I won’t forget the style of the writing, the clarity of Cassie’s anguish and resilience, and the entirely immersive reading experience of spending time with her. Definitely a favorite this year, and I’m certain we’ll be hearing more about this one.

𝟰.𝟱 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗦 𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗗 𝗨𝗣
“𝓨𝓸𝓾 𝔀𝓪𝓴𝓮 𝓾𝓹 𝓸𝓷𝓮 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓵𝓲𝔃𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝔂𝓸𝓾’𝓿𝓮 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓮, 𝔀𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓸𝔀, 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓮 𝓭𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓹𝓲𝓽 𝓪𝓽 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓼𝓮𝓵𝓯, 𝓪𝓽 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓲𝓬𝓮𝓼, 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝔀𝓱𝓲𝓬𝓱 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓫𝓮𝓮𝓷 𝓬𝓾𝓷𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓼𝓽𝓾𝓹𝓲𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓯𝓪𝓵𝓼𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝔀𝓻𝓮𝓽𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓴𝓮𝓮𝓹 𝓾𝓹 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝔀𝓸𝓻𝓵𝓭 𝓪𝓻𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓭 𝔂𝓸𝓾. 𝓗𝓸𝔀 𝓭𝓸𝓮𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓮 𝓫𝓮𝓪𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓶𝓼𝓮𝓵𝓿𝓮𝓼?”

I have now read this book twice, so it is safe to say I loved it! I unfortunately didn’t quite get that ~five star feeling~ either time, but it was pretty darn close!

I saw a lot of myself in Cassie and in the perceptions she has of herself and the people she is surrounded by. This book just had so many great quotes about life and relationships and the pressures of being a “believer” just like everyone else seems to be. Highly highly recommend!

I enjoyed Ripe and thought it was a good story with good writing. The protagonist experienced trauma and the backstory helps readers understand why Cassie has struggles she experiences throughout the story. Some trigger warnings are applicable though for depression and abortion. Capitalism is a prominent topic in the narrative and the author does a great job discussing theme.

Unfortunately this book didn’t work for me and was a DNF but I am sure other readers will feel differently! Thank you for the ARC!

Thank you Netgalley and the publishing house for sending me this e-arc to read and review. This was a great book, I read it here a few months ago and loved it. The cover art is beautiful and the writing style is beautiful. I cant wait to see what else this author comes out with in the future. I love this book!!!

Sarah Rose Etter took a big bite for this book and unfortunately ending up choking halfway through.

Ripe sets out to be the star child of the new so-called Millennial Malaise genre -- millennial main characters who are struggling with balancing all of the pressures and idiosyncrasies of modern, capitalistic life. As a software engineer at a big tech company myself who feels drained from their job, I was ecstatic to read this. It started off pretty well, the pace slow, yet limber and the prose accessible if not a bit juvenile, until suddenly you're struck dead with the sheer force of her heavy-handed metaphors and cheugy definitions at the beginning of each chapter.

A black hole to represent depression...groundbreaking.

I give this book 2 stars.

Highlighted something on every single page. So brilliant and feeling and painful — true to the storm of reckoning with what you do for work in the modern age.

Cassie was excited when she landed a job at a prestigious Silicon Valley start-up, thinking it will change her life. But a year into the job, Cassie's dream has turned into a nightmare. She has an inscrutable and demanding boss, impossible and ethically questionable projects, and unreasonable hours. Cassie also finds herself increasingly troubled by the juxtaposition of the extreme wealth of tech workers with the poverty experienced by so many residents. When Cassie finds herself at both a personal and professional crossroads, she must confront whether her job is worth it.

This was a well-written and interesting exploration of timely themes around work, ambition, family, and inequity.

Highly recommended!

First I want to say thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me early access to this book! Ripe was one of those books that comes along and really just hits you right in the gut. As a millennial woman, I related to this novel so much. Our main character’s struggle with depression while navigating the current economic landscape was so spot on that I felt like I was reading my own diary. It is not the novel that you pick up to feel good, or the novel that sends warm fuzzies through your chest. It is a novel that tells hard truths and is unflinching. I will be reading the next novel that Etter puts out and I thought this was a very solid mediation on mental health and the corporate world.

Here's my problem: This book left me speechless. Almost manic, if I'm being honest. Which kind of presented a problem when it came time to write this review.

The short version is: I absolutely devoured this book, wanted to be reading it whenever I wasn't, and it kind of overtook my life for a minute there. (And truly, that's my ideal reading experience.)

"Sometimes reality hurts so badly we must twist it in order to go on living beside it."

The synopsis lays this book out clearly: Cassie is a millennial trapped in a toxic corporate job in Silicon Valley, battling her depression and anxiety and directionless-ness in the personified form of a black hole that's been following her around since she can remember. This was such a strong way of illustrating how all-consuming mental health and the bleakness of late-stage capitalism is, which was both so smart and so very depressing and relatable.

But past the black hole imagery, I was really obsessed with the recurring idea of Cassie's "fake self" taking over at times throughout the book. It really did a phenomenal job of illustrating what people have to do, what roles and costumes and props they have to take on and off every day in order to get through the day and survive without the soul-crushing reality of existing making it too hard to even get out of bed. Literally. How DO we do it??

From its fragmentary structure to its astute observations on just, well, life, this book had me by the throat and refused to let go.

I received an advanced copy of RIPE through NetGalley and the publisher (thank you!) but actually ended up purchasing a final copy for myself before even reading it after seeing four of my favorite authors had written blurbs for it on the back cover, including Emily Austin, who wrote Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead. (One of my favorite books of all time!) I think if you liked that book, specifically its themes, the specific quirks of the main character re: mental health and anxiety, and the fragmentary structure of how its told in vignettes, you might enjoy this book too and I'd definitely recommend it!

(I also highly recommend listening to the Reading the Room podcast episode that discusses this book! It's a phenomenal and emotional interview that I adored.)

Hard hitting and very real. The tension in this book is superb, and I was so stressed out while reading it. I cannot recommend enough!

It took me a while to get into this book, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. I think I was initially taken aback by the writing style - so many stream-of-conscious “e.g.”s! - and I also expected the discourse around the black hole to be more metaphorical, less scientific. That said, once I got used to it, I was IN. I found Cassie jarringly memorable in ways that will stick with me - some of the most vivid moments were when her “fake self” took over. (I loved how it was “she” in these moments, not “I”.) I’m admittedly not sure what happened at the very end, but that doesn’t take away from it. Unusual, surreal, disturbing, occasionally sharply funny; reminds me a bit of Severance by Ling Ma and How To Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann.

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book was so relatable and unique . I appreciate the surreal way the author describes the struggles women face .

Thank you for the arc .

A woman in a slightly dystopian version of San Francisco navigates working for a heartless corporation while dealing with a literal black hole that follows her through her life. I really enjoyed reading this book, and still think about it. It accurately captures the way capitalisism destroys us with prose that is both subtle and gut-wrenching. Highly recommend.

Ripe is a dark, disturbing, and ultimately hopeful novel about a young woman named Cassie who is struggling to find her place in the world. She works as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, where she is surrounded by people who are constantly striving to be the best, the brightest, and the most successful. But Cassie is not like them. She is tired, she is burnt out, and she is starting to question everything she thought she knew about herself and her life.

One day, Cassie discovers that she is pregnant. This news sends her into a tailspin, and she begins to spiral out of control. She starts using drugs, she cuts herself, and she even contemplates suicide. But even in her darkest moments, Cassie never gives up hope. She knows that she has to find a way to get her life back on track, for herself and for the baby she is carrying.

Ripe is a beautifully written and emotionally resonant novel. Etter's prose is sharp and poetic, and she does a masterful job of capturing the inner turmoil of her protagonist. The novel is also thought-provoking, and it raises important questions about the nature of success, the meaning of life, and the power of hope.

I highly recommend Ripe to anyone who is looking for a challenging and rewarding read. It is a novel that will stay with you long after you finish it.

This was...fine? I was expecting to LOVE it but I felt a little underwhelmed by it. I'm not sure much even happened and thought there wasn't much to the character. I felt like I was reading the same paragraph over and over again and nothing new was happening. The character herself also didn't intrigue me, and it felt like I had to convince myself to pick up the book each time I wanted to read.

I like to read because it takes away from the monotony of everyday life but this felt like.....a basic, boring every day life? I did give it one extra star because I love a good depressed Bay Area story, but I just wish it hit my expectations. The one part I did like was the writing. It used a unique style of writing where there were a lot of analogies and had a unique theme, but I just needed more from it.

We love an unhinged corporate girlie. This one is bleak but definitely worth it for anyone interested in sad girl lit and liked Ling Ma's Severance.

(ARC from NetGalley) This book gave me a stomach ache and now I must stare at a wall and contemplate life for a bit. ‘Ripe’ follows Cassie who is experiencing late stage capitalism, the horrors or 2020, and a situationship all by her lonesome. This story was deeply claustrophobic!

Another entry into the sad girl lit genre, and probably my favorite cover so far. I did like this book, for the most part, but a few things were really distracting for me — and perhaps just me! This has gotten such good reviews that I really do think it’s a personal problem.

Mainly, it came down to the use of metaphors, though are there some banger lines in here (mostly about existential dread and millennial ennui) that I immediately underlined.

I’m also obsessed with black holes, and my reading experience about fictional and implausible black holes might have suffered from having coincidentally JUST finished A Brief History in Time, but I’m not sure I bought the astrophysics connection here despite the very obvious black hole that follows Cassie around like a puppy.

The author cites a lot of research that went into black holes for this, and yet the plot revolves around a mini black hole just vibing on earth, not behaving like a black hole at all. And that’s fine, it’s clearly creative liberty, clearly a metaphor, but then it began to feel repetitive as nearly every metaphor became related to space-time or the cosmos. If it wasn’t that, it was a fruit/pomegranate metaphor, and I couldn’t always make their coexistence work in my mind.

What I appreciated most about Ripe was its portrayal of toxic tech culture and Silicon Valley-style capitalism against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying, often bleak San Francisco. The juxtaposition gets Cassie almost to the point of accountability and enlightenment, and that sets this book apart in the sad girl lit genre — many of Cassie’s literary counterparts live in much more delusion.

I also thought Cassie was one of the more relatable sad girls out there, if we’re being honest about the parts of ourselves the sad girlies hate most — she is self-aware enough to know right from wrong, to know she has chosen this life that has pushed her to the verge of a mental breakdown, but her sadness swallows any ability she has to take action. As readers, we are progressing further and further toward the inescapable event horizon of the black hole that is Cassie’s pain, yes, but also the post-capitalistic, dystopian hellscape we live in.

this book woke me up -- the themes of corporate america, mental illness, the trauma of living in the 21st century, office culture and feeling lost and alone really hit home