Number One Fan
by Meg Elison
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted October 28, 2026
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Meg Elison has written post-apocalyptic fiction (the Road to Nowhere trilogy), and my previous review (Foundling Fathers) was an alternate world scenario. She has also written a YA novel I have yet to read. Number One Fan is a Non-SF novel, a tense thriller of jealousy and obsession. Any SF/F elements within are only about books written by characters in the novel, plus there is talk of genre conventions the characters attend. You might see it described as horror, but nothing concerning supernatural beings or effects, just the cold, hard facts of a realistic kidnapping, incarceration, torture, and abuse. At the end a defense attorney argues there wasn't an actual rape, but that's sort of like someone arguing about what constitutes a lynching.
Elizabeth Grey writes and publishes as Eli Grey, and I assume that is pronounced like Ellie. She is several books into a very popular fantasy series, which has also been adapted into a blockbuster film, with a sequel in production. The books are about a magical, subterranean realm, along with elements similar to a police procedural. The seventh book had recently been published, and Eli is on a book-signing and interview tour. A private plane takes her to a small airport near her next event, and she had arranged for a rideshare. Shortly after the plane lands a car pulls up, which she assumes is her ride. She gets in, the driver knows her name, but doesn't offer his own identification, and she doesn't double check which driver she had booked. It is a hot day, they are in a desert area east of LA, so he is sure she is thirsty. He tells her there is a cold Gatorade in the door's cupholder, which she opens and drinks in several big gulps. The next thing she knows, she wakes up in what she is sure is a basement, in a thin nightgown, with one of her ankles shackled to a heavy metal bed frame. Before that, when she was still in the car, she had the nagging feeling that she knew the driver, but could not remember from where, or when.
Both Eli and her abductor had troubled childhoods, which we learn through the thoughts of each as they piece together the events that brought them to their current situation. Eli's father had left the family, and her mother fell into alcoholism. She had a younger brother, but he blamed Eli as much as his father or mother for the poor conditions they faced. They rarely spoke, but she would regularly send him a check to help him with expenses. One place that she always thought of as her escape from reality was a hidden closet in a basement where they lived just before her father left them. It was there she read her books, and also began writing her first stories. Now, as she is trapped in another basement, she uses the memory of that closet as her "mind palace" in order to escape her dire predicament. I won't detail the abuse she suffers, other than saying it was not pleasant to read. She does eventually remember the identity of her abductor, even though he had changed his appearance somewhat, plus they had never been close. He was another author, one who had won an award for his fan fiction, at the same convention where Eli won her first SuperNova award for her first novel. In a sense, this does come close to fantasy, since he has a muse who talks to him, telling him what he needed to do to win Eli over to his plan. His muse is the main character from her books, plus he tries to convince Eli she is that character, and that the magical realm is real.
Other plot points deal with the hazards of fame, the fickleness of fandom, and the toxic dangers of social media. It is not a pleasant read, and Eli is not necessarily a sympathetic character, but no one, for any reason, deserved what she suffered. And of course, the perpetrator of the crime is a white guy convinced the world is against him, hindering his progress in the writing world. It is not a completely original concept of course, with several recognizable tropes, but the execution is tight, tense, and brutal. Hard to recommend due to that brutality, but still, very well written.
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