The Default World – Naomi Kanakia

Years after fleeing San Francisco and getting sober, Jhanvi has made a life for herself working at a grocery co-op and saving for her surgeries. But when her friend (and sometimes more) Henry mentions that he and his techie festival-goer friends spent $100,000 to transform a warehouse basement into a sex dungeon, Jhanvi starts wondering if there’s a way to exploit these gullible idiots. She returns to San Francisco, hatching a plan to marry Henry for his company’s generous healthcare benefits.

Jhanvi enters a world of beautiful, decadent fire eaters and their lavish sex parties. As her pretensions to cynicism and control start to fade, she develops a Gatsbyesque attraction to these happy young people and their bold claims of unconditional love. But do any of her privileged new friends really like or accept her? Her financial needs expose the limits of a community built on limitless self-expression, and soon she has to choose between doing what’s right, and doing what’s right for her.

This darkly funny novel skewers privileged leftist millennial tech culture and asks whether “found family” is just another of the twenty-first century’s broken promises.

What others are saying:

“Both incisive and sincere, The Default World exposes the hidden transactional dynamics within progressive social circles via a quest for belonging, love, and security.” —Foreword Reviews, starred review

“A great setup… Readers will undoubtedly root for Jhanvi as she tries to navigate the complicated relationship dynamics she faces as well as her own feelings of rejection and dismissal by both of the groups she desperately wants to be a part of—the fire-eaters she’s infiltrated and the transgender community.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A darkly humorous story of excess.” —BookRiot