Status: Published novel.
Rights available: World/All
Page count: 292
Categories: Fiction, Coming of Age,
Dramedy, Sex+Relationships
Inspired by a true story.
Logline: A sex addict looks for true love in NYC.
Synopsis: The Hobbyist is a coming-of-age story masked as a sex addict’s roller coaster. Based upon true events, the author authentically chronicles sexual awakening from a man’s perspective as he pulls back the curtain, and with staggering honesty, invites you into his private world of decadence. Not to be confused with a book on recovery, this raucous account is a cautionary tale of heartbreak and hilarity as a young man rises to manhood and into the throes of full-blown, sexual addiction in New York City.
Critics Quotes
KIRKUS REVIEWS: “Funny as hell…dialogue is sharp and the narrative witty…adult females may delight in discovering what certain men really think and feel about women, in and out of bed. An honest, often hilarious tale of a man who loves sex too much.”
WRITER’S DIGEST: “I’m impressed by a number of things about this book: the quality of its prose, the penetrating psychological insights into its protagonist, and the unflinching way it manages to depict its subject. Anna David’s blurb on the cover is quite apt: Like Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, The Hobbyist has a grim, cold, bleak worldview. I very much admire Shelly’s boldness in writing this book, as it couldn’t have been easy to be so revealing on the page. This is an extremely impressive read.”
San Francisco BOOK REVIEW: “Shelly is a talented writer, and his prose can soar poetic when he wants it to. Still, his descriptions of sexual encounters range from delicate and intimate to raunchy and completely absurd… Shelly lovingly details the sex that Dash has for the mostly right reasons, but he refuses to glorify the sex that exists as an emotional crutch and a burden. Addiction is never pretty, and this book shows that in a vivid manner. In The Hobbyist, Shelly has created a disturbing (and disturbingly realistic) tale of a young man falling into temptation.”
PLAYBOY RADIO: “I didn’t read the book, I absorbed it. It was so good, I loved every single bit of it… Visually stunning and so incredibly appealing – it’s hot! I wish I would have just been there to see it as a fly on the wall to witness the human behavior… Find this book because it’s amazing!”
NYT bestselling author, Anna David: “In painstakingly, painfully precise detail, Shelly’s The Hobbyist walks us through the mind and experiences of a young male sex addict roaming the streets of New York, with an inheritance to spare and seemingly every Asian Mamasan on speed dial. What Jerry Stahl did for junkies and Bret Easton Ellis provided for serial killing bankers, Shelly has done for sex addicts. Simply put, The Hobbyist is impossible to put down.”