Title: Rouge
Author: Mona Awad
Pages: 317
Pub date: September 12, 2023
Source: Edelweiss
Good Reads Description: From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother’s unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother’s fate—and find a connection that is more than skin deep?
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.
Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.
The pressure to be beautiful, it can really mess with a girl's head.
I didn't love the first third of this book. There was a point where I thought I was going to set this book aside. Something I rarely do. I was just so confused and then out of nowhere Tom Cruise was thrown in the mix and I'm just like, wait - what?
Maybe this is too weird for me? (Again, rare).
Anyways, once I got over that hump, I really liked this. And I appreciate all the symbolism with the mirrors, the broken and complicated relationship between the mother and daughter, and the creepiness of the whole thing. And despite pretty well hating Belle - the main character - throughout almost all of the book, I found some of her obsession with beauty relatable. I don't do extensive beauty routines, but as I read, I was like maybe I should be doing these acid peels and mists and diamond-infused eye creams... wait is that the point of this book? For Mona Awad to say to me: Hello? Maybe you're letting yourself go a little? I mean, how did you let it get to this point, where you look in the mirror and the story of your life is etched in lines in your face? I thought this was supposed to be <i>against</i> the beauty industry's pressure on us all to stay looking young?
Anyways, she does make her point eventually. I could see this making a pretty creepy movie, and I kind of hope it does eventually get made into one. And I did love the ending. The ending really made the book for me.
Finally, I just have to say it - this horror-filled fairytale is based on Snow White, not Beauty in the Beast. I mean did you even read the book or did you just see her name was Belle and write a review?
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