Retail Therapy is a raucous and darkly funny meditation on consumerism, survival, and self-worth in an era of economic decline. Through biting dialogue and immersive detail, Jess Cole crafts a vivid portrait of working life on the crumbling high street—where ambition collides with corporate indifference, and identity is both a performance and a commodity.

Set in the basement of a fading department store, the novel follows the HOTshop GIRLS as they navigate shifting sales tactics, impossible targets, and the slow erosion of their own aspirations. Between stockroom politics, relentless corporate oversight, and the absurd logic of retail, they carve out moments of wit, camaraderie, and fleeting resistance against a system designed to wear them down.

Themes of class, power, and precarity thread through the novel, as Cole exposes the quiet desperation beneath the surface of everyday transactions. With razor-sharp humour and unflinching honesty, Retail Therapy captures the exhaustion of late capitalism—where even escape feels like something that must be bought and sold.