Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for my ARC of Rouge. This story had an interesting premise that made one look at the lengths people would go to be considered attractive.

This dark fairy tale/horror read like a fever dream that I didn't want to wake from. Such a beautifully written, well imagined and unique story. Looking forward to reading more from this author.

I feel like it’s easy to classify a book as being cinematic, but what do we truly mean by that? Is it merely a text that we want to see adapted, or does it push against the boundaries of the written word.

Reading Rouge was for me a mildly hallucinatory experience. There’s a rhythmic repetition to the prose that feels nearly synesthethic. The prismatic blues of the California coast tainted with a pulsing blood red. The coppery scents of saline and plasma and the slippery satin of rose petal.

If there ever was a book that should be a Peter Strickland movie, it’s Rouge. It’s blend of horror and magic realism, fashion and vanity, grief and longing… and Tom Cruise.

Thank you to @simonandschuster @netgalley for an ARC of this title. Rouge comes out September 12th

4.5 stars.
Rouge follows Belle, who works at a dress shop and is completely obsessed with skincare. When she learns of the death of her mother, Belle travels to her apartment in Southern California. Now, she has to deal with her mother's debt and lingering questions about the unforeseen death. Belle discovers that her mother was a member of a high-end spa called La Maison de Méduse. She later finds herself at their door, being welcomed in with open arms. There, Belle uncovers sinister truths behind her mother’s death, her obsession with beauty, and what’s been lurking in the other side of the mirror.

Mona Awad does it again. This novel is absolutely brilliant!! Rouge expertly explores complex mother-daughter relationships while critiquing the skincare industry. These topics hold the story together, but they are are interwoven into a fun, dark, twisted, and magical plot. The writing is incredibly vivid and the story keeps getting better as it progresses. Interspersed throughout the book, we see a distorted and dream-like reality through Belle’s eyes; Awad’s writing really shines here. We also get disorienting time jumps which adds on to the warped, surreal version of reality. It’s just SO much fun and I completely ate it up. Rouge is filled with magic mirrors, a skincare routine with a seemingly infinite number of steps, Tom Cruise, red jellyfish, red roses, red everything, and has major cult vibes. I am *obsessed*. As much as this book feels like a fever dream, the story is wrapped up wonderfully and had me feeling quite emotional at the end.

This is one of the most unique reading experiences I have had - Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut is a very apt description. The writing was so evocative and lush, and I really enjoyed the exploration of very nuanced topics such as the beauty industry, mother-daughter relationships, and beauty standards. It was really thought provoking and unsettling in the best ways. The pacing was great, it slowly built until a chaotic and very satisfying crescendo.

Once again Mona Awad takes an idea that already sounds like it would make a decent book and she throws in her patented weirdness that keeps you glued to the page.

Mirabelle has inherited her mother's obsession with her looks, particularly, skincare. After news of her mother's sudden death, she finds that she has a lot more than the funeral to deal with. Quickly, she encounters a group of people who seem to share her affinity for skincare and an appreciation that the journey to achieving your beauty goals sometimes exceeds monetary value.

So often I found myself feeling confused and rereading parts, and this is not in a bad way. You can feel how unhinged Belle becomes throughout the book. There are some many things that are left ambiguous. I could not predict where things were going.

If you like weird, you'll want to slather yourself in this one!

very weird.. kind of funny, kind of relatable, especially the whole skincare part. as a woman i definitely understand the pressure to look young and beautiful

This is a page turner and keeps you wondering just what is going on. Life is hard and when you lose someone you love it becomes even harder. Now add a large amount of self-doubt, self-criticism and a good dose of never feeling good enough and you have the makings of a very unstable character. One who is always on the look out for something to make her more beautiful, more acceptable and more loved.
Mirabelle is just that person and dealing with her mother's death causes her to go searching for that which she has been not able to attain.

If you enjoy sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for another shoe to drop, this book is for you!

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for my review!

Here’s my honest review and thank you the author for giving me the chance to read the advance copy of this book.

I’m giving this book 5 stars for story uniqueness and excellent writing. I was captivated by the story & characters between mother & daughter and wanted to know the mystery behind it and was not able to guess it at all, which is unusual for me. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book.

Mystery, Suspense ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Horror ⭐️⭐️
Romance ⭐️

4.5 rounded up.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada, Hamish Hamilton and #netgalley for the advanced reader copy of this deliciously strange novel. I have yet to read Mona Awad's two other books and I really knew nothing about her books except that Bunny seems very divisive.

So when her newest book Rouge (coming out on September 12th) popped up on Net Galley, I decided to give it a go. I love strange books so I was pretty confident that I would at least like it.

Rouge follows Belle, who arrives in La Jolla from Montreal for her mother's funeral. Belle and her mother have always had this disconnect and losing her now leaves so many unanswered questions.

Belle has always idolized her mother's beauty and longed for her pale, creamy complexion, never appreciating the beautiful brown Middle Eastern skin that she gets from her late Egyptian father. Both mother and daughter are obsessed with beauty products and regimens - going to any length to achieve a flawless complexion.

When she died, Belle's mother had attained ultimate beauty and wouldn't share her secrets. Belle is drawn to a mysterious cult like spa where she undergoes their treatment. What follows is a bizarre fever dream of a journey. It's beautifully written - my favourite part was the "word slips" Belle starts to have as she unravels: kiss/kill, sever/serve, sham/shame, skin/sin, ridicule/ritual, insanity/vanity.

I expected this book to be about the beauty industry and the lengths people will go to be beautiful but it's also about deep grief, trauma and the way we can misunderstand the people we love the most. I loved it.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review. The following opinions are my own.

This book had so many layers and I found myself relating to some of the main character Belles struggles. Especially about the perception of "beauty," how heavily we are influenced by social media and the pressure to remain young. I loved the way the author weaved a fairytale like quality into the story. The obviously strained relationship between her mother and her, and how it impacted her obsessive nature to groom and cleanse and look after her skin. I'll definitely be looking out for this authors next work.

A mind-bending glimpse into the reality and lack of it in the experience and trials of grief and trauma. I cannot say enough good things about this book and it's metaphors, nor can I say enough about the truth Mona Awad uses to display trauma and the human minds ability to change reality in protection.

What gorgeous prose for a thriller cult novel! I enjoyed the culture clashes and the ubiquitous envy for beauty across age, culture, and gender.
We see the world through Belle, an interracial daughter of a beautiful French mother, who is desperate to keep it that way. Belle seems to have inherited her mother's overwhelming desire to continually seek higher beauty as she devours social advice and products to maintain her incessant skin facial treatments that burn her darker skin. Enduring the pain is worth it to Belle as she continually tries almost any product to attain the bright, allure of facial perfection. Her insecurity fails to see her natural beauty within.
Belle's memories as a child with her mother are fractured, hidden for reasons uncertain. Yet Belle does feel the hurt when her mother left her as a child in the care of her Grandmother when her mother goes off to California in search of movie stardom.
When what appears as an unfortunate accident with her mother, Belle goes to California. She is dumbfounded by the enormous debt her mother has taken on and now burdened her with. Entering her mother's oceanside condo reveals mirrors everywhere and endless amounts of red jars of one mystery skin product that her mother has purchased.
Belle decides to seek out the allure of this one beauty routine. Unknowingly, she too is drawn into this beauty cult.
Rouge is an occult thriller that preys on our desire to do whatever it takes to attain the elusive beauty of youth. It veils the evil predator, making us question who it really is, and why they are taking us on our beauty journey to our most magnificent self.

Delighted to include this title in the September edition of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley + Penguin Random House Canada for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Rouge releases September 12, 2023


<b>Rouge (noun):
A way of being. A way of becoming one’s Most Magnificent Self.</b>

What was this?? I mean, I know what I read… but really, <I>what was this</I>?!

Mirabelle, our main character, is grieving the loss of her mother, and also happens to have this obsession with skincare. Over the course of the book, we quickly see her spiral and enter this unhinged state.

I can get a sense for what the underlying message was supposed to encompass about vanity, but the execution was so clunky. It felt like I was wading through quicksand, a tropical storm, and any other kind of disaster all at once.
This didn’t have a strong or clear voice of what it wanted to be; part contemporary fic with undertones of various fairytales, but also a whole slew of speculative fiction and body horror among other things. It was just trying to do too much.

Once the narrative started to have a constant mention and delusion of Tom Cruise every other sentence with Mirabelle slipping up by using words that didn’t mean what she intended them to, I started skimming most of the prose.

Definitely a unique way of storytelling, but not for me I guess.
I had a more enjoyable time reading the synopsis than the actual book.

Thank you for this copy netgalley.
This was an interesting dark read for me. Not my usual read but the author had me engaged with her witty writing style.

Mona Awad’s Rouge is kinda weird, kinda wonderful, and a wild ride from start to finish.

Rouge is the story of Mirabelle (Mira to her friends, Belle to her mother), but more accurately, it’s the story of a mother and daughter. Miscommunication (and misinterpretation) creates an ever-widening rift between Belle and her mother, Noelle, as far back as Belle’s early childhood. Belle, half Egyptian on her father’s side, feels unattractive and insignificant to her mother. This spurs an obsession with beauty rituals and skin care that culminates in Belle following in Noelle’s footsteps in search of “your most magnificent self”.

There’s A LOT to unpack in this book, but it’s Belle’s relationship with her mother that hit the hardest for me. So much left unsaid, or not properly explained, between the two. So much love that wasn’t properly expressed. It made me sad, and I definitely cried towards the end of the book.

The writing style gripped my right away. It’s witty and clever, almost tongue-in-cheek. I loved the play on words the author used throughout the story. It really helped set the tone.

There are a few unanswered questions that I’m left with, and while I don’t need my stories to be wrapped up in a big bow at the end, these were plot points I felt were left dangling.

The “romance” didn’t work for me. It didn’t fit the tone of the story. I don’t know if it was supposed to provide a fairytale ending in this bizarre fairytale/myth mashup, or just show that Belle now sees herself as worthy of love, but it felt out of place.

Overall, Rouge was a fun (strange way to describe a horror, I know), surreal, twisted little book. I’ll never look at roses or jellyfish the same way again. 3.75 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing the ARC of this book. This review is my honest and voluntary opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of Rouge and for introducing me to Mona Awad's literary prowess! I had low to no expectations for this book when I downloaded my ARC copy, but I quickly determined that it was going to be one I would enjoy.

The book depicts Belle, who has a shared addiction with her mother, to seek products that promise the most beautiful and flawless skin. As a result, she invests in beauty products and never misses the videos of her favourite YouTube beauty product influencer. While I'm not a superfan of cosmetics or beauty products, that did not stop me from quickly appreciating the plight of the book's protagonist, Belle. The reader quickly comes to understand that Belle's desire to be more beautiful stems from comparing herself to her mother's beautiful appearance and from feeling all her life like she was ugly and less than.

Mona Awad does a phenomenal job of creating images in the reader's mind that immerse you in the protagonist's experiences. The storyline was built well and flowed, with just the right amount of text. The descriptions of characters, objects, and events were so well written. As someone who was 14 when Top Gun came out, I also enjoyed the use of Tom Cruise as the teenage love interest of Belle and thought it was a cheeky and fun touch.

Great book overall!

It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on cults, mental illness, physical violence, physical abuse, psychological abuse, the loss of a loved one, grief, promiscuity & others.

The mysterious allure of the morbid drew me once again to a book that was not written for me. This statement is not to be interpreted as a petty nuisance or as a bourgeois stance on the department of stories. Rather, the seasoned reader; the reader whose mind longs for the ghouls to show their malicious tendons in the night; the reader who wishes the grotesques spoke riddles & mumbled turmoil into the wind, will find themselves stunned into stone by the catatonically monotonous premise & plot of this book. It would be an understatement to say that I am disappointed.

As a lover of Horror in all its many ludicrous forms, I cannot help but develop sentiments of eagerness when faced with the opportunity to add a new author to the inventory. Awad’s name is everywhere; readers boast about her writing skills as though no book had ever been so well written in the history of stories before she picked her pen & drenched the page in ink. I will not shy away from saying that I have very little faith in the collective when it comes to social media’s darling authors. Certainly, it would be ignorant to say that authors whose work has become popular are not worth your time in retired Canadian pennies. There are thousands of writers around the world, it just so happens that a collective group of people feel the need to share their enthusiasm & there is nothing wrong with that.

However, here I sit, conflicted & not a little bit confused about the plot I just read. I have seen no criticism of Awad’s work that veered from praise; no single word shadowing a disappointment or lack of thrill. Once again, it would be untruthful of me to say that this did not leave me intrigued. It is human nature to feel the pull of the wave of joy that surfs the social medias in which we visit. The main character in this book, Mirabelle, is a victim of this feeling as well. Yet, so rarely does the dive pay off. I became quickly aware that I had been duped, led astray & left to rot with a story that made no sense & not because it was illogical but because it had been done before, with depth & talent; to find myself reading a semi-sewn attempt at derivative work from the fables & fairytales well-known, was tedious at best.

To begin at the start, this book is about Mirabelle who travels to the California coast from Montréal, Québec, following the sudden death of her mother, Noelle. Mirabelle is an awkward person. Her personality veers on reflective, never actually adopting any depth or sense of self. Though readers might be inclined to state that this is intentional, there is a fine line between vapid & struggling. Never once throughout the entire novel does the main character experience any level of growth or revitalization from her self-loathing. This can be read as a consequence of a poorly built character, one who has so few things going for her that there is little desire to add dimension.

This very same fault befalls all the characters in this book. Not one in the array of casual tertiary characters develops an identity all their own; there is the shop attended, the shirtless window cleaner, the fake-beard-wearing man, the lady in red, the twins, the manager, the male companions, & the mother. Certainly, somewhere among this crew, someone deserved to be written with dimension; someone merited to have a personality all their own & not be stuck in a loop of redundant dialogue & action. Hope as one might that a Horror may be written with the delicate syrup of a tremor in mind, this book fails at hitting the mark.

Mirabelle’s arrival in California allows the story to adopt a dual narrative. At once, the reader follows her experiences in real time as she attends her mother’s wake, speaks to her mother’s friends, & walks the halls of her mother’s condo. In between these events, Mirabelle recalls the childhood that shaped her; her time seated watching her mother prepare for a date with another man who promised her movie stardom, another day complaining about working at The Hudson’s Bay Company (The Bay), another moment wherein her grand-maman, spoke to her of the end of the world.

I appreciated the flashbacks to a youth, which was evidently deranged by the shadow of the ghost of Tom Cruise. That is not to say that I think the inclusion of Tom Cruise was a good idea. On the contrary, I think this aspect added a facet of lunacy that was both hilarious & succumbed the story to a Drama rather than the Horror it was purporting to be. The inclusion of the past proved to be far more interesting than any of the actual alleged drama of the present. I cannot necessarily fault the author for including a more intriguing aspect of a dual narrative. This is often the way of these things, one tends to prefer one timeline to another & the book hardly reaches favouritism amongst readers given none can agree on the superiority of the whole.

Back & forth the narrative flows until the reader has grown tired within the first five percent of the mundane redundancy of the story. Throughout my reading experience, I questioned whether or not the author’s previous work followed a similar suit. How can so many people love a writing style that is so trite, corny, & bland? Cruel it is, perhaps, to say such a thing but, regardless, it is true. This story would have benefited from being half the length. The joys to be found when reading a novella are in the knowledge & first-hand experience noting that the author has kept the fruit itself succulent & juicy for consumption. Having this story play out within a novel format dragged it down. There was no suspense, no tension or worry, there was repetition & redundancy galore & nothing else.

The sheer number of times the reader explores the very same passages leaves them with no other option than to call to mind the original works that the author has used to line her book. The red glass slippers ring true to “The Wizard of Oz” (1939). The path through the cliffs & the wood to a woman who houses sweetness, a callous representation of the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” (1812). The shiny twin bodies of the slimy red queen, shadowy forms the likes of which can be found in “Alice in Wonderland” (1951). The wishful desires of the mirror are nostalgic reminders of the story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937). The castrated reflection aiming for independence is just such a one as is found in “Peter Pan” (1953), which was originally a play written by J.M. Barrie in 1904.

The list goes on & perhaps the point of this book was to case the small plot in a magical world of familiar faces & actions so that the reader might find themselves eased through the story. I cannot say for certain, I am not the author. What I can say with certainty is that though these markers of nostalgia & similarity might ring a quaint tune, the story should not lie wholly on the backs of works that have already been done by champions of storytelling. Fables & fairytales can be adopted to find the modern consumer without necessarily regurgitating platitudes. I found the nomenclature of the Woman in Red to fit ideally with the lore associated throughout many cultures & centuries, with the Woman in White.

Awad had ample opportunity to craft a tale dark & mysterious as the ghoulish masked face in the mirror for which she drew a pound of flesh. Yet, in lieu of malevolence turned beast & instigator, the reader is met with Tom Cruise. I repeat this fact twice because there were many more important things to explore than the movie roster of the actor. Mirabelle deals with low self-esteem as a consequence of her skin pigmentation. The child of mixed parents, her encounter with the world shines light on her mother & leaves her darker skin to callous, unloved. This should have been presented with the gumption that is deserved. Instead, here we come through another long-sequenced dialogue from the paranormal spirit in the mirror whose actual name was….Seth.

What was the purpose of this? Surely, readers note the abundantly corny writing that nose dives into rocky gardens as an attempt to bring cultural awareness & link the reader’s own past childhood crushes to Mirabelle’s. Yet, this is supposed to be a Horror. This story is supposed to incite feelings of dread & malaise; one is not supposed to be wriggling with discomfort at a ghost named Seth who seems to speak kindness to Mirabelle who is experiencing colourism. Where is the fright? Where are the screams & moans of torment? Seth (a.k.a Tom Cruise) is a worm of a character who does nothing but bring down the quality of this book.

Ultimately, I am aghast, not because of the cult of skin-care-loving abusers who slurp the soul like a Windigo; escape the legal system’s clutches like a Changeling; roam the countryside like maggots the likes of which feature in any number of episodes of “The X-Files” (1993); I am aghast because this was a story about listening to skin-care regiments & reading about the main character’s walk down the same pathways every single chapter. This book is quirky in the worst way. It’s shallow & tedious & truly a lost potential. Therefore, for any readers who consume literature as I do, you may take this voluntarism of my time as freedom in yours to save yourself the burden.

With that being said, I know this book will be beloved. The readers who have found themselves eagerly knocking at Rouge’s cult door will nibble the crumbs of a treatment meant specifically for them; the sly grimy minds of the fandom of easy reading. As always, this is not said with malicious intent. The world needs all kinds of people—readers included. Though none of this story was of particular joy to me; joy in the sense of finding a story brooding & gothic like the haunting pain experienced in Mirabelle’s neglected & abandoned childhood; I am confident in my assessment that the plot is a gem the likes of which many readers will seek to possess & admire.

As for those who, like myself, need something altogether different. The darkened rocky pathway leading to the house of the banal cult will veer into the ocean wherein the detritus of the Leviathan’s passage will ask us to be brave & dive headfirst into the original & familiar encasing of the deep.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, & Mona Awad for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

3.5/5 stars. This book is released September 12, 2023. Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada, Mona Awad and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.