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.

“There is safety in metaphors. The truth is far more terrifying: Black holes are confrontations with the collapse of space and time. They are a reckoning with both the infinite and death, two forces that always hover above me, never letting me out of their sight.”

ripe by sarah rose etter, serves as a strong, twisting commentary on the unethical environments and values of the corporate world, bringing these extremities to light through the following of the daily life of the protagonist Cassie who works for a major tech corporation in Silicon Valley.

the corporate world is cutthroat. there’s the competition, the upholding of work ethic, abusive environments, unaffordable living conditions, lack of down time - the list goes on. but to have a job, to exist within this sophisticated world, one must feel grateful. i appreciate etter’s take on how one survives an environment like that of Cassie’s, the need to split oneself into two, the disassociation in order to manage the cumbersome workload that never seems to end, and will never receive recognition for. the extremely abusive environment to which Cassie experiences seems to point the finger at these large tech companies where performance of the company is valued much higher than human needs, the humans that run it. unfortunately this is most likely a reality for many trying to make it in the tech world. one does whatever they can to survive and perform. but burnout is real and there is only so much one can take until they resort to unhealthy methods in an attempt to uphold their responsibilities. it can feel impossible.

we watch cassie painfully succumb to this very natural burnout, the constant fight of validating the harmful treatment just because of a highly-coveted position dwindling as the dark truth to this way of life grows until it cannot be ignored.

there are “two possible outcomes if you enter a black hole: you may be ripped to shreds, or there is a slim chance you will cross into another space and time, another dimension.” so what will it be?

Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe was a panic attack on speed. This story, both all-too anxiously, heartbreakingly real, and yet vaguely, weirdly magical realist, follows Cassie from the cruelly competitive environment of her Silicon Valley tech/marketing job to her home life, which includes toxic, terrible friends, an occasional lover that technically belongs to someone else, and a long-distance relationship with her parents that does more harm than good. And while we follow Cassie, so too does the ever-expanding black hole that's accompanied her for her whole life. Cassie's loneliness and desolation --and that of the city she lives in--are captured in the author's lush. dreamy prose and there are passages in which I forgot for a moment that I was reading about characters who are profoundly unhappy, who deeply hate themselves. At the heart of this story is the question, "How does anyone bear themselves?" And the end shows us, in the starkest manner possible, that they simply don't.

Thank you Scribner for my Netgalley copy of RIPE by Sarah Rose Etter, out now!

Apologies if this is not the most coherent review as I finished this doped up on pain pills after my breast reduction lmao. Ripe follows a woman named Cassie who is a year into her ‘dream job’ at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, where Ivy League grads complain about their limited snack options in a multi-million dollar building overlooking the bay filled with unhoused people bathing in the sea and setting themselves on fire.

As we follow Cassie through long hours, toxic bosses and unethical projects many look the other way for to nab a paycheck, a literal black hole follows her around as a manifestation of her anxiety and depression. Suddenly, Cassie finds herself pregnant, we witness her life swirl into disarray in the middle of a capitalistic hellscape.

I liked this book a lot. It’s obscenely readable. The tone is very depressing, eerie and sinister. If you’re looking for a hopeful read, this is not the one lol. I really think the book could have gone more into her pregnancy and how corporate life ignores the strifes of expecting women, often adding boatlads of stress and anxiety to what is supposed to be a happy and exciting time for those wanting a child.

The prose is as engaging and enticing as the cover, and if you’re looking for a narrator dredging through the trenches of capitalism with thoughts of emptiness, give this banger a read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter!

I am still thinking about this ending. In a world where burnout and putting work before yourself seems sometimes glamorous, this is the perfect response. Ripe will leave you with the unsettling feeling of what happens when we snap and can’t take it anymore.

Sometimes I get a book on Netgalley and I can tell within a couple of pages that unfortunately, in spite of the marketing, this book is just not my thing. It might even be a good book, but for whatever reason, it's not going to appeal to me.

This book is not that book. It should have been exactly my thing: a voicy, internally driven literary novel with a speculative edge, speaking to the social issues of our time.

Except it's really, really bad.

I've got three main problems with this book:

1) I think the quality of the prose is poor.

2) There's a black hole following the main character around, which is obviously just a heavy-handed metaphor for depression, but still, it sounds neat! Except that the implications of having a black hole following you around aren't dealt with at all. For example, it has NO GRAVITATIONAL PULL. The narrator throws around a lot of details about black holes, but none of them are exemplified in the black hole that's actually in the text; for example, at one point she talks about the temperature of black holes as being very hot on the outside and very cold on the inside, but what is the temperature of her black hole? We don't know. What are its physical characteristics, and how do they affect her and the people around her? They don't. What does the black hole do? Answer: Nothing. Except at the end, where she finally walks into it, because no one could see that one coming.

3) This book is, I think, supposed to be a send-up of late-stage capitalism, exemplified in the protagonist's terrible tech job and lack of $$$. Here's the thing, though: For the most part, people work savage hundred-hour weeks for the cash, and in this character's case, it doesn't pay her enough cash to live. So she's getting literally nothing out of this. She's working a terrible job that she hates, that takes up all her time including weekends, where the people are cruel to her, where she regularly does things she finds reprehensible, and she's still draining down her savings and having panic attacks over money because the job doesn't pay her enough to make rent. I spent the whole book wondering, Why doesn't she just quit and do something else?, and the book never bothered to answer this question, I guess because I'm just supposed to take at face value that people want to work in Silicon Valley even though it's bad?

I'm sorry! Normally I try at this point to say nice things about the book, or say "However, I think it will appeal to X audiences because Y," but I can't say that here. I guess all I can say is that (a) at least it's short, and (b) I've seen it buzzed everywhere so I guess at least it's appealing to some people, but I myself couldn't tell you why.

I received an eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

ripe by sarah rose etter
4.5/5⭐️’s

“before it was applied to marble statues and women, the word beauty began as a word for objects, or for the light from god, or for a point in time, e.g., the moment a fruit was perfectly ripe. there are moments i am perfectly ripe, too, moments when i am the fruit bursting with the reddest of seeds.”

ripe plunges us into the chaotic world of cassie, a young woman who has traded her small-town existence for the high stakes, high stress life of silicon valley's tech industry. cassie is struggling to maintain balance in every aspect of her life while she coexists with the ever present black hole that follows her, a second shadow.

“my mother stung and stung. her words stung. her fury stung. her palm stung across my skin. i think it was then that i learned some part of love must be the stinging.”

i ventured into this book blind, save for its comparison to “my year of rest and relaxation” and “her bodies and other parties”. i was pleasantly surprised by the unique narrative format; the writing is filled with nuance and laced with remarkable prose. ripe is a feisty testament to human emotions and the pressures of modern life that i found both profoundly relatable and melancholic. for those wanting to slice into the rawness of life, read this!!

A short read, but pretty compelling!! The protagonist was interesting to follow and I enjoyed the way the author switches between flashbacks and present-day events. The way most of the details about her life were kept vague was also a very interesting storytelling device—it was easy to stay in her head during the story. Overall, this is a fascinating, well-structured story and I would definitely be interested in buying a finished copy!

Oof, this was bleak.

I loved the writing, it was incisive and direct. The setting was horrid, the characters were awful, and overall this likely reflects a reality that’s a bit too close to home for a lot of people.

Persephone in a capitalistic hellscape is so unique, conceptually to me. I have only ever read Persephone retellings in the romance genre so to see it in literary fiction and to give her this new ending? I ate it up.

Overall, I think Ripe is joining the ranks of other anti-capitalist books but not through a main character who is fighting against the norm but rather through a character who tries to make it work and ultimately realizes it’s not worth it. Perhaps it’ll inspire us to save ourselves before we reach an untimely demise.

beautifully written and uniquely structured, this should’ve been perfect for me but i just never connected with it as much as i hoped. even though it’s a pretty short novel i felt like there was a bit too much going on

I ended up DNFing this after reading 30% of it. I wasn't a fan of the main character's passivity or the black hole plot device. The definitions included throughout the book took away from the reading experience--in my opinion. I do still harbor some interest in seeing how the story turns out, so I may revisit it at a later date. It just wasn't something that I was interested in finishing at this time.

The story of Ripe follows our exhausted and beaten-down narrator named Cassie. Cassie is a magnet for being mistreated and taken advantage of by the people around her: her mother, her boss, her friends, her lover, etc. After taking a leap of faith and leaving her hometown behind, she finds herself in San Francisco, where the wealthy and the impoverished struggle to coexist. Cassie must do her best to jump over hurdle after hurdle, whether it be an abusive boss or an accidental pregnancy.

Ripe does a fantastic job of showing how bleak a woman’s life can be within the corporate world and a capitalistic society that shows no mercy to those who uphold it. Cassie works like a dog for a company that does not value her in any capacity: constantly being talked down to, insulted, and never receiving credit and appreciation for her contributions. On top of the commentary on the wealthy living alongside abject poverty, Etter effectively shows how depressing life under capitalism can be.

I also liked how Etter showed how some people can thrive under these conditions despite all odds. It almost exacerbated Cassie’s misery because it showed that happiness in this life is possible for some people, just not her. Whether these people were actually happy or not is up for debate anyway.

Another thing that Etter does well is forcing you to feel Cassie’s anxiety as she encounters obstacle after obstacle. Cassie's anxiety was something she could see, hear, and smell which strengthened the effect on readers.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to those who feel small and powerless under an unforgiving economic system or even those who want a sad read.

"Their pulses thrum from stocks, driverless cars, phones that collect the data of their lives in digital dashboards reporting: songs listened to, steps taken, places visited, workouts completed, hours slept."

Ouch.

Sarah Rose Etter certainly has her finger on the pulse of technology culture. Observations like the above fill her novel Ripe, set in the Bay Area. Cassie lives in San Francisco, where she steps over the homeless on the train to work at tech company Voyager in Silicon Valley, where she watches the homeless bathe in the bay from her office window while her coworkers, aka Believers, "nameless young people who prop up the whole industry" complain about the free snacks.

Cassie has the boss from hell, a jerk for a boyfriend, a job she dislikes (at best), a horrible mother, tragic friends to party with in the city, and, oh yeah a black hole that follows her around, growing and pulsing in sync with her moods.

The wit is scathing, the humor laugh out loud funny.

"I roll my eyes up to the roof of my skull. She can’t see my face, but it feels good, this act of rebellion. “I know you’re rolling your eyes, you stoned asshole. Don’t fuck up my dinner party.” I am so high that I let her say it without any fuss."

As the tension escalates we're really invested in how Cassie navigates through life. We're in her corner. I liked this book a lot, even if it was a little too close to home.

My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC. Ripe was published in July 2023.