While it feels like we're sharing absolutely everything on the internet these days, there's certain pieces that completely change up your idea of it all. Lior Torenberg's debut absolutely makes you question it all and how far we're willing to go for ourselves, a couple of bucks, and also the ones we love. Part wake-up call, part introspection, Torenberg creates a one-of-a-kind debut that you're absolutely devour and you're 100 percent gonna want to take a look at it before it becomes the ultimate it-girl book of the year.
Cosmopolitan has an exclusive look at Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg, which is set to be released on January 20, 2026. The novel follows Dell Danvers as she tries to raise money by deciding to livestream her life for seven days straight. Hoping to save her sister who needs private life support, Dell allows strangers to see into her every day life in the hopes that they donate money to the cause. But just how far is she willing to go for some extra cash? Here's some more info from our friends at Avid Reader Press:
Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this bold debut about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister—a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption.
Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plants to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy.
Dell is her stream’s dungeon master, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes and her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost to the hottest pepper on earth: the Carolina Reaper. Dell is finally good at something—but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.
Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestream, Just Watch Me careens through a week in the life of this misguided striver with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both a razor-sharp tragicomedy about the internet economy and a surreptitiously moving tale about the desire to be watched, and the terror of being seen.
And yes, you're going to want to witness every second of Dell's livestream. In fact, you can get a special sneak peek below with an exclusive excerpt. Just make sure to pre-order Just Watch Me before tuning in!
An Excerpt From Just Watch Me
By Lior Torenberg
Juice Body’s hours are seven in the morning until eight o’clock at night, wide enough to accommodate the liquefied produce needs of most commuters. It’s Wednesday and if this week’s schedule is the same as last week’s, Krishell will be working the register. I speedwalk past the tourists and deke around a group of schoolchildren on a field trip. Mini yellow crossing-guard jackets to make sure they don’t get lost in the shuffle, a battalion of little people holding on to the same teacher-fed rope. It’s only been a couple days since I visited this old castle, with its shimmery mural, vaulted stone, but it feels much longer. Marble floors so shiny you can nearly see yourself in them. It feels calm, despite the hubbub.
I hold my phone out in front of me as I navigate through the station, taking in the mess of bodies. The line at Juice Body is long. Around this time of day, it’s not just commuters who grace the halls of Grand Central, there are also the local midtownies out for an early lunch or late breakfast, perusing the overpriced food market in the building’s basement or grabbing a bagel with schmear at one of the fast casual joints on the ground level. The brand of human that gets a detox juice for a meal is a special one. You can intuit the hunger in their hands, the way they shove them in their pockets as they wait in line, grab their premade juice from the fridge with a white-knuckled fist and latch on to the bottle with unctuous urgency. I queue up behind these quivering hungers, fifth in line. And there’s Krishell, flitting behind the counter, her hair held back by a very thick, very neon pink headband.
My stomach doesn’t hurt yet. That’s a good sign. A great one. Maybe today is a very special day.
When I’m third in line, I lean over and wave to get Krishell’s attention. She’s surprised to see me. I wonder if Nik is here. If Johnny is in I’ll ask him about his mole removal. If it hurt. If they gave him his mole to keep afterward, in a little dime bag.
There’s a new limited edition menu item called “BIG YE5 ENERGY” and I’m relieved that I don’t have to memorize its contents. Plant-based collagen, mango, strawberry, broccoli, pitaya, flax fiber, stevia, almond milk.
Broccoli. Really.
It’s a collaboration with Korean pop band YE5. I’ve never heard of them. Apparently they’ve sold out Madison Square Garden for an upcoming concert. New dates added. Buy your tickets with promo code “YE5JUICE.”
“Anyone here a YE5 fan?” I ask my viewers. I have one headphone in and I’m holding my phone low, with a sublime view of my underchin.
chickenleggy: YES OMG
jackofnotrades1: my cousin is korean
jackofnotrades1: he sent me a link to a YE5 song last week ^___^
chickenleggy: COOL
jackofnotrades1: it was just ok
kirk_equivalent: r u korean
jackofnotrades1: no but my cousin is
kirk_equivalent: r u adopted
jackofnotrades1: no but my cousin is
jimpix: my cousin is in jail
“Not that I care, but these drinks aren’t even healthy,” I say to my viewers. The woman in front of me turns around and narrows her eyes. “They have so much sugar in them. Nut butters. Yogurt. Fruit. Sure, they’re high in protein and have all these random macronutrients in them for you to pee out, but at the end of the day they’re the same calories as two slices of pizza and enough sugar as a pint of ice cream.”
The woman goes up to order her dandelion and celery detox juice ($13) and I step up to the register after her, leaning my elbows on the counter conspiratorially.
“Hey, champ,” I say.
“Hey, Dell,” Krishell says. “What can I get you?”
“Seems like you’re busy today,” I say. I turn around and lean against the register, giving an optical pat down to the line that’s formed behind me, eight strong and buzzing with agitation.
“Yeah,” she says. “You know how it is. But it goes pretty quick at lunch.”
“How are you doing? Has Nik replaced me yet?”
“No. It’s like no one wants to work these days,” Krishell says.
“Do you really believe that?” I ask.
“No.” She sighs.
I laugh, which startles Krishell. “Is mommy dearest here?”
“She— He stepped out.”
“That scrooge never gave me my last paycheck, did you know that?” She shrugs. “You left the store open with no one in it. That’s, like, illegal.”
“It’s not even remotely illegal. There is literally no law about that. Whatever. I don’t have time. I’m kind of also at work right now so I wanted to grab a quick power lunch.” I waggle my phone in the air. “Want to say hi to my viewers?”
“Oh.” She squints at my phone and gives a mechanical wave. “That’s cool.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” she says, like she means the opposite. The line behind me is thrumming with desire, keen for kale.
“When you started working here, what T-shirt size did you ask Nik for?”
“What?”
“A small? Medium? Large?”
“I asked for a medium.”
“And what size did he give you?”
“I don’t remember. A small.”
“Same. I had to go to the supply room and steal a couple medium shirts. It helps with tips or whatever, I get it, but the word ‘Juicy’ on the back of the shirt in big bubble letters always mega creeped me out.”
“What’s your point?” she says, voice neutral. She’s not annoyed, not even listening. Her attention is on the nine, ten people in line behind me.
“The world is gross. And most work is inherently demeaning. Even at a place like this where everyone is nice and the pay is solid. That’s my point. Listen, this streaming thing has been good, really good. I’m making more in an hour than I used to in an entire shift. If you ever want to leave this place, leave the ‘Juice Body family,’ let me know. I can help you out.”
She shifts from foot to foot, staring at a spot between my eyes. That bovine neutrality, it gets to me, makes my fingers itch. If there were a tip jar on the counter, I’d swipe it. But all the tips are given electronically now, and there’s nothing in arm’s reach worth taking. Plastic cups, napkins, biodegradable straws.
“I’ll have a BIG YE5 ENERGY smoothie,” I say. “Seems like you have a lot of people to take care of, and I don’t want to get you in trouble for socializing.” I point to the security camera near the entrance of the store, glaring down at us. “You never know when mother is watching.”
Krishell nods with relief and gets to work. I watch her shove a scoop of white powder into the blender, pink stuff, yellow stuff, green stuff. More white mystery powder. A hefty glug of almond milk. There tends to be leftover smoothie with these things. Measuring out ingredients is an art. Usually the smoothie-maker inherits the overflow and sets it aside for a snack, but Krishell fills up one and a quarter cups for me and hands them both over. She could get in trouble for that. I’m marginally impressed by her chutzpah.
“Thanks,” I say.
“I’m doing a keto thing before Burning Man,” she says. “No sugar.”
She rings me up and I even add a dollar tip ($17.75).
“Nik’s not here, then?” I ask. “I’m going to leave a note on his desk.”
“Wait,” she says as I start walking past the register toward his office. “Dell.”
But she doesn’t follow me. She can’t. There are too many people in line. Nik’s door is unlocked, like it always is, and I close it behind me with a smooth hush.
“Y’all,” I say to my viewers. “I’m in my boss’s office. The one who fired me without giving me my final paycheck. Thoughts?”
racre001: steal something
“Like what?” I ask, my brain buzzing. Nik could be back any minute. In fact, Krishell has probably texted him to let him know that I’m here. I could spill my smoothie on his computer. I could uproot his dying mandarin tree and smear its humid dirt on the walls. I could look for cash and pay myself out for my shifts last week, steal some allowance.
excelsior404: malicious compliance
excelsior404: he got mad at you for not locking up
excelsior404: so take his keys and lock him out of his office
“Maybe.”
racre001: let me see
I turn the camera around so my viewers can see what I’m seeing. Then I sit at Nik’s desk and open drawers. Pencils, pens, rubber bands, a calculator. “No sex toys. No hand gun. No bud,” I say. “Yawn.”
cindyrella: write ur name in sharpie under his desk
pklrik: ive done that
“Lame. So lame it hurts.”
pklrik: poop on his desk
racre001: steal his wallet
I cross my legs and swivel in a circle in Nik’s chair. He has a landline, a desktop computer, a framed business school diploma on the wall. I could change the voicemail on his desk phone to something ridiculous, like the song “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic. I could send an email to the staff telling them they’re all fired, that he’s decided to close the store and pursue his real lifelong passion: ghost hunting.
I jolt to attention and open the internet on his computer, navigate to Juice Body’s social media account. He had me go to his office and post from the Juice Body account a few times, mostly about changes to store hours, so I know his computer password (Juice123!) and his social media account password (Juice123!). I write out a message, publish it, and head out of the store without saying a word to Krishell, a smoothie in each hand and my viewers in my back pocket, complicit as ever.
We’re putting the BODY in Juice BODY for #PRIDE!! Bottoms get a free Smooth Move Detox juice for the entire month of JUNE!!
My viewers adore me. I’ve never received so much positive reinforcement in my entire life for being an asshole. Fizzing with adrenaline, I chug the bonus smoothie and make quick work of the full cup. I like this expensive crap, it’s a fatal flaw of mine. In terms of digestion, a liquid lunch goes down easier, meaning less stomach pain on the other side of things than the roughage of plants, the gassy sugars in legumes. This particular concoction is a shade of pink that reminds me of Pepto Bismol. A salubrious pink hue found absolutely nowhere in nature. Is there anything more beautiful?
“Brain freeze,” I say. This is lunch today: chugging down a hot pink smoothie in a minute and a half while a homeless man masturbates a few feet from me.
jackofnotrades1: i hate that
wintrbrry: i never get brain freeze
anomalous_donkey: >:D
anomalous_donkey: angry brain emoji
excelsior404: press your tongue against the roof of your mouth
“Don’t tell me what to do with my tongue,” I say. This fucking guy. I close my eyes until the brain freeze goes away, and then take another hefty slurp. Maybe the cold will shock the seed in my brain, stunt its growth. Plants need a warm, wet environment to flourish, so I need to make my body as inhospitable as possible. That shouldn’t be too hard.
Almost noon. So much time left in the day, so little time left in the day. I feel like I just woke up and now the hour hand is tick-tick-tocking toward five o’clock when I’ll be providing this evening’s entertainment. That stunt I just pulled seemed to bring in some word-of-mouth referrals. Conversations in the metaverse. Or maybe the LiveCast algorithm deigning to lift me up, place me higher in the rankings. An algorithm that seeks out people like me: hungry, wretched, raising money for a good cause.
Viewers have been trickling in since the morning: one, ten, twenty, forty. I’m hoping for sixty by the time I do my habanero stream later. I think we can get there. Sixty viewers, an average of five dollars each . . . we can definitely get there.
“Come, my little bees. Swarm to me.”
jackdaw2000: bzz bzz bzz
“What should we do today?”
anomalous_donkey: visit daisy
“You’re obsessed. Everyone is obsessed.”
cindyrella: ooooooooo
redtimepolice: i want to meet daisy
jackdaw2000: what if she woke up from her coma on camera
cindyrella: that would be amazing OMG
“I’m going to visit eventually. It’s going to happen. Just don’t bug me about it. You all sound like my mom.”
I walk home and have instant coffee and a slice of bread. My mouth is dry and I have a hard time swallowing the bread. I shove it down my esophagus with over-hot coffee. The stomach pain hits soon after, stony and bitter. I need to get on health insurance. Get one of those jobs that takes pay out of your own salary to give you benefits that you still have to pay out of pocket for. According to the internet, my self-diagnosed ulcer is treatable with antibiotics and something called a proton pump inhibitor, neither of which I can get at the drugstore. Is there a black market for antibiotics? Would one of my viewers ship me some? I know that low-cost health insurance is out there, I’m just not sure how to get on it and I fear my network would be full of perverts with malpractice suits anyway.
I have a little less than seven hundred dollars in my LiveCast account and a little more than that in my bank account. Rent is due in four days. I can make rent and bills on time. But the very idea of fourteen thousand dollars for Daisy’s life support was ill-conceived, impossible, cruel to everyone involved. A crackpot plan uttered by my one selfish remaining brain cell. I’d have to win the Carolina Reaper World Record Competition for that kind of money.
***
There are fifty-seven people in my stream, a pleasing number to humiliate myself in front of. As I’ve always said: if anyone is going to exploit me, it’s me. Five hundred dollars for putting a habanero in my vagina. If I can get to sixty viewers, and they all give me between one and ten bucks, I could make a thousand dollars today. The number is insane. Both feasible and insane. Insane in its feasibility.
Lee isn’t here, thankfully. I checked and double-checked a trillion times. The thought of Lee watching me do this makes me want to bury myself alive. They’ve met mademoiselle_dell, fine. But they don’t need to get up close and personal with her. I never should have told them about my stream to begin with.
“Ladies and lads and everyone in between,” I say. “The time is nigh.”
crabbybob: nigh
kirk_equivalent: neigh
jimpix: woof
“I see some old friends and new enemies. If this is your first time in my stream, let me catch you up: This is a donate-a-thon. We’re raising fourteen thousand dollars to put my little sister on private life support for a week. And I’m sorry to say we’re doing a horrendous job. It’s day three and we’ve raised less than a thousand dollars. Maybe we can turn that all around today, what do you think? Our generous benefactor excelsior404 has pledged five hundred dollars if I put a pepper in my vagina. My one request is: No perverts, no loiterers, no solicitors. If you’re here, you’re pledging to donate no less than five dollars, or you will be blocked.”
chillnessa: vamooooos!
barbistani: i pledge $4
barbistani: jk jk jk jk jk
A handful of people drop off now that I’ve set the ante, but fewer than I expected. Four or five. “Now, I’m a simple girl, when it comes right down to it. Not to kink shame, there’s just nothing sexual about this for me, and so I’m asking the same of you. This isn’t Cinemax, this is Fear Factor.”
kirk_equivalent: its kind of hot though
chickenleggy: lol pun
I get the habanero from my bag and hold it up to the camera, placing my palm behind it to help the lens focus. Baby grenade, gnarled and precious. “I guess I’m lucky habaneros are pretty small, and your kink isn’t something like pineapples, excelsior404, or eggplants.”
redtimepolice: what if teh habanero explodes
redtimepolice: or gets stuck
“If it gets stuck? I don’t know,” I say. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Though the idea of having pepper seeds stuck in opposite ends of me has a sort of sick humor to it. Would I ask Lee to help me get it out? Go to the ER? I’d rather eat this habanero than stick it up myself right now. The sweaty adrenaline of a pepper high, the accompanying tunnel vision that blocks out all other thoughts and forces me to be present. But five hundred dollars is five hundred dollars. I stand and do a lap around my apartment, as big of a lap as I can manage within my meager square footage. Then I open one of my desk drawers and take out a condom. I have a handful of these rainbow foil–covered condoms from last year’s Pride, when they were strewn off a parade float like so much angular confetti. I open the condom and slide the habanero inside, then tie a knot at the end and wiggle it around for the camera. “There. Stuck proof.”
barbistani: lmfao
kirk_equivalent: thats konky
barbistani: protection is lame
kirk_equivalent: *kinky
pklrik: ^^^ LAME
I stand and angle the camera up so only the top half of my body is visible. The condom is wet, lubricated in my hand, the habanero inside like a deformed embryo that I’m about to suck back inside myself. I don’t have to do this. No one is holding a gun to my head. But I’m going to. I can’t let my viewers down as they pack the room with their non-bodies. I show the habanero to the camera one more time, little red nub of a thing, potent and firm, before reaching into my pants. I feel a slight pressure and give as I insert it inside myself, making sure that part of the condom remains outside of my body. The feeling is not entirely unpleasant. I hold my empty hands up to the camera.
“Ta-da.”
People go off in the chat, encouraging me, exclaiming their support and fealty and unconditional love. It wasn’t decided how long the habanero had to be inside of me, but it would feel like cheating to take it out right away. I sit down slowly, feeling the pepper shift and settle with a slight twinge of discomfort. If I wiggle in my seat in a certain way, it even feels good. “Who’s going to write this piece for Cosmo? ‘Ten Tips to Spice Up Your Sex Life.’”
I wipe my fingers on my shirt and catch up on the chats, which are going off. Everyone has something to say, most of it congratulatory, in awe of my bravery, my fearlessness. They’re saying that I’m a vibe. Clap emojis abound, and the money starts coming in.
crabbybob has donated $10
jackdaw2000 has donated $5
pklrik has donated $8
“Chillnessa? Wintrbrry? I see some stragglers in my viewer list who haven’t coughed it up yet. Don’t mess with me here. I’m talking real, gold-backed United States dollars.”
chillnessa has donated $6
barbistani: idt USD is backed by gold anymore
cindyrella has donated $10
jackofnotrades1 has donated $5
karnie_vibes has donated $10
karnie_vibes: hi from vancouver
I love the sound of money coming in. I close my eyes and listen to it. With nearly sixty viewers, it lasts a while, like the scattered, buttery sounds of popcorn in the microwave. Nothing, and then a cacophonic concentration of dings, before they get fewer and further apart.
“Wintrbrry? Going once? Going twice?”
jackdaw2000: maybe he’s in the bathroom
“Don’t care. Too late.” High on cash, I press the “Block” button and wintrbrry disappears from my viewer list. “Well,” I say. “I thought that I was the star of the show, but it seems like our generous benefactor is trying to stir up the suspense.”
excelsior404: yo
barbistani: ......
trutherdare: ...
jackofnotrades1: ...............
excelsior404 has donated $200
“What?” I say. “Are you fucking kidding?” I yank the habanero out of me and wave it in front of the camera before throwing it in the unlined trash bin under my desk. It misses and hits the wall hard before dropping to the floor. “We said five hundred dollars. You said five hundred dollars.”
excelsior404: you cheated
chickenleggy: BLOCK HIM
jackofnotrades1: off with his head
excelsior404: she cheated
excelsior404: she didnt show it
excelsior404: i could only see her upper body
excelsior404: we don’t even know if she did it
excelsior404: she could be a liar
excelsior404: she could be lying to all of us
I grip my desk until I can see the whites of my knuckles. “What do you think this is, a sleight-of-hand show? You think I’m some kind of magician? Who the fuck are you to call me a liar?”
barbistani: idt she cheated
crabbybob: i could tell she did it
crabbybob: her face twitched
“Fuck you, my face did not twitch.”
excelsior404: it doesn’t matter. the point is we don’t know for sure
excelsior404: so $200
excelsior404: its generous
“You are an inch from being blocked, excelsior404. Blocked within an inch of your pathetic life.”
excelsior404: ill dm u
excelsior404 has signed off
I want to shut off my stream and throw my laptop out the window, throw my plants out the window, throw myself out the window. But I don’t have a window, so instead I get up and shuffle to the McDonald’s at the end of the block, the one where the bathroom door perpetually has a fake “Out of Order” sign on it. My stomach is pulsating disagreeably, but I can still stand up straight, so I’m fine on the Dell pain scale. I order a Sausage McMuffin ($1.19) and hashbrowns ($1.09) from the dollar menu and a small caramel frappe ($2.39) because I crave sugar when I’m angry. I stand by the trash can and eat, grease staining my hands and face. In seconds I’m done, and my hands are empty, and my brain feels saggy and pendulous with salt. I use the end of a straw to dig into my left ear, trying to remove the budding sprout. I give up and drag myself back up the block to my apartment. The last place I want to be right now.
Two hundred dollars is a lot. I know that. And with my other viewers, I made another hundred or so. Nothing to scoff at. But he humiliated me, backing out like that at the last second. This is my dungeon, and if anyone’s going to be a piece of shit, it’s me.
I open Juice Body’s social media. My post is gone. I try to log in to Juice Body’s account, but the password has been changed. No text or calls from mother dearest, though I do have an email. It reads: If you ever come into my store again I will call the police and have you sent to jail
I type back a response, my fast-food fingers dirtying up the screen:
Directly to jail?
Do not pass go? do not collect $200? How about $400?
I’m definitely not getting my paycheck now.
Somehow, without realizing it, I broke 300,000 today. Sometime during my habanero stream, my ranking jumped to 297,777. A sleek and tolerable number. My daily dare is over and there are thirty or so people hanging out in my stream. I transfer it to my phone and swoop my camera across my plants, their many tentacled, entangled limbs reaching all the way up to the ceiling to form a queer canopy, a fecund jungle. It seems like the more I ignore these plants, the bigger they get, the more muscular. Some leaves are as broad as my face and serrated, war-hungry, their musty dirt-smell clogging my nostrils.
I water the plant with the thick, bright green leaves last. Pretty thing but vengeful. Her name is crown of thorns, or Christ plant. Street value up to forty dollars if I play my cards right. I approach gingerly and try to water her from afar, but her too-soft leaves find me, as do the thorns beneath them. I pull my hand back and examine my palm, a pearl of blood emerging slowly from the shallow channel of my life line. And now she seems to lean, sweep her leaves toward me for an embrace. I put the watering can down and step back. Copper. Saliva.
Angry. They all are. Because they’ve been listening to my thoughts through the seed in my brain, and they know what I’ve done, what I’m up to. I need to sell them before they can organize their squirming undergrowth, razor leaves held against my throat in my sleep.
“That’s it,” I say. The condom-wrapped habanero is still on the floor beneath my desk, and my mom’s comments about Daisy this morning still linger and take up space, pressing out against the walls. “Tomorrow, I’m getting rid of all of you.”
JUST WATCH ME: A Novel by Lior Torenberg. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted by permission of Avid Reader Press, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Just Watch Me, by Lior Torenberg will be released on January 20, 2026 from Avid Reader Press. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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