Rouge

Another weird and captivating story by Mona Awad! This time more like a disturbing gothic fairy tale that will confuse you at times but in the end everything comes to a really satisfying conclusion.

Mix the luxurious cream in a glass jar your mom didn't allow you to touch as a kid with your own modern SPF 100, The Substance, Black Swan, Snow White, and a classic Gothic novel. Add copious amounts of the color red, mystery, jellyfish and unanswered questions, and you've really got something. They NEED to make this into a movie.

Mirabelle comes back to California after many years to bury her estranged mother. Both, even though they've grown apart, have always been united by their obsession with beauty and youth. While Mirabelle obsessively watches skincare-videos, slathers herself with creams and serums and aimlessly wanders the area instead of packing up her mother's belongings, she stumbles upon a spa. There, people seem to have known her mother very well and offer Mirabelle a treatment. She accepts, even though it is never specified what this "treatment" really is.... This was a dark, literary novel with elements of horror. This story deals with beauty standards and society's obsession with being perfect and staying young forever, even at the expense of oneself... The plot might start out a little slowly, but especially towards the end, when the threads of the story start coming together and more and more is revealed, you will find it impossible to put this book down. I recommend this to everyone who is, or wants to become, a fan of Mona Awad's writing.

I wanted to like this so desperately but I just couldn't ... After I read "Bunny" by Mona Awad I just had to read another of her books, but Rouge really dissappointed me. Not because of the story, because that was actually interesting and quite unsettling, but because it was just so boring to me. The story took so long to unfold and I just wanted it to be over... The topic of longing for beauty so much that you loose yourself and give up your memories and life to "glow" was actually really interesting and disturbing, but still the book didn't give me the mysterious and horror esque vibes that I hoped it would.