She’s a Lamb!
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Apr 8, 2025
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- $9.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A darkly comic suspense in the vein of All’s Well and Yellowface, She’s a Lamb! is an edgy and incisive novel that marches toward showtime with a growing unease about the dangers of magical thinking and the depths of delusion
Jessamyn St. Germain is meant to be a star. Not an actor who occasionally books yogurt commercials and certainly not a lowly usher at one of Vancouver’s smallest regional theaters. No, she is bound for greatness, and that’s why the part of Maria in the theater’s upcoming production of The Sound of Music is hers. Or it’s going to be.
Jessamyn may have been relegated to the position of childminder for the little brats playing the von Trapp children, but it’s so obvious she’s there for a different reason — the director wants her close to the role so when Samantha, the lead, inevitably fails, Jessamyn will be there to take her place in the spotlight.
This must be it. Because if it isn’t, well, then every skipped meal, every brutal rehearsal, every inch won against a man attempting to drag her down will have all been for nothing.
Sharp, relentless, and darkly funny, She’s a Lamb! is a cutting satire about the grotesque pall patriarchy casts over one woman’s delusional quest to achieve her dreams and the depths she will sink to for a chance at the life she’s convinced she deserves.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A woman sets her funny, ambitious, distressingly misguided sights on stardom in this darkly hilarious novel from Meredith Hambrock. Jessamyn is destined to star as Maria in a Vancouver production of The Sound of Music; she just knows it. So what if she didn’t actually land a role in the play? The director obviously sees her potential. All she has to do is secretly memorize the lines for Maria…and then make sure the actress playing her never takes the stage. But Jess’ delusions go far beyond taking on the completely unsolicited responsibilities of an understudy. As her determination spirals to psychopathic proportions, her status as a narrator goes from unreliable to completely unhinged. And yet, Hambrock manages to weave in some very real themes about the pressures women face in society—and the abuses they often endure from men—amid the increasing mayhem Jess instigates in the name of low-level regional theatre. She’s a Lamb will untether you from reality in the best way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Hambrock's wickedly funny tale (after Other People's Secrets), a theater usher deludes herself into thinking she can be a star. Jessamyn St. Germain, 26, an aspiring actor and singer who's floundered as an usher at a regional theater in Vancouver for three years, assumes she's a shoe-in for Maria in the company's production of The Sound of Music, but the part goes to her frenemy, Samantha Nguyen. Instead, Jess is offered a backstage babysitting gig, wrangling the actors playing the Von Trapp children. Her vocal coach, an unscrupulous woman who takes her money and fuels her irrational dreams, convinces her to take the job so she'll be ready to join the production if needed. As rehearsals get underway, Jess, impatient to show off her talent, pushes Samantha into the city's harbor. Samantha sustains only a minor injury, but as Jessamyn goes to greater lengths to get what she wants, the tabloid-esque plot turns deliciously lurid. Hambrock keeps the reader on edge via Jessamyn's unreliable narration (she describes the seemingly kind Samantha as the "king bitch" of the stage), and even manages to evoke sympathy for Jessamyn by exploring in flashbacks the roots of her "bottomless depths of wanting." It's a show-stopping performance.
