Kudos to anyone who manages to do anything but read this book in one brutal sitting -- what a VIBE Etter has created! The book absolutely pulses with Cassie's abject disgust at the cognitive dissonance required to work in Silicon Valley and partake in ultra-wealthy tech culture while unhoused, impoverished people make homes of the sidewalk. As Cassie's world unravels alongside her morals and her sanity, the reader cannot help but to share in her despair. Devastatingly bleak and horridly funny, RIPE is an instant classic of the Millennial office novel genre.

An amazingly creative and well written story. I couldn’t put it down. The way Cassie’s life is presented and portrayed is vibrant and beautiful despite the angst and depression. This is what makes for such a compelling read, the vivid imagery. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

This book depicted anxiety and depression SO WELL. The pacing was perfect, and the characters just made sense. The ending shocked me but I felt it was necessary not have a HEA and I think that's where this novel thrives.

Ripe is about Cassie, a millennial woman, living and working in Silicon Valley. The book is mostly spend in her mind as she struggles with anxiety, depression and feelings of isolation. I would definitely define this as a DWM (depressed woman moving) novel. Not much happens plotwise, but that isn’t a bad thing. I loved the writing style and the constant imagery and metaphors using pomegranates and black holes. I kind of wish there was more to it, but overall a great read.
(Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.)

Thank you to the author and Scribner for access to the eARC of this novel.

I'll start with the obvious: the cover and title combo is spectacular. I expect RIPE to be a notable novel in this respect, an example to other cover designers.

Readers of slow, literary fiction that has something to say will enjoy RIPE.

At first I was so bored by the book that I very nearly stopped reading. But I'm glad I didn't, because the end of the book made up for everything else. I believe I wasn't in the right mindset that first day. While initially I didn't much care about the characters, eventually I did, especially in the later chapters.

Also at first, I was a little put off by the prose. Again, it wasn't what I expected, so it took some time to fall into the groove. I actually love stream-of-consciousness style writing. I'm also a sucker for super long sentences intermixed with choppier ones. The prose was at times clever with poetic lines and rhythm.

There is a relatability to the work aspect of the story. Anyone who's worked a job that requires more than should be asked of a single person may relate, particularly office jobs. Particularly if they've had impossible bosses. Cassie's boss was written so realistically that I nearly had my very own panic attack.

I disagree that the purpose of this book is to make readers sad, to be sad and dark, to promote bleakness. Absolutely not. It's just realistic. And for many it will be very relatable. But readers should take care in reading it. RIPE offers a raw, harsh, and honest view of the world.

I also disagree that this is magical realism, though this might be what the author intended. To me it just reads as metaphorical, allegorical, and vividly imaginative.

I'm unsure if this was intended, but I see a very strong Persephone myth connection in RIPE (iykyk). If this wasn't the intention then it's a major coincidence and if it was intended then it was very well done.

More books like this please.

PS: I laughed my ass off (in a good way) at the inclusion of binary code in the story. Probably because I read this book using TTS so I just had a robot voice read me a long sequence of zeros and ones. The audiobook will be interesting.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a most anticipated ARC!

This novel did not disappoint. This felt like listening to a boygenius album and questioning the purpose of our lives, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Mainly I loved this but I would only recommend it to a friend who would find that activity enjoyable.

The writing was just excellent. I found myself highlighting paragraph after paragraph. This will be a top read of 2023 for so many! Really loved the museum chapter.

Thanks again!

I cannot wait for the sad hot girls on booktok to wet themselves over this book. Honestly it’s so good I would join them except now I need to lay in bed and have an existential crisis for a few weeks. Everything of my Ottessa Moshfegh-Ling Ma dreams.

ARC provided by NetGalley.

I am a 30-something woman much like the main character in this book. I, however, have never got off the school train, and am still in academia. The world of cooperate seems to me like you fit in to one of two positions. You are working 24-7 and things would collapse without you, or your there to fill time and if you disappeared from the face of the earth your boss wouldn't blink an eye. Sarah Etter's book managed to blend these two sides into a terrifying look at the world of start up tech. A place I am glad I have thus far avoided.
Furthermore it gives a complex take on the relationships we have and mental health. Sarah Etter's ability to use magical realistic elements in a way that doesn't feel flippant, over-done, or too obscure in both her novels makes look forward to whatever she produces in the future.

4⭐️my favorite genre, mentally ill women!!!! It follows a woman working in tech and hating every single moment of it. A social commentary on hustle culture and late stage capitalism, this was excellent and so harsh. The ending was really painful. Ripe comes out in July, thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

After reading Etter's Book of X a couple months ago, I was thrilled at the opportunity to read Ripe. It did not disappoint!

This was such an engrossing and beautiful read. I think many women living under modern-day capitalism will feel connected to Cassie, the main character. Her despair as she navigates work, relationships, and loneliness is fundamentally real in a way that is both heartbreaking and relatable.

Ripe is filled with vivid imagery. It is less overtly surreal than Book of X but still includes a central element of magical realism, which adds poignancy and depth to Cassie's experience of life. One thing I really appreciate about Etter's work is that the imagery and use of surrealism/magical realism is always incredibly meaningful. It can be shocking and strange, but it's never just for shock value. In Ripe, surreal imagery and magical realism elements are used to viscerally expose Cassie's inner emotional landscape, without requiring her to narrate each thought. This allows the reader to experience her feelings directly, as she does, rather than read about them.

This book packs a powerful punch, especially given its short length. I found myself tearing up at parts, I felt so connected to Cassie, and I devoured it in just three sittings.

Emotionally resonant, uncanny, and sharp-- Ripe is a poetic yet searing portrait of womanhood and the exhaustion of capitalism. There really isn't anything I can compare it to, but I think fans of Carmen Maria Machado, Sophie Mackintosh, Sarah Moss, and Halle Butler would all enjoy Ripe. I already have a few people in mind I plan to buy a copy for!

Thanks to Scribner & NetGalley for the arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. I will post this review on Goodreads closer to the publication date.

Thanks to netgalley for the advance copy of Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter. This is a satisfying read and great commentary. It'll haunt you with a sense of dread the size of a black hole/

In pre-pandemic Silicon Valley, Cassie works for VOYAGER, a tech company that specializes in targeted advertising. She is surrounded by Believers, tech workers who have fully bought into the mindset and lifestyle you need to succeed in the high-pressure, competitive industry they work in. Cassie is not a Believer, instead she puts her true self away at work and pretends to be one of them. But as news of a mystery virus and wildfires grows and she's asked to push the boundaries at work, her life becomes increasingly out of control. Set against a backdrop of extreme privilege and wealth contrasted with extreme poverty and displacement, RIPE is a devastating social commentary on women's lives, capitalism, and the state of our modern world.

**Thank you for the ARC. All opinions are completely my own.**

3 stars.

This book was written to be depressing and did not add any value or knowledge into my life at all. There was nothing redeeming about the story.

The three stars are for the writing style, which was just average.

TLDR; I do not recommend this book.

Raw and challenging, Sarah Rose Etter pens a reality that we turn away from. Or rather, desensitize ourselves to by scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Ripe’s ability to so beautifully press on what plagues us new adult and millennial women as we navigate careers, hustle culture, substance abuse, complicated love lives, abortion, maternal wounds, misogyny, mental health, an ever-growing housing crisis, climate change, and the absurdity of trying to balance it all. It is always a marvel when a novel can so precisely yet uniquely reflect what we are afraid to look at in our own lives. The prose in Ripe was so devastating but memorable.

Unfortunately, it’s use of magical realism is disappointing. The dread of Cassie’s black hole is supposed to be ever present, but it feels slightly underutilized. I did anticipate more from this element of Cassie’s life. Also underutilized were both Nicole and Marie. It surprised me to find that Cassie valued either of them as friends, when as a reader, there was so little of a friendship to care about. While I understand Cassie’s isolation, it didn’t make sense for her to not at least be able to confide in Marie. Still, Ripe doesn’t disappoint as modern feminist literature and is sure to be a refreshing read.

"A horror that sharp stays with you. It's a knife lodged in the heart."

So begins Sarah Rose Etter's "Ripe", an incredibly visceral journey through the horrors of late-stage capitalism and the vast absurdities of modern life. And lodge in your heart it does, this novel of inescapable horrors that is also somehow one of the most compelling reads I've experienced all year, like a train wreck from which you cannot look away and are also potentially on the train itself watching it being steered into its oncoming obstacle from your window seat, frozen in fear.

To clarify, the train-wreck-ness of the story is purely the nature of the horrors themselves, which we experience through Cassie's close gaze, reminded inescapably of our own inevitable suffering and demise. The prose is stark and visual, the landscape familiar and yet brimming with a danger that haunts beneath the skin, the characters bordering on caricaturization only for their demeanor to slip into a shadow adjacent to our own intimate terrors. I feel as though I have read this story before, and yet I have never read anything like it.

I am truly in awe of Etter, the way she has managed to create something that rips apart one's heart so cleanly while simultaneously weaving an innately beautiful work that begs to be devoured. Once I started reading, I absolutely could not stop, and yet the unease that lurks under the surface was never far behind. This is a novel composed of contradictions, one that compels and dissuades in one fell swoop, one that absolutely needed to be written.

Though I will never be able to pinpoint how Etter has managed to create something so equally gorgeous and upsetting, I know only that I was encompassed by it, body and soul, and that I look forward to my next meeting with these strange pages, which I am sure will find me again soon.

I devoured this in a day and a half. Though a lot of this was difficult to read, it was very raw and will be very relatable to many, whether in SF/the Valley or elsewhere. I loved the tie ins of woman in tech, existential crises of 30 somethings, and of course...black holes.

The prose in this is phenomenal. It’s a raw and jarring take on depression, technology, gentrification, and the working world. I read a lot of literary fiction and have never encountered anything quite like this. Incredibly interested to see what else this authors comes up with. Check trigger warnings!

Sarah Rose Etter has completely knocked me off my feet once again. Her novel THE BOOK OF X took me by utter surprise a few years ago. so I was thrilled to get an early copy of RIPE, one of my most anticipated reads of 2023. The wait and hype was worth it.

Cassie! Oh, Cassie broke my heart. A burned-out, Silicon Valley non-believer, she is stuck at a toxic start-up in an early 2020 San Francisco. Dealing with a black hole following her for her entire life, Cassie suffers from anxiety and depression, an abusive boss, an emotionally distant family on the other side of the country, and a boyfriend who has another girlfriend. I have never seen such a vivid depiction of depressing tech startup culture. It made me so lucky to not be sucked into that world, and I spent the entire book just wishing Cassie could pull herself out.

Sarah Rose Etter has such a specific and wonderful way with words. Her writing is stunning and succinct, and always leaves such a dent. I predict this being a massive hit when it's released in July. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's going to go down as a contemporary classic for sure.

One of my favorite books this year and one of the best releases of 2023, Following The Book of X, Sarah Rose Etter brings us Ripe, an enthralling and disturbing story about the demands of the corporate world and the depression that runs deep. The story follows Cassie, a thirty-three-year-old, a year into her "glamourous" Silicon Valley job, where she is overworked, underappreciated, and looked down upon every day of her career. We understand her as a character and the demons lurking below, like a black hole. Her depression and anxiety morph into unnerving but very relatable anecdotes. While trying to stay afloat in her job and not fall for her fling, who is in a serious relationship and a pregnancy, Cassie is slowly losing herself.

This was one of the best depictions of depression I've seen in literature in a recent release. Cassie, from a young age, has an obsession with black holes that are there in the story to represent her depression, a simple analogy a lot of us endure throughout our lifetime. While depression is the focal point, the demand for corporate life and Silicon Valley culture is also an interesting part of the story. I highly recommend this to anyone and everyone when it is released.

Truly my year of rest and relaxation for the tech girlies...

Ok, I'm literally the only woman at my tech company and this book really spoke to me. It really hit with the whole moral dilemmas you're forced to face in order to get a paycheck and just simply survive. (I've been a tad existential about my job lately, so this book came at the perfect time)

The writing was superb, I really liked the organization of the story. The way the author wove in Cassie's past with her present really worked for me. And I just really enjoyed the style of writing, it was easy to fly through this book, and beautiful enough that a passage would make me pause for a moment and re-read it.

I also thought the secondary characters were filled in with just the right amount of detail. Sometimes when a book is dark and existential like this, the minor characters are kept at a distance and almost flat, but the minor characters in this colored the world perfectly.

I'm not sure if I particularly enjoyed the dictionary entries at the beginning of each chapter - they didn't feel needed to me, but the rest of the book was good enough that by half way through I didn't mind.

Sad I have to wait until July to start pushing all of my friends to read this.