This is a fantastic novel. I'm not depressed but this book kind of successfully makes the point of, in our current world, how could you not be? The "Fake self" she puts on at work and in social circles! The way we look away from the awful things happening in front of our eyes because there's just so much awful, our brain won't let us process it. That moment of almost happiness with the oysters at the beach... really gorgeous writing.

Ripe is the kind of story that sits in your stomach like a bad seed. You know from the beginning that you're not getting out of here in one piece and yet, the author makes sure you want to stay for the journey. 30-something Cassie lives in the myopic nightmare realm that we call Silicon Valley, working at a tech start up. At first the job opportunity feels too good to pass up, but the longer she stays in the city, the quicker her soul is (quite literally) eaten up by a black hole of despair. Throughout the story, you taste the souring of the world around Cassie. What was once sweet becomes bitter and rotten. Like the most delicious fruit, I couldn't put Ripe down until I was finished.

The black hole swarms above Cassie’s head, which is a great metaphor for depression, but a repetitive one in this fictional work by Sara Etters. I found myself wishing I had a trigger warning for the parts of this novel that felt too real and too hard to confront. I loved it for that. I also loved Cassie’s estranged and very strange friends, her perception of California, and her incredibly shitty boss and boyfriend.it seemed like nothing was redeemable in her new life aside from her relationship with her father, which I envied.p, and it honestly felt out of place. When you have a dad like that, what more can you ask for? I do suggest this book for anyone who would enjoy a deep dive into pre-COVID depression before the big indoor marathon hits, but I’ll most likely never read it again, if that makes sense.

I loved this book. Maybe it was because I shared some of those feelings she had about the corporate world and humanity in general or I found the MC to be a very relatable millennial. With so many expectations on her shoulders, Cassie was doing her best to find a good balance between be best at what she was doing, have a personal life, and feel like a decent human being when juggling those two. Unfortunately just like many of us her age, she had a blackhole looming over her and ready to suck her into the depth of it.

"The black hole is at its most powerful when I'm alone. When I'm around other people, it tends to stay small, shrinks down to a small point. But if the melancholy gets too great, if it rises up and overtakes me, the black hole expands no matter what. e.g., When I am alone on my darkest days, the black hole swells, a rotating mass that blocks out the world. It smells sweet and metallic, like what astronauts report when they describe the smell of outer space: notes of welded silver, raspberries, burned meat. The scent overtakes me. When the black hole expands, it eclipses my heart and mind, sucks all joy and light from my body. The black hole sings and holds a single note, the song of my name. It might seem like it would be easy to resist it. But it's impossible not to hear the call into its depths. It is the siren song of the void."

"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? How can anyone stare into the darkest corners of humanity and return to the office, enter the meeting room, and deliver the presentation? How do we all just keep working? The CEO nods at me. My fake self opens her mouth and begins."

Honestly, I probably went into this wanting some Ottessa Moshfegh vibes but it never really got there for me. And the cover had me jonesing for some Mona Awad level gross sensuality and it didn't really deliver on that either. And the description had me excited about the surrealism of the black hole, but I didn't feel it. Basically I have terrible expectations.

Cassie works for a soul-sucking job in Silicon Valley at a tech startup. Everyone around her is the worst, especially when her boss assigns her to a committee to sabotage another company. All the while the black hole that's followed her since birth is growing.

It's an interesting book, but just nothing super unique that makes me want to recommend it.

Wow! This book. I can’t decide if it’s ok that I really liked it. It was so well written and I just felt for Cassie so much, even though I couldn’t always understand her actions. It’s a book that makes you stop and really look at what’s important and what’s not.
I highly recommend!

Personally, I'm enjoying the cultural zeitgeist of particularly feminist commentary on Silicon Valley culture with a side of late-stage Capitalism critique. 'Ripe' firmly belongs in this micro-genre, carving its own spot through unique framing and stylistic choices. Additionally, giving this novel the backdrop of early 2020 provides readers with a somewhat-shared recent history to act as an emotional sounding board. Etter manages to convey how the strands of our lives weave together; good decisions and bad decisions as both causes and symptoms of suffering.

The main character of 'Ripe', Cassie, is a Millennial. As someone in that same age group, this work felt particularly resonate with me. Cassie tries to Do the Right Thing throughout the story to ensure that she will have a stable and secure future. She does everything she is told by her parents in order to achieve the goals they define as worthwhile. But, in the end, it isn't enough. She has her fancy job in a fancy city, a life that gleams on the outside. However, with costs of living on the rise, toxic work culture more pervasive than ever, student loans demanding repayment, and the consistent occurrence of History Making Events happening everyday...it's no wonder the black hole of depression and anxiety that has followed her all her life threatens to eat her alive.

Though there is hope. As the books mentions, there are two things that can happen when you go into a black hole:
1. You are ripped apart.
2. You are transported to another dimension, another reality.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. There were a few moments of overwrought metaphor, but I almost liked them because they were so obvious. It's refreshing to see an author be so blatant with their metaphor instead of trying to twist it into something more complex than it is. I do wish there had been more discussion around the political climate of the United States in early 2020. Just a few throw away details would have worked.

I literally have nothing bad to say about this book, it was everything it needed to be. Very melancholy, with sprinkles of hope, shock, frustration, anger. You sympathize with Cassie....because if you are like me you are a millennial and probably can completely relate to her. The motions of keep moving forward keep on working hard but to get lost I depression feeling alone, thinking everyone else has it figured out and is succeeding but you cannot BECAUSE everyone puts on a smile and fibs a little that everything is great.

The ending of this book wrecked me and felt like just a heavy anvil was dropped on me. This book....well done

The MC, Cassie, is on the marketing team of a Silicon Valley startup company. The heartless state of the darkly capitalistic society and pregnancy leave Cassie questioning her job and ultimately her lifestyle. She is constantly ingesting stimulants to keep up with the demands of a toxic work culture. The work conditions she subjects herself to mirror her dysfunctional family and unfulfilling romantic relationships.

An instant hit with avid readers, Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter is boldly dark in its situations and depictions. Even the rare moments of intended kindness are unsettling in this story. Many trigger warnings for self-harm, addiction, and various forms of abuse are necessary. Depressive pandering and metaphorical language depict the emptiness of a capitalistic world, which is presumably deeply devastating to anyone with integrity or on the lower rungs of this soul-sucking society.

Cassie’s mindset is understandably very black-and-white. You're either homeless or a capitalistic husk, which she calls a “Believer.” I could see this book appealing to misanthropic teenagers and struggling adults — especially anyone depressed, jaded from growing up in poverty, or suffering hardship from the current economic downfall.

In a narrator style, the MC uses metaphysical language to convey a split from one’s morals. The “black hole” that resides in Cassie is the most prominent. Its description conveys levels of soul-sucking emptiness. Constantly, there’s also an underlying concern of pregnancy and wanting to protect the unborn and provide a better life for them.

Mention of the void always gets bonus points from me. I'm obsessed with the empty escapism of the consciousness. With the exponential growth of the population and the division of echo chambers, helpless apathy and mindless avoidance at the hands of an abusive culture just makes sense to me. There are so many people with so many different reasons for being part of the collective problem and one only has so much influence. For some, that understanding is too much to bare so they take the unfathomable route out.

Mention of the drug-abusing, fast-paced world of Silicon Valley being too fast for the Midwesterner is deeply relatable for me. As is the drive for a passionate relationship as an escape or an ounce of somewhat meaningful connection derived from a reasonable parent. It’s all very meta, which I find appealing. Overall, it gets a four-star rating from me. Though I’m very fond of the metaphysical concepts and metaphorical language, it was a bit difficult to digest in its entirety.

Ripe is a dark and captivating story of a woman in an existential crisis. We follow Cassie as she navigates life in Silicone Valley. We witness her drug use in order to numb her anxiety due to her cutthroat job at a tech start-up, we see her crumble in an open relationship where she isn't the main chick, all the while having a blackhole follow her around.

A haunting look at loneliness, depression, and hustle culture. A must read!

If you love Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh, or Mona Awad, this is one you need to pick up!

4 stars- this was sharp and so well written. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time after reading. thanks netgalley & the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review

in sarah rose etter’s latest novel we follow cassie who works in silicon valley, san francisco. she’s over worked and is beaten down by tyrant supervisors. her life outside of the workforce is not any better, in a city where the rich and wealthy thrive right across people living in the streets and quite literally setting themselves on fire. doing anything just to escape the capitalist hellscape that surrounds them, cassie just barely floats above it all.

and to top it all off cassie has a literal black hole following her. representing her mental health and anxieties, the black hole hovers above cassie speaking to her, swelling bigger and bigger, enticing her to give it all up too.

ripe is bleak, soul wrenching and depressing which makes sense since i recently learned that sarah rose etter wrote this at the height of her grief after losing her father right before the pandemic.

this book made me have a BIG existential crisis and it surfaced feelings of long suppressed service industry burn out for me. lol!!!!! really good book though!!!! highly recommend!!!

Thank you to netgalley and Scribner for an eARC of this book. I adored Etter’s previous work, The Book of X, and so eagerly requested this new book.

This follows Cassie as she navigates through an increasingly bizarre and surreal Silicon Valley at a job that encourages her to perform morally questionable maneuvers to take down the competition and she finds exhausting. She is plagued at every step by her own personal black hole, a moving and changing entity that grows and shrinks with her own emotions. This is a very post-modern exploration of anxiety and depression in more dystopian version of our own reality.

I found the concept interesting, the cover is fantastic as well, but ultimately it didn’t grip me the same way that her previous book did. I found it difficult to develop emotional attachment to Cassie and the other characters feel like superficial foils.

Ripe is an essential read for any working girl in corporate.

Etter takes no prisoners when it comes to criticism of the largely male-run capitalist world. Ripe sets up a startlingly bleak insight into Cassie’s life—one fraught with mommy issues and a deep-seated loneliness. We explore Cassie’s mind as she navigates a frantic, demanding job—one that takes more than it gives, at the end of the day.

We see Cassie lament, grin, and bear through commands and opposing orders, all whilst battling a demon of her own—a black hole which grows unfettered; numbed temporarily by drugs, non-relationships, and praise. There’s something about the writing that almost seems fantastical—perhaps due to the lithe absurdity that threatens to break through the fragments of reality. It is, however, this exact absurdity that makes it the story so plausible and tangible. Cassie could have been any one of us.

Ripe is unforgiving, bold, and every bit unapologetic. Etter writes with such a creative pen, taking otherwise mundane terms and relating them to bits and pieces of our narrator’s life. I enjoyed every single minute of this—bingeable, thought-provoking, and powerful. Highly recommend.

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare.

Reading about women having mental breakdowns is sooo relatable and honestly my favorite kind of fiction. Add in a tad of magical realism (my other favorite genre) and this book is a masterclass. I could not put it down.

Especially as a millennial, hyper-capitalism and the workforce (whether toxic or not) is always at the fore-front of our minds. Though we tend to read in order to escape reality, this book does a great job in making the reader feel seen and heard. Though I, too, had some moments with this book - it felt a bit like therapy.

The first-person narration was perfect - especially with an unstable character. Do we know what version of the truth we are getting? Are we always hearing the dramatized, anxiety ridden side of the story? Probably - and I love it all the more for it.

The ending was just okay - but there wasn't really truly another way to end this. It felt natural, but maybe I just wanted more.

Warning: Abortion, depression

Ripe (4.5★) tells the story of Cassie, who, after leaving her dysfunctional parents and small town behind, takes a job at tech startup Voyager in San Francisco. Cassie is quickly met with the “millennial dread,” and the reality of the extreme disparities between the haves and the have-nots of the city. As events inspired by the real life catastrophes of the last few years (extreme wildfires, a world-wide pandemic, rent-hikes/protests) begin occurring alongside Cassie’s personal struggles, Cassie is pushed to her breaking point.

I was initially hesitant to read this one, as the corporate/tech world aren’t where I spend my days. While I can understand the setting, it doesn’t resonate with me personally, and that was a disconnect I noticed when I previously read others books in this sub-genre. Additionally, I’ve been having some thoughts about “millennial dread” as an overdone trope recently. I was honestly going to skip this one, until @netgalley sent me a digital ARC. I started reading this one and all my initial hesitations fell away. I was ordering my physical copy by the 30% mark.

Right off the back, this book is visually stunning. The cover is a work of art, and inside, the way Ripe is sectioned off by illustrations which represent the growing problems in Cassie’s life, wowed me. Etter also uses a unique text structure for her story, by dividing the chapters by dictionary-esc entries, naming the chapters with a word, giving a few relevant definitions and including examples of this word through the story of Cassie’s life in the exempli gratia.

Beyond it’s visual appeal and structural uniqueness, Ripe is a heart-wrenching story. From Cassie’s looming black hole, to her noncommittal relationship with “the chef,” (never named), her painfully aggressive coworkers and her abusive mother and subtly toxic father, the reader’s heart breaks for Cassie even as they recognize that she has, by society’s standards, “made it.”

The book culminates in an ending that is, I believe, intentionally ambiguous. Etter has done an incredible job making her own mark on the millennial existential dread trope. Ripe stands in a league all its own, and I’m so thankful I was given the chance to read it.

This book really gripped me, and I’m still thinking about it over a month after I finished it.

A mix of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” and “The Guest,” this book has the same sleepy, dreamy quality but set in the fast-paced ecosystem of Silicon Valley. It’s a dichotomy that’s executed incredibly well, as the story’s action waxes and wanes. As a reader, you’re pulled forward as the main character’s black hole of feeling pulses. It’s a tense novel, but the discomfort is so worth it for the perspective it shares.

I walked away completely questioning corporate America, my role in it, the cult of employment and so much more. “Ripe” left me pondering what life is actually worth.

Thanks to @netgalley and @scribner for the ARC!

This book has so much to offer. Short but very dense. Very needed for this time.
Cassie is struggling and coasting in her life. Her high demand job pushes her abilities - unreasonable expectations, her morals and boundaries are a company concern.
She dates a chef - a man with a long term girl friend in a supposed open relationship.
Her mother's mental health a massive impact on Cassie; an easy relationship with her father.
Worth the hype. One of my best books of the year.

Cassie is a young woman living on the cusp of the pandemic hell in San Francisco, working for a tech company, and slowly losing her soul as the world devolves into chaos. While compared to Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, I don't think that comparison is fair as it lacks the sophistication of Moshfegh's writing., I found it more akin to Diary of the Void by Emi Yagi, with its daily entry approach and focus on the corporate/work sphere.

The portions that I felt were strong were how it felt to live in the SF Bay area at the beginning of the pandemic with all the wildfires and the confusion in the workplace as to sheltering in place or being in the office. The behaviors of the leaders in the company Cassie works for feel more than plausible, and we see her adopting a persona to maintain the insider track she has been given. I thought the class comparisons were also well done, as Cassie cannot see herself as privileged compared to those in her workplace, and yet she is frequently shown ways she is favored.

But for a book to be so on the nose with those elements, it felt strange that she doubled down on the scenes of misery in the city with drug abuse and homelessness but left the overall national political climate untouched, and it was such a glaring oversight that I couldn't help but wonder why.

Interesting premise, but it felt a bit unevenly rendered overall.

Heart wrenching, achingly sad, and completely relatable if you have ever suffered from any kind of depression or anxiety. So aptly metaphorizes the all-consuming nature of dread. A short read, but one that will last with me for a very long time.