The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Hot Girls with Balls, Benedict Nguyen

Hot Girls with Balls

Benedict Nguyen

Reader Score

66%

66% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 3 reviews on

BookMarks logo
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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Catapult
  • Publish Date: Jul 1st, 2025
  • Pages: 288
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.30in - 5.70in - 1.10in - 1.00lb
  • EAN: 9781646222476
  • Categories: LGBTQ+ - TransgenderSportsAsian American & Pacific Islander

About the Author

BENEDICT NGUYỄN is a dancer and gym buff. Between pistol squats and muscle-ups, she works as a creative producer in live performance. She's written for The Baffler, BOMB, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The Brooklyn Rail, The Margins, and other publications. In 2022, she published nasty notes, a redacted email zine on freelance labor. Hot Girls with Balls is her first novel.

Critics’ reviews

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 Nguyễn's dishy satire, but with writing this alive, we wouldn't want it any other way." --Chantal V. Johnson, author of Post-Traumatic

"I rarely come across a novel with the style, humor, and vitality of Hot Girls with Balls. It's a rigorous and gutting satire, a courageous social fantasy, a realistic portrait of the hell that is humanity, a deeply felt book about love and competition. Benedict Nguyễn is a star. I love the way she sees the world." --Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

"Hot Girls with Balls is a cheeky and daring presentation of women defining themselves for the love of the game. Nguyễn moves blithely through Six and Green's ability to balance their own bodily autonomy, the transphobic/fetish gaze, and the love and envy that can exist for these women creating themselves in the gender segregationist world of sports. Dear reader, consider yourself immersed in the world that is Hot Girls with Balls!" --Jasmine Gibson, author of A Beauty Has Come

"Nguyễn 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, author of Summer Fun and A/S/L