Thank you so much to NetGalley and to Simon & Schuster for this ARC! I was thrilled to have an early look at one of my favorite author’s upcoming novels.

Mona Awad’s Rouge is the perfect blend of thrill, intrigue, and social commentary about how we grieve and the all-consuming nature of the beauty industry. As a massive fan of Bunny, I was not surprised that Awad was able to achieve a uniquely different narrative that held the same tone and voice that continues to bring me back to her writing. Similar themes of desire and obsessive self-reflection take their place in Awad’s latest novel as she delivers a narrative equal parts gothic and alluring.

The way the female protagonist, Belle, is written by way of carefully constructed grief, repressed trauma, flashbacks, and her regimented beauty routines, allows us to truly experience her slow unraveling alongside her as it plays out. The depth of Belle’s character paired with the fantastical, romanticized draw of the French spa and her mother’s signature sense of style pulls one in immediately and does not let them go as the tone moves slowly from grief into desperation and irrationality. The consistent symbolism through nods to French language and culture, old Hollywood-esque style, pop culture, movie stars, and the pervasive presence of the color red allows Awad to fully envelop readers in a literary environment that feels equal parts otherworldly and their own.

I cannot wait to see what Mona Awad does next and will continue to endlessly recommend her to anyone who loves literary fiction and flawed, empathetic female characters written in a raw, unique narrative voice.

This book was not for me. I was expecting more of a straight retelling of Snow White. Instead, it felt Snow White adjacent or referential, but definitely not a 1:1 match. In addition, I didn't sympathize with any of the characters. Their pursuit of physical beauty was empty and superficial. And then there was Rouge...which I won't describe to avoid spoilers, except to say it is an collection of mysterious souls whose provenance remains unexplained.

And I'm just now realizing maybe my biggest beef with this was that it never fully committed to being fantasy. The story could have been told without needing any fantastical elements. But given that it was, I wish they had been explored more thoroughly. What made for "perfect candidates?" Why mirrors? And why mirrors only sometimes or only for some people?

For all that, I appreciated Awad's skills. She certainly created a gothic feel, even in sunny California. And her storytelling seemed intentionally obtuse, keeping the reader wrong-footed in a way that mirrored Bella's confusion.

A dark tale of beauty culture!

Read if you're a fan of: complicated mother/daughter relationships, magical realism, and have a hatred of beauty culture in your heart.

I just reviewed Rouge by Mona Awad. #NetGalley

My expectations were high, and Awad blew right past them anyways. A dark, beautifully, dreamily written modern fairytale. Perfect from beginning to end, such a good reflection and commentary on beauty standards. She also captured perfectly what it feels like to be a pre-teen girl: the crushes, the envy, and the feeling of just wanting to be beautiful.

Mona Awad has a way of writing enticing and eerie stories that you can’t help but fall into. Rouge made me want to take my evening skin care more seriously, then seriously question myself for having that impulse. This novel pulls from conversations surrounding the beauty industry and fairy tales, weaving a dark folk tale for adults. While I wish I had more answers, I've read enough Awad to know what's left unknown and up to the reader is part of her storytelling. I can see this book doing very well in the "BookTube" community on YouTube, and am excited to be a part of the conversation.

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.