Exhilarating ... Pacey and rich, full of verve, drama and detail ... Ambitious; it reads as if it is trying to wrap its arms around the abundance of experience ... Does Soft Core come together? Sort of. The final third is rougher than the opening. Subplots peter out or climax abruptly. But the last pages offer a different and more satisfying kind of crescendo — open-ended, strange, joyfully loose.
Murkiness is one of the defining textures of the book, giving it an uncanny, almost ghostly feel. For a story about desire and longing, it is surprisingly spooky, full of stalkers, creeps and doubles ... A wonderful portrait of San Francisco ... If Soft Core does lack in resolution, the feeling you get on the final pages, when the book fades away like a fuzzy dream, makes it all A-OK.
While some elements don’t pay off as spectacularly as they could, the plot has suspenseful elements and a good sense of pace. Through her own expertise as a performer, Newell offers an intense and compelling character study.
