Shelley Hill's life was a tightrope of performance - pristine police officer on the outside, chaos underneath.

Behind the badge: social drug use, fractured relationships and a relentless hunger to feel alive.

When a drug investigation ends her thirteen-year police career - and her private life is splashed across the headlines - Shelley doesn't run to escape. She runs to rebuild. From Sydney's queer clubs to a Cambodian gambling den, what follows is a spiralling, psychedelic search for truth, meaning, and something solid to hold onto.

Only Joy Bites is a raw, beautifully gritty memoir about identity, shame, the strength of love in all its human messiness and the unpredictable path to healing that begins after one unassuming but deadly mosquito bite.

Told with dark humour and unflinching self-awareness, it explores the sharp edge of what happens when you finally let go - and life unexpectedly grabs you by the throat.