Jessica Knoll is the New York Times bestselling author of Bright Young Women, The Favorite Sister, and Luckiest Girl Alive--now a major motion picture from Netflix starring Mila Kunis. She has been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan and the articles editor at Self. She lives in New York City with her family.

"Knoll is back with a vengeance... This twisty and twisted story of college love, adult success, and the complex ways in which people's pasts are written into their futures is perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and other psychological thrillers where women's sociosexual desires are presented in prismatic, shifting ways." --Library Journal

"True to form, [Knoll] absolutely goes there in this novel, offering a nuanced and unapologetic portrait of an unconventional relationship without judgment. Puts the 'erotic' back in 'erotic thriller.'" --Kirkus

"A sexy new thriller." --New York Post

"Jessica Knoll has made a specialty of dark, compulsively readable stories about women trapped in other people's narratives. Helpless sharpens that obsession into a relationship thriller with teeth." --Oprah Daily, "31 Most Anticipated Books of 2026"

"Jessica Knoll is one of my favorite writers and Helpless is her at her best. A fearless, powerful and completely original thriller." --Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me and The First Time I Saw Him

"A dark, twisty and addictive read that you will struggle to put down." --Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of Don't Let Him In

"I will read anything Jessica Knoll writes - her voice is inimitable, propulsive, and utterly addictive." --Louise O'Neill, bestselling author of Only Ever Yours and Asking For It

"Slick, sexy and dripping in delicious suspense. This is Jessica Knoll at the very top of her game." --Katy Brent, bestselling author of How to Kill Men and Get Away With It

"If Jessica Knoll writes it, I'll read it. The pages of her books seem to crackle with electricity and she's an utterly fearless writer. Perhaps never more so than in HELPLESS, a dark, daring, sexy tension-fest with head-spinning twists, which roars Knoll's refusal to ever write the same book twice." --Catherine Ryan Howard, bestselling author of 56 Days

"Dark, twisty, and wildly addictive. Helpless is Jessica Knoll at her boldest and most unsettling." --Jeneva Rose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Marriage and The Perfect Divorce

"Few writers are able to capture human nature as well as Jessica Knoll. In Helpless, she crafts a razor-sharp thriller with a riveting cast of characters. Dark, daring and deliciously sexy, it takes an unflinching look at power and privilege, and the ways in which we efface ourselves for those in control." --Kia Abdullah, author of What Happens in the Dark

"Knoll is a master of ambitious, cool-headed heroines who know exactly how to package their pain. But in Helpless, she lets one of them get seriously hot and bothered... Unapologetically kinky and almost diabolically twisty, this thriller keeps making you rethink who is using whom, and why. Also: Your book club will need at least two meetings to unpack the ending." --Oprah Daily

Publisher: Scribner Book Company

Pub date: 2026-07-07

Length: 320 pages