200 Monas

Saenz’s darkly funny debut finds a college senior scrambling to pay her late mother’s debt to a drug dealer. Arvy Keening is still living at at her free-spirited mother’s Texas home months after the funeral when she discovers a baggie of illicit pills. Then a large woman and an armed man show up at her door and inform her that the pills are Mona, a rare drug that stimulates mind-blowing orgasms for women. The pair demands that Arvy cover the $10K they expected from her mother’s sale of the drugs, or they’ll kill her. In a panic, she turns to her classmates’ attractive drug dealer Wolf, who agrees to help off-load the pills. She also tests one of the Monas during an exam, which triggers vivid sexual fantasies involving Wolf and others that lead to a wild orgasm. Though a handful of women are happy to find solo satisfaction from the pills, Arvy still has too many left in the bag as the 36-hour deadline looms. Arvy and Wolf’s will-they-or-won’t-they subplot drags on a bit too long, but Saenz’s depiction of the erotic elements are delightfully over-the-top (Arvy’s Mona dose ends with her emitting the “breathy cackle of a madwoman”), and the quest narrative builds to a satisfying reckoning with the complicated legacy of Arvy’s mother. There’s a beating heart at the center of this titillating story. Agent: Jessica Spitz, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)