In this outrageous and deeply serious satire, two star indoor volleyball players juggle unspoken jealousies in their off-court romance ahead of their rival teams’ first rematch in a year
Six is 6′7″, scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, and barely checks her phone. Green is 6′1″, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. Together, they’re going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the men’s pro indoor volleyball league. Our hot girls with balls just thought playing with the boys would spare them some controversy . . . haha.
In between their rival teams’ away games across the globe, Six and Green stay connected on SpaceTime and selflessly broadcast their romance to fans on their weekly Instagraph live show. After a long season, they’ll finally reunite for the championship tournament, the first to accommodate in-person fans since the COVIS pandemic struck the world a year ago. Just as they enter an airtight bro bubble of the world’s best, they’re faced with a crisis that demands an indisputably humiliating task: make a public statement online.
Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her team’s seniority politics? Can they both take a time-out to just grieve? Their rabid fans and horny haters await their next move. We’re all just desperate for a whiff of the sweaty feminine energy that makes that ball thwack with such spectacular force.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Six is 6′7″, scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, and barely checks her phone. Green is 6′1″, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. Together, they’re going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the men’s pro indoor volleyball league. Our hot girls with balls just thought playing with the boys would spare them some controversy . . . haha.
In between their rival teams’ away games across the globe, Six and Green stay connected on SpaceTime and selflessly broadcast their romance to fans on their weekly Instagraph live show. After a long season, they’ll finally reunite for the championship tournament, the first to accommodate in-person fans since the COVIS pandemic struck the world a year ago. Just as they enter an airtight bro bubble of the world’s best, they’re faced with a crisis that demands an indisputably humiliating task: make a public statement online.
Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her team’s seniority politics? Can they both take a time-out to just grieve? Their rabid fans and horny haters await their next move. We’re all just desperate for a whiff of the sweaty feminine energy that makes that ball thwack with such spectacular force.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Hot Girls with Balls is a thrillingly cheeky, tenderly irreverent, seriously funny novel, anchored by a loving duo I couldn't stop rooting for and featuring a very spicy send-up of the comments section. No one is spared from Benedict Nguy?n's dishy satire, but with writing this alive, we wouldn't want it any other way.'" - Chantal V Johnson
"Following its heroines as they navigate their relationship on and off the volleyball court and online, alongside a relentless comments section full of lovers and haters, I was rooting for Six and Green every step of the way. Sharp and stylish, Hot Girls with Balls is pitch-perfect satire with a generous heart." - Lisa Ko
"Benedict Nguyen's Hot Girls with Balls is literal genius: nailbiter sports fiction meets Kathy Acker on EMDR meets our shiny screentime moment, with all the desire & denial & overwhelm & the queer Asian trans girls at the heart of everything that matters. I love this book! It's so observant & emotionally intelligent & moving & shot through with clarity. SO SO GOOD! & I like volleyball now!" - Andrea Lawlor
"Benedict Nguyen's Hot Girls with Balls is so fun, so adrenalized, as grippy as Pilates socks, that it seems a little unfair that it's also smart as hell. It's a novel that's utterly contemporary, vividly specific, funny, and moving. Nguy?n has given us a kinetic, deeply pleasurable satire that I'll be pressing into many hands, this volleyball season and after." - Sarah Thankam Mathews
"Nguyen serves up sharp, hilarious satire about trans celebrity and the limits and costs of trying to change a world from within it. I've never read such an unflinching celebration of the weird, violent poetry of online trans discourse, and was here for Six and Green's journey - via fierce tournament play, lesbian processing, brand deals and soaring follower counts - somehow to rise above it." - Jeanne Thornton
"Hot Girls with Balls is an antic drama of fame, envy, and vanity, equal parts kinetic and erotic, and intensely self-aware - like if Challengers included the online discourse about Challengers. More than anything else, it's about the perilous double-bind of visibility: how you need it to have your existence acknowledged, and how it constrains and deforms that same existence. All the ills of the internet are here: the performed vulnerability, the eternal servitude to the peanut gallery, that paranoid feeling of all humanity constantly looking over your shoulder - including a couple of real freaks. Like any good volleyball player, Benedict Nguy?n can truly serve, and knows just when to go in for the kill." - Tony Tulathimutte
"Following its heroines as they navigate their relationship on and off the volleyball court and online, alongside a relentless comments section full of lovers and haters, I was rooting for Six and Green every step of the way. Sharp and stylish, Hot Girls with Balls is pitch-perfect satire with a generous heart." - Lisa Ko
"Benedict Nguyen's Hot Girls with Balls is literal genius: nailbiter sports fiction meets Kathy Acker on EMDR meets our shiny screentime moment, with all the desire & denial & overwhelm & the queer Asian trans girls at the heart of everything that matters. I love this book! It's so observant & emotionally intelligent & moving & shot through with clarity. SO SO GOOD! & I like volleyball now!" - Andrea Lawlor
"Benedict Nguyen's Hot Girls with Balls is so fun, so adrenalized, as grippy as Pilates socks, that it seems a little unfair that it's also smart as hell. It's a novel that's utterly contemporary, vividly specific, funny, and moving. Nguy?n has given us a kinetic, deeply pleasurable satire that I'll be pressing into many hands, this volleyball season and after." - Sarah Thankam Mathews
"Nguyen serves up sharp, hilarious satire about trans celebrity and the limits and costs of trying to change a world from within it. I've never read such an unflinching celebration of the weird, violent poetry of online trans discourse, and was here for Six and Green's journey - via fierce tournament play, lesbian processing, brand deals and soaring follower counts - somehow to rise above it." - Jeanne Thornton
"Hot Girls with Balls is an antic drama of fame, envy, and vanity, equal parts kinetic and erotic, and intensely self-aware - like if Challengers included the online discourse about Challengers. More than anything else, it's about the perilous double-bind of visibility: how you need it to have your existence acknowledged, and how it constrains and deforms that same existence. All the ills of the internet are here: the performed vulnerability, the eternal servitude to the peanut gallery, that paranoid feeling of all humanity constantly looking over your shoulder - including a couple of real freaks. Like any good volleyball player, Benedict Nguy?n can truly serve, and knows just when to go in for the kill." - Tony Tulathimutte
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