Rogue was fascinating and I loved the way it tackled themes like harmful beauty standards and the toxic desire for whiteness. Unfortunately Bunny was too strange for my taste, but Rogue had just the right balance of fantasy and reality for me. My main grievance is the pacing. Personally, it was a slow read and felt too repetitive and drawn out at times.

Rouge started off as a slow burn for me and then took off into that dazzling, macabre journey that Mona Awad is so beguiling good at taking readers on, and I just went along for the ride. A skincare cult, blood champagne, Eyes Wide Shut style self-exploration, but for me, it was so about Vanilla Sky-style-scars, the mother wound, an Alice in Wonderland/Snow White-like fairy/folktale horror through the trees and down by the sea, the lady in red, THAT MIRROR REVEAL MOMENT... Jaw-dropped, huge smile on my face… so dark. Hud Hudson? AH. It's all very, very good. Endings have been making me cry lately and this one did. I highlighted so many quotes and I just enjoyed this so, so much.

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

I don’t think this is a bad book by any means, it just wasn’t for me. I love Mona Awad’s writing style and she never fails to perfectly capture the “fever dream” feeling for both the characters and readers. I just didn’t connect with this one and felt bored for a majority of it. The first half was very slow paced but the second half picked up and I was more intrigued with the plot. The symbolism and meaning behind the story was pretty clear to me but I didn’t like the direction it went in the end. While this book wasn’t my favorite, I do recommend it if you are a fan of Mona Awad’s other books, if you are interested in the beauty industry/aging, and if you don’t mind the fever dream type of feeling as you’re reading.

Content warnings: death of a parent and grief

*Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC!*

Thank you to NetGalley and S&S/Marysue Rucci Books for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

Listen, I really wanted to get into this book. I enjoy the cadence and structure to Awad's writing but for me this failed in capturing my attention. I got 20% in before I decided to call it quits. I felt no desire to understand what was happening Belle or had happened with Belle's mom death. I just felt like by 20-25% of the book I should be dedicated to the story and wanting to know what happens. I was apathetic at this point.

I really would like to revisit this at another point because I own Bunny by Awad and definitely was intrigued by the start of that book.

Please don't let my apathy deter you from trying this book. You very well might find your next favorite book in this!

I am giving 2 stars because I DNF'd it but I could not bring my self to give it 1 star because the writing itself is good.

I love Mona Awad's writing, but as a storyteller, her novels tend to drag. Her books are always too long and over-detailed. She could benefit from an editor. I had the same problem with "Rouge" that I had with her previous novel, "All's Well". Both novels have too much emphasis on metaphors and symbolism. I need more of a structured story to really become engaged with the overall plot. I like the tone of her novels, but Awad tends to lose the plot when it comes to her stories. Also, I don't always the magical realism ascept in her books. This has was too heavy on fairy tales and Tom Cruise. Such a weird balance. I get what she's trying to say, but in the end I can't really say I cared about Mirabelle and her obsession with perfect skin.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Just as I thought it was heading in one direction, it yanked me toward something else. I particularly liked that it’s written in the first person, and that we got to see into Belle’s mind. Highly recommended!

considering this is outside of my usual thriller genre, i don’t have much to compare this to other than bunny and i really didn’t like bunny that much. i did actually really like rouge though, it felt more like something that could happen in real life rather than a wild fever dream. plus to me i felt like bunny left a lot up to interpretation whereas this story was pretty well explained by the end. the description tells you most of what you need to know about this book so really it’s just up to you to decide whether or not you want to take the journey but it was a pretty good one i thought! if you’re into skincare and things alike i think you’ll enjoy this. i just finished this a few hours ago so i haven’t had time to fully process yet but it’ll probably be living rent free in my mind for awhile. in a good way!

thank you netgalley and Simon Element for the ARC!

I enjoyed this quite a bit, but there were some parts that lagged or got too caught up in repetitive descriptions.

Genre: Literary, Occult, Psychological
Release Date: September 12, 2023

"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?"

This was an odd experience.
In a good way.

Think...
(here he goes with the dashes...)
a dash of Eyes Wide Shut (the air of mystery, not the orgy stuff), a bit of Snow White, a dash of Death Becomes Her (under-rated), a dash of A Cure For Wellness, smeared with a David Lynch haze.

This is a sensory experience, a horror-adjacent fever dream.
A story of mothers and daughters, the beauty industry, trauma, grief, and agency-- both surreal and whimsical, strange and heartfelt.
oh, and Tom Cruise.
There's a lot of French speaking and Tom Cruise...

Is our obsession with surface self-care a veil hiding something deeper at the core?

While a little repetitive in the first half, I feel like it recovered as it went. I enjoyed its strange vibe but felt it could have dived even deeper into its themes.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon Element for an advanced copy to review.

I can honestly say that I have never read or watched anything like this story. My mind is blown. Rouge is a story of grief, vanity, beauty, insanity, exploitation, and complicated mother-daughter relationships. This book kept my attention from the second I read the summary, all the way to the final page. Mona Awad is really talented at combining the senses to create the feeling of a fever dream, blurring the lines between reality and illusion.

Mona Awad is a modern genius when it comes to modern fairy tales. This is a beautiful and haunting story similar to Snow White, among other classics. I did not care for the Tom Cruise aspect of the novel, but I understand it.

This was my first Mona Awad novel and to be honest I wasn't too sure what to expect, but it was definitely a wild ride.
In this story we follow Belle as she goes back to California to bury her mother. During her stay, she's lured into a mysterious spa where she starts uncovering not only her mother's secrets, but her own.
I have to say, I felt like the first half of the novel was quite dragging, and I was just confused. Things were happening but I was not entirely sure why they were relevant. But when I got to the mid point, oh boy. I could not put the book down.
There's something about women going insane in literature that's just so captivating, and Mona Awad did an amazing job at portraying it. Belle's downfall into insanity, the revelation of the cult's system, her final contact and understanding of her mother. Everything about this book was just so astounding at the end. That, with the addition of Mona Awad's beautiful writing, made this book unforgettable.

As always with Mona Awad, that was a wild ride. Her writing is SO incredibly visual and visceral — Rouge even more so than her others. The colors and imagery of the story are characters of their own. I always believe it’s best to go into a Mona book without knowing too much about the plot so I won’t go into too much detail, but there are many layers here. The fairytale element along with the mother/daughter relationship and grief is brilliant.

I did feel that the first half was a bit too long and repetitive at times, but once I crossed 40% I read the rest in one sitting. The writing was still fantastic from page one, but I think it could have been cut down a little bit.

I always look forward to Mona Awad’s books and I’m so glad I was able to get an advance copy of this one in exchange for a review.

Mona Awad is utterly brilliant at spinning a psychologically mind-bending story mixed with a commentary on the beauty industry.

Belle has a peculiar relationship with beauty. Despite her mother affirming that she's beautiful and doesn't need the anti-aging products that capitalize off the insecurities of women, Belle doesn't believe her. Perhaps because every time her mom chastises her for using a product, Belle sees it on her counter a couple days later. But then her mother dies -quite mysteriously- and Belle is forced to confront the circumstances leading up to her death.

This book was endlessly interesting and kept me enthralled from chapter one. I particularly liked how the cover gained new meaning as the book went on, and how certain chapters made you go "what?" before everything began to fall into place. The commentary this book offers on the beauty industry and the concept of 'youth' is ingenious.

Go into this book knowing as little as possible and be prepared to be blown away.

After hearing so many different opinions on Mona Awad, I wanted to make my own. And I seriously do not regret it. While Rouge definitely is not my kind of book, I could not help but fall for this story that I thought was so beautifully written and enthralling.
Now I must admit that I am excited to dive into her other books and get a physical copy of Rouge once it releases in September.

Mona Awad has mastered another gothic fairy tale that will take you to the shimmering depths of the mirror where demons linger. In a dreamlike haze Belle descends on a treacherous journey of self-care after her estranged mother, Noelle’s mysterious death. She is gifted a free beauty treatment but everything goes blurry from there. Envy’s thorns will scratch you, beauty can be deceptive, and grief can drown you. Noelle and Belle’s relationship was as strained as the sun and moon, there was one section that made me tear up as Belle found a way to make amends with Noelle. I love the detail of the Noelle’s red shoes leading Belle along the cliffs, this detail brought to mind the fairy tale The Red Shoes, where the girl was taught a lesson for her vanity and was made to dance until her skin was shriveled and she was skin and bones. I loved the 1948 movie, The Red Shoes. Rouge found a way to expose a cult-like tendency of the beauty industry as clients of La Maison De Meduse seek individual journeys to seek happiness through beauty.

I listened to a lot of Lana Del Rey, Portishead, and in the final chapters I listened to Alicia Keys. Lana Del Rey had the perfect vibe to go with the fever dream and sexy darkness. Alicia Keys is a powerhouse, so she was perfect as Belle started making a move.

I was lucky enough that @netgalley & @_simonelement approved my request to read this book before its release date in September. Typically I dislike reading e-books but I have to say it was nice having something other than social media to look at on my phone. This story stayed on my mind even while reading other books and while at work.

My first introduction to Awad’s writing was All’s Well. I am a sucker for books that weave Shakespeare into the story. I loved it. Then I picked up Bunny an read it as I flew to Oregon. I basically read it all on the flight there and on the flight back, then finished it in a gas station parking lot before driving back to Pueblo. I proceeded to hand the book off to two friends, forcing them to read that dark twisted book. Then I read it again a couple months later.

Rouge was an excellent addition to my collection of Mona Awad stories. I can't wait to have a physical copy in September! I'll be ready to read it again by then.

“Beauty, when you come face-to-face with it like Tad is right now, can be very like a collision. A kind of violence.”

“No one knows what’s inside grief. Anything at all can be there.”

Mona Awad does it again.

Awad is masterful at writing women on the verge. Here, with Mirabelle, the depiction of grief is visceral. This will resonate with those especially that have had to grapple with relationships, in death, that which was a complex and nuanced relationship in life.

The Hitchcock references (both overt with rear window and covert with him pulling her out of the water and taking her back to his place (which, for me, was a delightful Vertigo callback as it is one of my favorite films.)

I know it is branded as a Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut collision in setting and theme and I agree with that assessment. However, the La Maison de Méduse gave me Death Becomes Her as well as Suspiria (the original, obviously) vibes as well.

An aside, I was delighted at the few bunny references Mona gave her readers. Bunny pajamas, a stuffed bunny, tattoo references, and black netting/veils, among them.

There are moments, like there were in Bunny, and perhaps to some extent in All’s Well, dear reader - where you will ask yourself, “what the f*ck did I just read?” the amount of times I stopped reading to say wtf midway through this book I cannot highlight enough (the TC of it all I tell you!) you will feel it is, at points, ridiculous and too far, and too much and YET, you will keep reading. And by the time you flip the last page, you will feel foolish your ever doubted her and you will be changed and you will want to go down the rabbit hole again. That is the singular magic of Mona Awad.

The premise, without giving spoilers, also gave me shades of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. This quote, in particular, was striking:
“If you extract one memory, the bad one, the absolutely unnecessary Free Radical of the Mind, the Comedone of the Soul, the one that’s filling and creasing and darkening your visage so hideously, it’s bound to affect the others, isn’t it?”

There are many themes in this book to unpack. Envy. At being selected, desired, an object of want.

Beauty standards from a white western worldview. Colorism, Xenophobia, etc.
That the desired effect of the treatment was a whitening (some would say “brightening” effect), was poignant and rang true.

This feels like a work that is semi-autobiographical in parts. Not in central plot, of course, but perhaps when it comes to family dynamics (father being from Egypt, mother being French Canadian) and how these dueling identities may have caused cruelty, ignorance, or pain. What it means to be measured against the disease of whiteness and a societal beauty standard that supports its spread.

No one does symbolism like Mona.

Here are a few of my favorites:
“I look around the dark, empty hall. The arched ceiling, I can finally see it, like a cage of white bone above us. The tank of red jellies has gone black now. All around me feels like a void. Like nothing at all.”

“His face lights up the architecture of me, my cage of bones brightening.”

“It’s like the Queen of Snow’s smile has invisible threads connected to all of our spines. And when her lips curve, we straighten.”

Envy, traumas, hate - “the inter generational variety.” How we can feed off them; How they can feed off us.

Being selected, chosen. How we pit women against one another in this flawed premise.

At the same time, the book highlights the solidarity of women and women-identified individuals. How it is possible to unify (as we have done and will continue to do) around the experience of being a woman, the pressures to be beautiful, something worthy of desire, the male gaze, to fight injustice and inequity, etc.

By book’s end, I shed tears on the beach along with our characters. The horror of aging, of poor body image, the curse of that and how it is passed generationally - the rose and thorn of mother-daughter relationships in all their horrors and ugliness but also, somehow, impossibly - the beauty of them as well.

I could spend hours dissecting and analyzing this book (the scene where the two female characters at rouge were each other’s mirror, their validation, alone. My God. The last scene with Sylvia also. And so many countless others.)

I will never look at a rose (or a trip to the aquarium, for that matter) the same way again.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this title. And thank you, to Mona Awad, for sharing your endless gifts.

My expectations were incredibly high with Rouge because Mona Awad’s other books are some of my all-time favorites. I think those expectations were partially to blame for why I was a bit disappointed by this one. By no means did I think it was a bad book, but I just could not get into it. It was repetitive in a way that made sense for the story, but that made it more of a slog to read than I would have liked. The writing was great, as she’s a great writer, but I found myself bored more than not. The environment and weirdness were both top tier though. The setting and vibe felt reminiscent to Eyes Wide Shut, which is maybe why ‘Tom Cruise’ was heavily featured. I enjoyed the commentary on what has been defined as beauty and how we have made whiteness the ideal. The idea that you can lose yourself when you’re trying to reach this impossible standard of what society has deemed to be beautiful.

Lovely, dark and written in that special, gorgeous style only Awad can pull off. I loved the themes at play here. I will be recommending this to fans of all genres.