4/ 5 stars
What was put in this book. I started it thinking of I'll just read a few chapters. Nah this was straight crack. I couldn't put it down.

Frances Bean, is known to be a goth in her school. However when paired with her crush who is equally infatuated with her for an English project. She is thrusted into a world of White clothes, wellness parties that everyone is dying to be apart of.

This book definitely is on the darker side of YA and shows the vulnerability of younger people with how they can be taken advantage of in the makeup/health industry. I enjoyed the perspective of looking at it from an outsiders view before being thrown into the cult like beliefs. Not to mention the queer rep and it's a sapphic thriller.

The pacing of this book felt rather fast in spots and I wish we got to spend more time fleshing out some of the side characters.

TW: SA, Alcohol Addiction, Adult/Minor relationship, cult, drug use, emotional abuse.

wow, what a rollercoaster.

at times predictable, the story is still edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. it had me staying up late into the night to finish it - i was sucked in to the glitz and glamor and grit and grime of DEEP. truly, a wild ride.

I am not a cosmetics person, and the way this was headed seemed like I just would not enjoy it even though I usually love YA thrillers. The writing is good, and I love the idea of a girl getting involved in something because of a cute girl.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

I really wanted to like this since I loved The Substance but I really couldn't get into it. I don't know if I've run my course with YA and just not into it as much as I used to be a few years ago. However, I can see a younger crowd (who it's actually aimed at) resonating and liking this.

This book wasn’t for me. Overall, it was fine but nothing spectacular that stood out to me. It was very evident that it was written from a YA audience and was slow to start and a bit predictable. I can see a younger audience enjoying this a bit more!

This book was a pleasant surprise.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, as it was a quick read and a good time.

ɨ ʀɛċօʍɛռɖ tɦɨs օռɛ ʄօʀ ɛʋɛʀʏօռɛ ʝʊst ʟɨҡɛ ʍɛ ɨts a ʟօʋɛʀ օʄ tɦɛ աօʀʟɖ օʄ ɮɛaʊtʏ
ɨts a ʄasċɨռatɨռɢ աɛʟʟ ċօռstʀʊċtɛɖ ɮօօҡ ɨ աɨʟʟ ċɛʀtaɨռʟʏ ʀɛċօʍɛռɖ ʄօʀ sօʍɛ ɮօօҡstatɦʀɨʟʟɛʀs ɢʀaʍʍɛʀs ɨ ɖօ ʄօʟʟօա aռɖ ʟɨҡɛ ʟɨҡɛ ɮօռɛċɦɨʟʟɨռɢ ʄօʀ ɛxaʍքʟɛ
tɦɨs ɮօօҡ ɖɨɖ ɦօօҡɛɖ ʍɛ tɦɛ ċօʋɛʀ ɨts ʄasċɨռatɨռɢ tɦɛ tɛռsɨօռ ɨts օռ tɦɛ քɛʀʄɛċt % ռօt օɮʋɨօʊs ɮʊt ʏɛt stɨʟʟ tɛռsɛ ɛռօʊɢɦ tօ ҡɛɛք ʏօʊ ɢʊɛssɨռɢ "աɦօ ɖɨɖ tɦɨs?" tɦɛ աɦօʟɛ ɮօօҡ ċɛʀtaɨռʟʏ
ɨ sʊʀɛʟʏ աɨʟʟ ʄօʟʟօա tɦɛ aʊtɦօʀ ʄʀօʍ ռօա օռ ɨɢ aռɖ ʀɛaɖ օtɦɛʀ ʄʊtʊʀɛ tɦʀɨʟʟɛʀs ċօʍɨռɢ
ʟօʋɛɖ it

"You Belong to Me" initially lures you in with the promise of a classic "outsider finds acceptance" narrative, dipped in the glossy veneer of wealth and wellness culture. Frances Bean, the self-proclaimed goth bookworm, is a relatable protagonist, comfortably existing on the fringes until Julia Patterson, the epitome of popularity and privilege, shatters her carefully constructed world.

The author expertly crafts the allure of DEEP, Deena Patterson's wellness empire. The descriptions of luxurious parties, "magical" products, and the promise of self-empowerment are intoxicating, mirroring the real-world appeal of similar influencer-driven brands. You can almost feel Frances's initial skepticism melt away as she's drawn into Julia's orbit. The burgeoning romance between Frances and Julia is sweet and believable, fueling the reader's investment in Frances's newfound happiness.

However, the narrative skillfully shifts from a dreamy romance to a suspenseful thriller. The "dark turn" at the DEEP party is a pivotal moment, forcing Frances (and the reader) to question the true nature of the seemingly perfect world she's entered. The book effectively explores themes of manipulation, the seductive power of belonging, and the dangers of blind trust.

While the story is compelling, some readers might find the pacing slightly uneven. The initial build-up is slow and deliberate, focusing on Frances's internal struggles and her growing attraction to Julia. The transition to the suspenseful climax, while impactful, feels somewhat abrupt.

Despite this minor critique, "You Belong to Me" is a thought-provoking read that will resonate with young adult readers. It tackles relevant issues surrounding social media, influencer culture, and the pressure to conform, all while delivering a captivating story of romance and suspense. The book leaves you pondering the true cost of belonging and the importance of staying true to yourself, even when faced with the most alluring temptations. If you're looking for a YA thriller with a touch of romance and a dark undercurrent, "You Belong to Me" is definitely worth picking up.

That stunning cover immediately grabbed me and set the perfect tone for this book. It explores teen girlhood and complexities, harmful wellness culture, and class, all wrapped up in a quick, easy read. The writing style is simple but effective, making it really feel like a teenagers tone of voice and point of view. In the past few years there seems to have been an uptick in books that interrogate the wellness space and it’s really interesting to see that in a young adult novel as well.

You Belong to Me follows Frances Bean, an outsider perfectly content with avoiding the rich and popular at her school. Until Julia, daughter of the famous wellness guru who runs DEEP, takes notice of her. Suddenly, Bean is going to DEEP femme gatherings and falling for Julia. But one of those parties takes a dark turn and Bean is forced to reevaluate what is truly going on.

This was an interesting story with a sinister undertone woven throughout. It has a very cult-like vibe going on and I really liked when we finally got more into the creepy, sketchy stuff going on. I did wish there was more of a horror factor as a lot of the novel is Bean falling for Julia and growing apart from her friends. But I did appreciate the narrative and themes presented.

Bean is a good main character who goes through a lot over the course of the book. I enjoyed her arc and found it very realistic. I enjoyed how complicated and toxic her friendships and relationship with Julia was.

Overall, this is an interesting story that fans of beauty culture and cult-like vibe stories will enjoy.

Thank you to Penguin Teen and Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

First, I want to thank Netgalley and Penguin Random House for giving me the opportunity to read You Belong to Me by Haley Krischer. This opinion is solely mine. This book is not one that I would normally choose to read, but I'm glad I was given the chance to read it. The story follows Frances "Bean" and the lore of beauty, wellness, and love. Bean was always an outcast with her very small group of other misfit friends. That is until Julia starts talking to her. Julia's mom is the owner and guru of Deep, a beauty and wellness health line. Bean gets drawn into the glamor of "Deep Life," that is, until someone ends up dead at one of the parties. The book explores a lot of different hard topics (abuse, childhood trauma, drugs, alcohol). It was a decent read, 3 stars, and I would recommend it to others who are interested.

Hayley Krischer always demonstrates such an acute understanding of teenage social dynamics which then translates to a thriller plot, and this book is no different. You Belong to Me follows Frances as she becomes involved with Julia, the daughter of a wellness businesswoman. Their relationship evolves from casual to platonic to romantic, which also aligns with Frances being pulled into Julia's mom's company, Deep. Deep felt pretty cult-y to me pretty early on, but it was still interesting to read about Frances descending into it.

I think that Krischer handled Frances's and Julia's relationship very well, having them bond over legitimate shared experiences (like their lack of a father figure) and having genuine positive interactions while also making it clear that their relationship is unhealthy, especially since I was in an unhealthy relationship as a teenager and wish I had been taught about healthy relationships. We see how Deep (and Julia) changes Frances's personality and her relationships with both her mom and her existing friend group, who are toxic in their own ways too which added a nice nuance to the story (since I think it'd be very easy for Krischer to depict them as benevolent and acting solely in Frances's best interest). Of course, this being a thriller there is an unexpected death which adds even more intrigue to the story.

Lots of characters right off the bat.


Lgbtqia+
Young love and beauty products


Slow burn into the beauty world and what people may be hiding behind to find purpose and fit in.

Major cult vibes


Very namaste and wellness talk, also explaining away why things cost so much because of how they're made, feels alot like brainwashing
Along with drugs and alcohol and creepy investors. This book is a wide eyed look into the dark side of wellness


So taken aback by the amount of pressure they instill in keeping their perfect personality intact


I don't think ive really ever read a cult book before but this is something else

Such a fast paced thrill, I read it in one sitting. Lovebombed by your first girlfriend so hard you accidentally join a cult, classic teenage lesbian shenanigans. To me it was like if Lottie Matthew’s wellness cult in Yellowjackets ran a sex-driven Goop.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

Stories about the dark side of the wellness industry seem to be a thing right now, such as the movie The Substance. I read Ling Ling Huang's Natural Beauty recently and really dug it, so when I saw this book that sounded like it was in a similar vein available to read on NetGalley, I immediately requested it.

Unlike the two aforementioned examples of this subgenre, which use horror and fantasy elements to comment on "wellness" being sold to us at a great price, this book is firmly grounded in reality and seems like it could have been plucked straight from the headlines. It is a really well written account of the main character getting sucked into a wellness guru's orbit yet finding something darker there than she bargained for.

The pacing is really snappy and I blew through it in two days because I wanted to see where it was going. Without spoiling anything, I particularly liked how the author situated the main character to be able to see through what was going on when no one else was able to. I liked the book so much I grabbed another one of the author's books from the library as soon as I was done.

Bonus points for the Heathers reference. If it wasn’t for the fast pacing of this book I probably would’ve DNFed it. I wanted so badly to love Bean. I mean an gothy teen named after Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s child, how could you not? But unfortunately she was annoying and the entire story was utterly predictable.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for an arc

Some spoilers ahead:

While You Belong to Me had a really interesting premise, unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me. I enjoyed The Falling Girls by Krischer and while I ultimately decided on the same rating for both of them, I definitely connected more with her previous work than this one.

We follow Bean, a high school junior nursing a crush on Julia, daughter of famous wellness guru Deena Patterson, who runs a company called DEEP. When Bean- who is one of her elite private school's resident goths- receives an invitation to a DEEP event, she's shocked- and excited- for the opportunity to get closer to Julia. At first, it seems like a dream come true, a dazzling world of beauty and inner enlightenment. However, as Bean is pulled further into the inner workings of DEEP, she realizes everything is not quite as it seems. When tragedy strikes within the DEEP community, Bean must decide where she draws the line.

I think what caused the majority of the disconnect for me was the writing style. It just felt a little too... stilted? for lack of a better word. I'm sure it works for some people, but for me, something about the style really kept me from being able to fully immerse myself in it. I do wonder if this would've worked better in the adult genre rather than YA because maybe the writing choices were meant to keep it at that slightly younger level. However, I read mostly YA and don't typically run into this problem, so I'm not fully sure what about it didn't work for me.

I'm always down for a cult-esque/psychological book, especially if it's sapphic. The romance was pretty well done and I did like Bean and Julia together, but at times, I couldn't tell if Julia actually liked her or not. It was a bit insta-love, but that didn't bother me so much as while it was an important motivating factor throughout, the romance wasn't the main storyline.

There was also really great commentary on the beauty industry and the way it preys on vulnerable women and girls. The discussion surrounding the way wealth plays into that idea and how the rich are able to get richer by exploiting the insecurities of the working class was beautifully done. I actually haven't read too many books that explore this topic by taking it to the farthest point from a YA point of view, so that was unique and something memorable for me.

But man, oh man, do I wish that Femme- the young ambassadors group of DEEP- was able to do what I think it was attempting to do just slightly more successfully. It's pretty cut-and-dry clear that Femme is a cult. They wear all white and participate in strange rituals that require full devotion from the members. I just wish, as a reader, that I believed that I would be convinced. I've read some other books about cults, and the reason that they work so effectively is that you don't even realize that you're being pulled in until you find yourself nearly agreeing with the characters as well. Unfortunately, the whole time I was thinking, Why are you doing this, Bean? This is clearly a cult. As the reader, it's almost too obvious that it's a cult in a way that makes it less fun. While maybe it's not obvious to Bean in the moment, if it had been a touch more subtle, that would also allow the reader to get drawn in.

Bean's friends were way too forgiving, but I am happy that they stood up for her in the end- especially Ivy, who definitely would've been within her rights to never talk to her again. I did like the touch at the end that Ivy got to write her expose article, which felt like a little bit of earned justice for her. Brooks and Nico are somewhat the same character to me, they don't really get enough of their own individual storylines. Same with most of the Femme girls, other than Harmony. Kenny, Grace, Harlow, and Katrina again seem to all somewhat serve the same purpose. For them, however, I'll accept their similarities since they're meant to be representations of the cult and everyone sort of morphing into the same person.

All I'll say about Harmony is that she deserved better; that's for sure.

Kai was a very bad person but an interesting character in that he's sort of the figurehead for all these young, impressionable girls and is the mastermind behind everything. He deserved far worse, definitely.

I obviously didn't enjoy it, but the story shines with its conversation on the way men are able to get into power positions over young girls and manipulate them. That and the beauty guru aspect were the best-executed parts of the story and the parts that kept me reading. Bean's slow transformation from goth to wearing all white was a nice touch, too. I also liked it in the end when her friends reflect on how she was the one who got them all into goth culture in the first place because it showed how Bean's own understanding of events was sometimes misconstured. I think that idea could've been leaned into harder to develop her character more.

Deena is sort of a faceless entity -- which is the point -- who only really exists online. I liked her character for the intrigue she provided and how she was able to grow her company and become a savior to women by manipulating them. I wasn't shocked to find out she knew everything but I do wish her and Julia had more moments together to show what their relationship was like.

Bean's mom was nice but was also a touch too clueless for me. She expresses concern maybe like once? And then never tries to stop Bean from hanging out with DEEP. Bean's father was an interesting storyline but only pops up a few times and I sort of forgot about him until just now writing about her mom.

Towards the end, Bean's mom also mentions that it had only been 4 weeks, which was jarring to me because it definitely seemed like the timeline was way longer! I think if it had taken place over a longer period of time, that would have made more sense.

The "mystery" was a bit predictable (and I think popped up too late) but added good tension and moved the story forward, allowing Bean's view of Femme and DEEP to be altered. It was also pretty obvious immediately what had happened, though I think that that's sort of the point -- the reader knows but Bean has to come to that conclusion herself.

I didn't really love the ending. The epilogue was a little too blunt for me. I had hoped that maybe Julia and Bean would be able to salvage their relationship when Julia stood up to her mom and Kai, but nope, they break up off-page, and we just get told in the epilogue. Realistic, yes, but not the happy ending I had been hoping for! Funnily enough, I think the style of the epilogue is the best of the book and has a lot of great insight, despite that.

I don't think this is a bad book by any stretch of the word. I wanted more from it, but I think a lot of people are really going to love this. There's really great commentary on what it means to be a woman -- or even a girl -- in a world that seems to throw new products at us every second meant to make us look "younger" or "prettier." The way men use money to abuse and control girls was also thoughtfully explored. I just don't think this was for me personally!

3 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Sadly, I did not enjoy this very much. I’m settling on a 3 star review just because this is a YA book and I think some of my expectations not being met are due to age range. I LOVED the authors last book “Where Are You Echo Blue?” And I usually enjoy stories about wellness gone wrong or cult-y type books. However, this just missed the mark for me. It didn’t feel well developed , felt rushed, frustrating ending and just overall underwhelming. I will certainly try the authors next adult work. I think for younger YA this might be a really exciting and entertaining read.

This was an interesting book. I had a feeling from pretty early on how the story would end, but I was pleasantly surprised but some of the twists that I didn’t see coming. This book had some layers to it, and I quite enjoyed reading it. It was something new for me, because while I love thrillers and books that give off uncomfortable auras, I’m not a big beauty person, so I found myself entering a world I didn’t know much about, but found to be well developed. I would recommend this to friends.

I expected a lot more from this just from the premise: a health and beauty cult, a sapphic romance…

It spectacularly failed to deliver on such a promising idea.

The dialogue and narration felt very stale and surface-level. The characters’ dialogue felt very forced and caricatured.

The main character, Frances, is the antithesis of what the Femme cult entails: She is goth, she hasn’t worn white her entire life, and she cares little about her appearance. All of this is just told to us by her, it is never actually shown in a way that makes me believe it. Yet within 5 pages, suddenly she is buying into this cult. Which is not inherently bad, but I was just not seeing why I should care.

Maybe this would be enjoyed more if you are less picky than me about the “show, don’t tell” narrative device, but it irks me to no end to be told everything and not see any proof.