Gosh, unreliable narrator tropes are so fun! I honestly couldn't tell for a while if she was <i>meant</i> to be, at first, but as the story goes on it becomes apparently clear that Enka was just... incredibly selfish in so many of her choices. Poor Mathilde, poor Logan. These characters are such superficial interpretations of themselves, seen through Enka's eyes, that as the reader you're almost not fully invested in how badly she treats them until others begin to say something. Overall, while I don't know that this would be a book for everyone, I know exactly the type of people that I should recommend to to.

Needs some grammatical editing, encountered a couple typos and repeated sentences about halfway through the book.

I wish I could scream from the rooftop about how much I loved this book! The characters may not always have been perfect or incredibly likable…but the story as a whole was soooooo perfect to me!!! I did NOT want the story to end!!

I wish I could give this 10 stars…but a 5/5 will have to do!!!

Thank you to the publisher for an early review copy of this book!!!

If there's one thing about me, I'm going to be reading a book about a toxic female friendship. The sophomore novel of Natural Beauty's Ling Ling Huang follows best friends Enka and Mathilde and their ventures in the art world.

I think that books about art (visual, music etc...) are extremely difficult to write. Not only does the author have to write well, but they also have to have interesting ideas about other artistic media. I ultimately found the descriptions of art in this book to be a little bit trite. The story relies on Mathilde's genius, and I couldn't help but feel like it was flat.

Additionally, I wasn't very convinced by the relationship between Enka and Mathilde. They became close very quickly, and their conversations just seemed awkward.

The later on plot elements about empathy technology really set this book apart from others, and I am curious about the exploration of these themes, but I just couldn't get there. To me, this only really works if you buy into Enka and Mathilde's initial relationship, and I just couldn't push past that.

I liked this book a lot !It was intriguing, and kept me hooked from the start, There were a lot of twists and turns here, and i loved being on the edge of my seat. The friendship themes and the storyline in addition to being so thought provoking was so good and such a good mix

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, and especially the author for this ARC in exchange for my honest review of the book!!

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

This was an incredible story. I had no idea where it was going but I devoured it. The characters were intense and deep, the concept unique and fascinating, and the twists constant.