, and her candorparticularly about men and sexis keenly astute, intimate, and startling. The prose is precise and poetic, and Los Angeles vibrates on the page. Wry and heartfelt and uniquely defiant, Cake Time is like a hard slap I didnt expect or see coming. Victoria Patterson, author of The Little Brother and Drift

Siel Ju writes with refreshing candor about sexual appetite and the treacherous difficulty of finding love. There is cruelty in the search and tenderness and a lot of honest fumbling around. Cake Time is our timea provocative debut. Noy Holland, author of BIRD

Siel Jus stories are not boring because they are about not-boring things, like swingers parties and organic fashion company beauty pageants and high school sex and breakups and hook ups. Lots and lots of breakups and hook ups. I worried for Siel Ju reading about all these breakups and hook ups. Then I reminded myself these are fictions Siel Ju is telling us, and Siel Ju is fine. We are all fine, even after all these breakups and hook ups. Elizabeth Ellen, author of Fast Machine and Bridget Fonda

Siel Ju featured in

Author Bio

Siel is a writer in Los Angeles. Her novel-in-stories, Cake Time, is the winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Fiction Manuscript Award. Siel is also the author of two poetry chapbooks. Her stories and poems appear in ZYZZYVA, The Missouri Review (Poem of the Week), The Los Angeles Review, Denver Quarterly, and other places. Siel is the recipient of a residency from The Anderson Center at Tower View and Vermont Studio Center; she holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @sielju.