Author Lior Torenberg's debut novel "Just Watch Me" voted Club Calvi's first book of 2026
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A new book that's been called "razor-sharp" and a "wild ride" is Club Calvi's first read of the year.
We asked you to select from our Top 3 FicPicks, and Lior Torenberg's debut novel "Just Watch Me," came out on top.
Torenberg said her book follows a woman who livestreams her life to raise money for the healthcare costs of her comatose sister.
"But as she does increasingly dangerous and spicy dares online to make money, she has to reckon with what her digital life ignores and what real redemption means for her," Torenberg said. "'Just Watch Me'... is about the joys of being watched and the terror of being truly seen."
Please join Club Calvi as it reads the book over the next several weeks.
You can read an excerpt from "Just Watch Me" and get the book below.
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
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"Just Watch Me" by Lior Torenberg
From the publisher: 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.
Lior Torenberg lives in New York.
"Just Watch Me" by Lior Torenberg (ThriftBooks) $22
Excerpt: "Just Watch Me" by Lior Torenberg
It's five in the morning and I'm a summer slug wrapped too tightly in my sheets. I shove them off and open my stream. Zero viewers. My LiveCast rank has dropped to 480,892. I catch up on the chats I missed, which are just inane enough to be interesting.
karnie_vibes: i once slept for an entire weekend
pklrik: no u didn't
karnie_vibes: yes i did!!!
karnie_vibes: i had the flu
karnie_vibes: every time i woke up i took nyquil and went back to sleep
Around eight thirty, my first viewer of the day joins: excelsior404. A string of texts come in from my mom, one after the other, wrapping around my finger and turning it purple.
How are you, Dell?
Let's talk when you have time Please don't ignore me
Don't make me worry about you too
I eat handfuls of granola and chase them down with a shot of Pepto Bismol to get ahead of the stomach pain, which never actually works. Then I head out to see a man about a check. I usually jump the turnstile at the subway station, but I'm feeling flush this morning. I swipe in ($2.90) and take the train across town. The ride is just long enough to let the nerves set in. The closer I get to Juice Body, the tetchier I feel, lymph nodes swollen underneath my armpits and neck.
Maybe Nik will have a change of heart and hire me back. More likely, I'll have to grovel. I'm not above that, at least I wasn't before I started streaming, but I can't imagine doing it now. I have a reputation to uphold, viewers to entertain. Or mademoiselle_dell does, at least. Eleven viewers join during my trip to Juice Body and my LiveCast rank is slightly higher than it was this morning, but I still have work to do to get back to where I left off last night.
...
Some new guy is working the register. Did Nik replace me already? New guy starts to say something, but I walk past him and into Nick's office. His face is already pink, but it reddens when he sees me. He raises an eyebrow.
"What are you doing here?" he asks.
"How was the Hamptons? How were the Hamptons?"
"Beautiful. It was a beautiful time with my family that I had to cut short because of you."
"That's why I wanted to come in and talk to you."
"Dell. You push me. You push me too far," he says. "I know you're going through a lot and I want to support you, but there is a limit."
"Is that guy my replacement?" I ask.
Nik shakes his head slowly. "That's Johnny. My nephew. He's worked here for the last four years. You worked with him. He was one of the people who trained you when you started."
"Johnny? The guy with the huge mole on his nose?"
"He got his mole removed a couple weeks ago."
"I didn't recognize him without it."
"This isn't how family acts. We don't forget each other when we get a mole removed."
"It won't happen again, I promise. If he gets another mole removed, I'll notice," I say. "Please, Nik. I love this job. I love working here."
"I'm done with this conversation," he says. "Thank you for coming to see me, but it was not necessary. No one has ever gotten as many chances as you, Dell. As I said on the phone, you're no longer a part of the Juice Body family."
"Right," I say. A pit yawns open in my gut and stays open. Free food. Very solid hourly pay. A semi-walkable commute from my apartment. And Nik's not a bad guy, either. He hired me, after all, when he had absolutely no reason to. And he's given me plenty of second, third, fourth chances. And now he's looking at me with his eyes glazed over and his thoughts elsewhere.
"That's it, then?" I ask. "You're just done?"
"That's it," he says. "I've learned my lesson with you. It's taken me time, but I've learned it. And I'm not going to be made a fool of again." I'm not hurt, I'm furious. I don't want my job back, I want to jump on his desk and curb stomp his computer. I want to chuck my feces at the wall like a monkey girl, skyrocket my ranking, and make f***-you money.
I can grovel, but it seems that mademoiselle_dell can't.
"I'll just ask one more time: Are you going to give me my paycheck or not?" I say.
"Do you know when my wife and I planned this trip? Over a year ago. We planned it over a year ago. A week in the Hamptons. Just a week away together. It's not too much to ask. But then I look at the security camera: You're throwing peanut butter at customers! The store is empty! So I leave my vacation and drive back and now I have to figure out who is taking your shifts so I can drive right back tonight and my wife won't divorce me again."
"It was almond butter."
"What?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Let's call it even, Dell."
"No," I say. "You owe me four hundred dollars."
"I don't owe you anything," he says. "You have no respect for me or the rest of the Juice Body family."
"You can't not pay people. Are you serious?" I say. "Are you actually f****** serious?"
He doesn't yell back. Doesn't curse. He just sits there.
"I've never been anything but kind to you, Dell. I've been patient. And you took advantage of all of it. I'm truly sorry about your sister, but that's just the way it is."
"If you're taking food out of my mouth then you're just giving me a reason to eat you," I growl and shut the door behind me. Johnny says hello from behind the register and I flip him the double bird.
Excerpted from JUST WATCH ME by Lior Torenberg.. Published January 2026 by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Copyright © 2026 by Lior Torenberg.