Patricia Wants to Cuddle

The novel opens on Otters Island, Washington, where elderly innkeeper Margaret "Maggie" Davies discovers a mutilated sheep on her back deck. Its front limbs are missing and its face destroyed. Maggie calmly disposes of the carcass, noting that it has been a bad summer on the island. She is grieving her wife, Katherine (Kathy), who died of cancer the previous year. The placement of the sheep seems deliberate, a warning from something lurking in the island's forests.

The narrative shifts to CatchChat.com, a fan forum for The Catch, a reality dating show in which women compete for a bachelor's affections. A spoiler poster reveals that the Final Four contestants are headed to Otters Island for the penultimate week of filming. The bachelor is Jeremy Blackstone, co-founder of the photo-sharing app Glamstapix. His remaining contestants are Lilah-Mae Adams, a Christian influencer; Amanda Parker, a fashion vlogger from Los Angeles; Vanessa Voorhees, an auto show model from Denver; and Renee Irons, a Black HR professional from Tampa. Forum users note that three female hikers disappeared on the island in 1994, an unsolved case that devastated tourism.

The story follows these four women, along with the show's veteran producer Casey Collins and its host Dex Derickson, who has an alcohol addiction, as they travel to the island. Each woman has distinct motivations: Vanessa wants the career boost of winning; Lilah-Mae plans to leverage her screen time into a digital ministry; Amanda sees the show as a vehicle for her handbag business; and Renee, the most disillusioned, privately suspects she is bisexual and experiences recurring dark thoughts, including passive fantasies about the plane crashing. She has been sober for five years. On the ferry, Jeremy tells Renee he will never pick her but wants her at the finale as a decoy; she must give enthusiastic interviews and act heartbroken when eliminated. She reluctantly agrees.

Signs of danger accumulate immediately. On the ferry, Vanessa spots a shadowy figure along the island's cliffs. During the late-night drive to Maggie's bed-and-breakfast, cameraman Mike slams on the brakes after seeing a large figure on the road. The next morning, Amanda takes sunrise photos at the tree line and later discovers a dark, human-shaped silhouette in every frame, its arm bending between shots to confirm it is alive and watching. At the B&B, Maggie tells Renee about Kathy and casually suggests Renee might find a "him or her," implicitly acknowledging Renee's possible bisexuality.

Interspersed throughout the novel are blog entries from Abigail Choi, sister of Kate Choi, one of the three women who vanished in 1994. In 2004, Abigail moved to the island under a false identity to investigate her sister's disappearance. She repeatedly hiked Mount Resilience, the island's central peak, and grew increasingly drawn to its summit, where her entries suggest she encountered something extraordinary. Her communications became erratic and stopped. A friend published the blog posts as instructed, noting that Abigail's final email read: "Funny. She has a way of showing you what really matters" (156).

Also woven through the narrative are love letters from the 1970s between Kathy and Maggie, who fell in love as teenagers in Little Rock, Arkansas, and ran away together after graduation. Their letters reveal the tenderness and secrecy of their bond as a queer couple. A final letter, dated January 2, 2018, is written by Maggie to the deceased Katherine, referencing Kathy's devotion to Otters Island and to "Her," an unnamed being they spent their lives protecting.

The plot accelerates during a Date Night at the summit of Mount Resilience, where the contestants play Truth or Dare around a campfire. Vanessa dares Amanda to kiss someone other than Jeremy; Amanda chooses Renee. The kiss is deeply significant for Renee, who feels her desire for women finally acknowledged, but Amanda treats it as a joke. The game turns vicious: Vanessa reveals that Lilah-Mae secretly worked at Hooters throughout college, contradicting her pious image, and Lilah-Mae retaliates by revealing on camera that Vanessa had an abortion six months ago.

That night, a massive, hair-covered creature rips through the canvas door of Amanda's yurt. Amanda sees glowing yellow eyes, flaring nostrils, and breasts protruding from the creature's torso. Amanda tries to flee, but the creature grabs her and slams her head against the floor. White-noise machines in each yurt prevent anyone from hearing her screams.

Amanda's disappearance triggers catastrophic events. Casey drives down the mountain and finds Dex dead in a car wreck. Mike, who stowed away in the trunk, follows bloody footprints from Dex's body to a barrier, where a woman shoots him in the face. The shooter belongs to a group of local women that includes Maggie and Abigail Choi, who has been living on the island since her supposed disappearance. The women capture Casey, bind her hands, and drown her.

Vanessa and Lilah-Mae climb the stone observatory and share a rare moment of honesty at the top: Vanessa cries over the public exposure of her abortion, and Lilah-Mae apologizes. Their truce shatters when the creature scales the tower and pins Vanessa down. Lilah-Mae turns back and tackles the creature off Vanessa, but the beast grabs Lilah-Mae by the throat and hurls her from the tower. Vanessa escapes.

Meanwhile, Renee and Jeremy follow scraps of Amanda's pajamas into the forest. Jeremy admits he never wanted Renee on the show and hurls anti-gay slurs at her after inferring her attraction to Amanda. Renee discovers a cave containing a fire, wildflowers, and a pile of bones and old hiking gear: the remains of decades of victims, including the 1994 hikers. At the bottom of the pile lies Amanda's severed head. Renee returns to Jeremy and lies, saying she found nothing.

When screams erupt from the observatory, they run toward the clearing. Renee sees the creature holding Vanessa's severed legs, with Lilah-Mae's body impaled on a tree branch. Jeremy charges the beast with a jagged rock and gashes her arm, but she leaps onto him and beats him to death. Renee keeps her flashlight trained on Jeremy so the creature can see him, internally viewing him as an offering.

Afterward, Renee approaches the wounded Sasquatch, tears strips from her shirt, and bandages the gash on the creature's arm. Maggie arrives at dawn, unsurprised. She calls the creature Patricia, explaining that she and Kathy named her long ago. Patricia has lived on Otters Island for an unknown span of time and periodically needs companionship, though she expresses it through violence. A community of local women called the Protectors has safeguarded Patricia for generations. Renee strokes Patricia's fur alongside Maggie, feeling not horror but homecoming.

A final CatchChat.com thread reveals the Protectors' cover story: Dex's death is attributed to drunk driving, Mike is blamed for a murder-suicide involving Casey, and all four contestants and Jeremy are listed as missing.

An epilogue set in 2044 shows a young tourist buying a hat from an Otters Island shop cashier who bears a striking resemblance to Renee. The cashier denies being her but recommends a camping spot with a joke about "lady Bigfoot." Encrypted chat logs confirm the Protectors deliberately facilitated the show's arrival because Patricia needed company after a restless summer. A final exchange between Maggie and Renee, dated April 2020, shows Renee settling into life as a new Protector and expressing her hope that Patricia lives forever.