By the time I came to chapter 7 of this amazing dream of a novel I began to hear Eric Burden's old song SPILL THE WINE singing strongly in my head and, although I can't exactly tell you why it's true, or even begin to explain it, this novel is exactly that song, in a very great, most excellent, not-to-be-missed way.

Mona Awad has done it again!! Bunny is one of my favorite books, so I knew this one had to be good. The story follows Belle through her unconventional journey of grief after losing her mother unexpectedly. This book was well written and kept me guessing with every page. The story was relatable in some aspects. The twists and turns had me questioning everything I had previously read and I never knew where the story was going to take me. The ending wasn’t my favorite, but it made sense with the story. Overall, I really enjoyed the wacky trip this story took me on!

What sets this book apart for me: the characters, the writing style, the twist on the genre. I love the writing style in this, I love the genre-blending. I love flawed and relatable main characters. Thank you for an advance copy! I'm excited to tell the people I recommended Bunny to!

I loved this book! It is definitely a slow burn type of book. It’s not too overwhelming with the horror but it’s definitely there. I am interested in reading Bunny by Mona as well.

I couldn't finish this book! The fairy tale allusions were too on-the-nose predictable, as was the main character's descent into madness. When Tom Cruise appears in the mirror, I had to stop. Awad is obviously a great writer (I loved Bunny), but this book (to me) was a disappointment.

Skincare-obsessed Mirabelle Nour has just lost her mysterious, enigmatic mother, Noelle. Having made a home for herself in Montreal, she finds herself back at her mother’s home in La Jolla, California to pick up the pieces. During the funeral, an even more mysterious, eccentric woman clad in red offers Belle the first clue in what happened to Noelle. A house on the cliffs. A spa, they say. Promises of clear skin, clear minds prove too much to resist. What ensues is a dark Gothic fairytale, tinged with horror. We watch Belle descend into insanity as she pursues answers, and, well, the Glow. Did I say insanity? I meant vanity, of course.

🥀🥀🥀

This story is an unflinching critique of the social-media-fueled beauty industry, as well as an intimate portrait of the sometimes fraught nature of mother-daughter relationships. The discussion about how identity plays into beauty standards was super engaging — Mirabelle being of Egyptian descent on her fathers side, French on her mothers. I’m like 2 kinds of Western European (French, Irish) by heritage so it felt almost like a privilege getting to learn about the complexity of being from diverse ethnic backgrounds in the context of a culture that tells us that no matter what, we are never enough. I heard comparisons of Snow White and Eyes Wide Shut and I want to confirm those but also add many aspects were Lynchian in execution. Or should I say Awadian? Either way, this novel is eerily, beautifully surreal with an undercurrent of dread running throughout. 🥀🖤

Simply put, this was beautiful. I can’t wait to pick up a physical copy. I hope my mood board communicates how eerily gorgeous the whole book was.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my eARC in exchange for an honest review. 🖤🌹

More like a 4.5 star, I loved this! So many fun horror bits with really prescient satirizing of beauty culture, my only gripe is that I thought it seemed a bit too similar to Bunny, but I also loved that book so it’s not a huge complaint,

ROUGE left me at several points gasping for air. If you've read BUNNY or ALL'S WELL you know the reaches that Awad will take you, but there's something very new and even more out there with ROUGE.

There's a tautness to the story where you know something's coming, but I think the reveal was so haunting in the best way! I'm not sure if it's a disservice to say I'd like to see it enacted on the big screen, but there is something so visual, sensuous, and silent-screaming about a lot of the unknown tension in this book.

As to be expected, Awad nails the unhinged woman like she defined it. I think she actually does it best here in ROUGE. It's to the point where we're so in the MC's head that we can auto-reflexively substitute the words we know she means. She's inducted us into her language and thoughts, and it's FUNNY!

As a quirky side note, and as @litulla noted, there is a lot of #TomCruise in here, to the point where if it's made into a movie, he definitely needs to star as himself in it.

Out of so many fairytale retellings, Rouge is my new favorite. It’s less of a retelling, more of a creative story with fairytale elements woven in. I especially enjoyed that there isn’t a specific fairytale that is singled out. Rouge draws from many different fairy and folk tales across cultures so that the elements are familiar yet present as something unique. It has everything I love - perspective from a different character, redefined protagonists, darker elements, challenging traditional values, etc. all set in a story about mothers and daughters, grief, and the beauty industrial complex.

I throughly enjoyed the whimsy, humor, and absurdity. The combination worked so well to create a magical story that had tension and darkness but was also amusing. I would highly recommend Rouge for fans of modern fairytales, critics of the beauty industry, or anyone else burned out from #beautygoals.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon Element, S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books For this ARC of Rouge by Mona Awad.

I admit to being an outlier and feeling disappointed in this book.

I practically salivated at the description of “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.”

The book did indeed fulfill this, but with too much noir/nightmare dream sequencing and symbolism such as the mirror, red-pulsing, whitening-brightening skin, Tom Cruise (Hollywood, Eyes Wide Shut, Cult), etc.

It’s not that the symbolism did not resonate with me. I am a woman who has had a tumultuous relationship with my own vain mother and who has gotten lost in the desperate chase for Beauty that only grows more hungry with each perilously aging year, as with Belle and her mother, the danger in the mirror and at the spa. I am deconstructed by it, literally and figuratively.
I did not enjoy being trapped in an ongoing, relentless atmospheric nightmare of one character’s experience with it. I would rather it have had more lucid and explanatory comparison moments.

In Eyes Wide Shut, the film, the viewer is shown a parallel dream to the real-life elite party that Dr. Bill attends. A reality to explain the dream. In Rouge, I had hoped for more of a literal narrative to go along with the allegory. Even to the last page, we are still in a fantasy.

- I took from this book that chasing beauty is a nightmare, and giving yourself over to the cult of Insta-skincare and ever-evolving cosmetic treatments will be soul-stealing. And that despite what the world demands of women’s appearance, how it affects us begins with our relationship to our mothers.

I gave three stars despite the disappointment for such fierce and fantastical writing as well as for the author’s effort to expose the emotional danger in joining our societal beauty culture.

This is a gothic fairytale about a mother/daughter relationship interlaced with the obsession of vanity and trying to come to terms with grief. While this is more of a slow burn, Mona keeps you entranced page after page. There are some nods to Bunny, but this book isn't as violent. If you loved reading Bunny, you will love this book. I really enjoyed this and will probably read every single thing Mona writes in the future. 5 stars

Thank you to Netgallery for this ARC

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Rouge by Mona Awad.

What did I just read?? I don't even know what genre to put this under. Does Barnes and Nobles have a shelf called Fever Dream/Nighmare/Unhealed Trauma?

Belle, a woman utterly obsessed with her morning and nightly multi-step skin care regime, has just lost her mother to a tragic accident. Riddled with grief and unanswered questions, Belle gets an opportunity by a strange woman to have some incredibly high end and sought after beauty treatments done.

The color you better get used to is red, and I also recommend staying as grounded as possible while reading this, because it's hard not to get pulled into the absolute insanity of this book. Did I fully get it? Nope. But did I enjoy it? I'm not sure. However, it was unique and could make for a very haunting October read.

This is my first book from Mona Awad, and certainly won't be my last. I'm already anticipating picking up Bunny. Rouge is a book I feel begs to be re-read, and I have every intention of doing so. Reading this was a like holding a fun house mirror to view society's toxic beauty standards, as well as the complex mother/daughter relationship, vanity, loss and grief. The blurb describes the book as "Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut" and while that's incredibly accurate, for me it felt a bit like watching Susperia with it's dream-like surrealism. Rouge is like nothing I've ever read before, this beautiful fever dream of a book. It's genre bending, being a mix of gothic/horror/fairy tale and something you can't quite describe. I went into this totally blind, and feel it's the best way to consume the words expertly crafted. I can't recommend it enough, and will be buying the physical copy as soon as it's published this September.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon Element, and Marysue Rucci Books for the e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this book! It’s a slow burn but intriguing horror novel that simmers under your skin. While it’s not an outright horror novel, it gives you a sense of foreboding, knowing something sinister is working in the background. If you’re a fan of the cult classic movie “Death Becomes Her”, you’ll love this book.

Rouge was stunning. Mona Awad just gets it. She writes horror in such a nuanced, understated, weirdly feminine way. Nothing is obvious, immediately violent or too in your face. You feel the threat crawl under your skin way before you see it, and you know you’re in danger long before the danger says “hey, how about a free facial?”.

In Rouge, there’s this culty spa full of creepy rich people; you don’t really know what’s going on, but you know they’re doing some shady sh*t to look so pretty. And we have a grieving main character obsessed with pursuing impossible standards of beauty, who has hated the way she looks since she was a small child. The narrative explores themes such as trauma, grief, mental health and race as well, though I’d say these are only superficially tackled.

THE VIBES
Eyes Wide Shut (Tom Cruise is a big part of this story! What the heck, right?) meets The Love Witch meets Suspiria meets Stanley Kubrick, or any other retro, warm-toned film set in California. Even though Mona Awad doesn’t waste much time describing visual elements, I could “see” this book very clearly.

THINGS I LOVED
Much like Bunny, everyone is weird and unsettling. The atmosphere is just sizzling with tension. Creepiness and glamour are one of my favorite combinations in books and you definitely get it here.

THINGS I’D CHANGE
I think the ending (or rather the conflict resolution) was a bit rushed. I wanted more drama, sue me!

YOU WON’T LIKE THIS IF
You need to know all the answers. You don’t really get an explanation about how things work, so if that irks you, I wouldn’t go for it. This is an I’m-here-for-the-vibes-and-subtle-social-commentary kind of read.

ALL IN ALL, DO I RECOMMEND IT?
100%! If you love weird books, creepy cults, and Mona Awad’s gorgeous writing, this is most definitely the book for you.

What a bizarre, beautiful book. If Bunny was falling down the rabbit hole, Rouge is stepping through the looking glass. A speculative, surreal, fairytale of a story, we follow Belle, a beauty obsessed woman whose otherworldly beauty of mother has just died. When Belle goes to her mother’s home in Southern California to sort out her affairs, we begin to discover the deeply strange and magical pull the quest for beauty has had on Belle. This book is absolutely incredible. Awad’s writing is fresh and compelling, and this story is truly unlike anything else I’ve read. This book also has incredible depth. Awad impeccably tells this trippy little story while also commenting on subjects such as the relationship between racial identity and western beauty standards. She satirizes and comments on the modern beauty industry the way she did for the dark academia genre in Bunny. I found myself feeling hypnotized by this book, reading it felt like a trance that I simply could not pull away from. Mona Awad is a genius and I will read anything she writes.

ARC provided by NetGalley.

Rouge was everything I thought it was going to be.

This book read like a fever dream and the writing is so beautiful and really keeps you hooked, can't put down the book hooked. Belle was such a fun character and going with her on the journey for beauty was wild! Is Tom Cruise reading these reviews? Mona put so much detail into the transformation and the imagery of the jelly and the sea, scenes I won't forget for a long time.

I really enjoyed this book and will be buying the physical copy once it's released!

Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me an arc!

WOWWWWWWWWWW! The gothic fairytale of my dreams! This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and I loved it! I even read it in one sitting! Mona Awad is one of my favorite authors--I've read all of her books and this one might be my favorite.

This is a truly surrealist gothic fairytale, and, therefore, SO Mona Awad. The story creeps slowly, making the descend more horrifying through the sheer inching pace. I’ve found that all of Awad’s books have, in some way, themes of loneliness tied to self-perception and this is no exception. She touches gorgeously on the feminine experience and mother/daughter conflict while dancing you through a grotesque display of the horror of beauty. Her light but firm hand on Eurocentrism stays constant throughout the story. Tom Cruise is a big thing in this book? I know next to nothing about the man but I’m choosing to believe it’s his involvement in basically-cult-activity that makes him relevant. This takes place somewhere I spent a lot of my youth which would occasionally throw me out of the story, but that’s no fault to the text itself. My only real gripe is that we don’t experience much time with the initial personality of our protagonist, making her decent less impactful than it could’ve been.
To those who are looking for Bunny: This book is slower than Bunny. It is more understated than Bunny (although, this means little. It’s overt as shit, Bunny was just absolutely insane). It is not as violent as Bunny. However, it possesses that same murky, milky, dreamlike uncertainty that I adore in both texts. Incredibly read.

A gothic fairytale about a girl who spirals down her mother’s life and her obsession with beauty, envy, grief, and vanity... all through an Alice in Wonderland/ A Cure for Wellness/ David Lynch kind of style. Mirabelle has a beautiful mother, in fact she grew up completely obsessed with being as beautiful as her mother. Years later they are estranged but then Mirabelle is told that her mother died and now she has to come back home and face her childhood... and the strange life her mother lead including the strange mansion filled with strange, beautiful, and wealthy people who are obsessed with obtaining beauty. Mirabelle has a strange relationship with her mother, hating and envying her for her beauty, but loving her all the same. Mirabelle is now obsessed with finding out who these people were in her mother’s life... how her mother is connected to this strange house in the cave and how her mother was a devote to this spa and how Mirabelle herself is finding herself being obsessed with their “treatments” that would make her just as beautiful.... yet beauty has a cost and if Mirabelle truly wants to have it she’ll have to uncover her childhood and face the question if whether or not she really wants to give everything up for beauty. This was a strange one, it definitely had a gothic fairytale kind of style especially with how fairytales, beauty, princes, shadow men, and magical mirrors all played into it. It also tackles the question of how far we are willing to go to fit into a standard of beauty, of the complicated relationship between mother and daughter as well as complex fixation we have on being perceived as the most beautiful, of being perfect and the price we pay for it. it had an interesting ending and certainly was a unique read.

*Thanks Netgalley and Simon Element, S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*