Sheer is a story of female ambition and desire told through the founder of a Glossier-type beauty company. This book really shined in the last third-- it had renewed energy, a synthesis of ideas, and a page-turning conclusion that brought the faux-memoir style home. I just wish the first half had a bit more of that excitement and had more twists and turns that one would hope for with a tell-all pitch. I found the themes though to be fresh and thought-provoking.

Thank you for providing this ARC! I will be including my review in my June/July reading wrap-up on my TikTok account.

A compelling insight into the mind of a results-driven, morally ambiguous female entrepreneur. I thought it was engaging from the start and the split timelines worked well, building suspense up to the reveal (pun intended). I liked that you were made to trust the narrators point of view, but *spoiler* that in the end it became clear she wasn’t reliable. I did feel that the reveal of what she had done could have been made bigger - in the end it was only a very small portion of the book, but I would have liked to see more of the aftermath and exactly what was being said online, and to see more of the scope of the scandal (eg news coverage, how widely spread it was outside of social media) to make the encounter with the child and mother in the park feel more real. I thought the ending was slightly rushed - her *spoiler* come to Jesus moment could have been more drawn out again; the pacing was slightly rushed at the end! Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to adults looking for books about morally ambiguous women (a category I personally love). Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

This was such a fascinating read! This book follows Max from ages 6 to 40 where we follow her journey of building her beauty brand. This story was so believable that there were times I had to stop myself from searching about the main character. Max is so real and powerful, you will not want to put this book down.

One of my favorite literary fiction reads of the year so far!

Once I started reading SHEER by Vanessa Lawrence, I couldn't put it down. Maxine (Max) Thomas, the founder of the cult makeup company Reveal, has been suspended by her own Board for something scandalous. To pass the time while the Board deliberates on her future, she writes her story, starting from childhood and up to the present day, giving us glimpses into who she is and how she got to where she is today. I was very into the fictional confessional- and autobiographic-style of this one.

A lot of buzz about this one but, while I enjoyed it, I'm not sure I was compelled enough by the protagonist to worry what happened to get her ousted from her company. However, the setting of a Glossier-like corporate beauty brand is spot on in today's culture. I think there was just maybe too much of an emphasis on her backstory and rise up through her own passion for make-up. The pacing was a bit draggy, as the present timeline focuses on the protagonist post-fallout, where she's spinning her wheels, and the past sections move a bit slowly, too. Beautiful cover!

perhaps because i just read a similar b0ok within the horror genre with many twists and turns, this one fell flat for me. it was good writing, that goes without saying, but the payout for the amount of investment they have you go through just didn't seem worth it by the end. hm.

This book feels like it was written for me. Complex power dynamics and a deeply flawed but (almost) sympathetic point of view character make this a compelling read- and the meditations on the beauty industry (specifically the intersection of the beauty industry and queer femininity) were insightful and timely, despite being set about a decade ago. A must read for fans of R F Kuang's Yellowface or Anna Dorn's Perfume & Pain.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dutton for this review copy!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Penguin Dutton for the opportunity to read a eARC in exchange for a thoughtful review. Sheer is a fascinating book and one that I found extremely engaging to read, even if it was imperfect. The narrative is presented as a memoir being written by the main character, Max(ine) Thomas, whose career is falling apart after a scandal that we learn more about as the plot progresses. We hear Max recount her career as she leads us up to the final moment, where we find out which direction her future will take and what the consequences will be for her actions.

There is a lot that Sheer does very well. For one, the voice is strong and we really get a sense of Max as a character and an understanding of where her hostility and guardedness comes from. Still, you do get the sense early on that she may not be a reliable narrator of events. The reveal at the end of the book regarding Amanda, for example, felt foreshadowed because of the language Max uses to describe Amanda early on in their relationship. I also think Sheer has a lot of valuable things to say about the experience of being a queer woman when it wasn't fashionable to be a queer woman and what that means in an age of online media where broadcasting the labels associated with your identity has become a form of social currency. There is an inherent tension between Max and the women younger than her that she can never quite smooth out because her perspective is so tied to her experience.

I thought the author did a solid job at hinting that something might be missing from Max's recounting of the events involving she and Amanda, without hitting you over the head with specifics too early. The dualing perspectives between Amanda and Max both feel grounded and true to their characters. Since the book is on the shorter side, I did think that some of the side character plots suffered from lack of air. Ellen was central to the action but I never felt emotionally connected to her story or impacted by her choices. The role of race in the story also felt, at times, a bit shallow. I wanted Max to be forced to reckon a little more with the version of herself that she was presented with, particularly with regard to her lack of intersectionality.

Sheer does owe a lot of its DNA to other lesbian narratives, I thought a lot about the movie Tár while reading this book, and those similarities did help me predict the "twist" in the last pages. I was hoping the author would take things in a different direction, but nothing felt unearned or out of left field. All in all, I was left wanting more from Sheer, but what the book does give us is definitely wildly entertaining and, on a more serious level, presents a perspective on girlboss feminism, lesbian identity, and power dynamics that is well worth reading and engaging with.

Sheer reads like a memoir, and I was all for this book and Lawrence's storytelling. It is creative and captivating. I was invested from the first few descriptive pages of the main character's childhood. I felt like I was right there beside her as she navigated life. Excellent writing and a good choice for a book club to discuss! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The good is that this book had great commentary on the beauty industry, queer experience, power dynamics, misogyny, women in the workplace, and even a little bit about fetishization of Asian Americans and other “exotic races,” as the book says.
The neutral is that this book could barely hold my attention. I am not interested in the minutiae of running a beauty company and creating and launching products, and it was tough to slog through that to get to the meat of the story! It’s also almost impossible to find one fully likeable character in these pages, which puts a damper on the whole reading experience. Overall, this is not a bad book by any means, and I’m glad I read it but it took more effort to stay engaged than I expected.

It is impossible to be an ambitious woman. Max is born in 1975 and is inspired to create a beauty brand at the age of 6. She starts doing makeup for women in high school, then during college she is able to secure an angel investor which alters her course forever. It’s a cult-following beauty brand, and cult stories never end well, so they?

The entire time she is closeted. The narrative spans Max’s life from age 6 to age 40. Interspersed with a 9 day period in 2015, we are learning the formative experiences for her building her brand.

This story was so engaging and so realistic that only 30% of the way through the story I started searching the author to see if she had experience at a female entrepreneur unicorn company. Surely she worked at Away, at Glossier?? This story is a deep dive in those types of stories, you can create a culture and create a monster. This is such a powerful story; you will find no heroes or villains. Max is a compelling character. She is so very real.

I am filing this as historical fiction. We do love to put a female entrepreneur on a pedestal and then knock her off of it.

This is a very nuanced story with so many layers. And I promise you won’t be able to put it down. When I was watching the Pee Wee Herman documentary I couldn’t help but think that if he wasn’t closeted, it may have played out differently. This may be true for this fictional story as well.

This is sure to be one of the best LitFic books of 2026.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC. Book to be published January 12, 2026.

4.5 stars
I wasn't sure what this book was going to be, from the offset it felt very different from a lot of books I had been reading recently. It reads like part memoir-almost like a fiction/ nonfiction novel. Set in 2015 Max Thomas is the founder and creator behind the makeup brand 'Reveal', pursuing and largely succeeding for decades we meet her after a public transgression. We don't find out what this is until later in the story and this largely kept me turning the pages, which probably reflects that morbid fascination we have with celebrity culture. But Lawrence's writing style and rhythm was really easy to get lost in and even though I didn't find Max to be a very likeable character, she did keep me intrigued.
There were moments that felt uncomfortable reading the attitudes towards women and sexuality in the beauty industry and what people turned a blind eye to. However it was really interesting how Lawrence created this anti hero and how Max's own journey gave her this power as queer business woman but still ultimately lost sight of how she impacts those without her status. It's a really interesting debate of cancel culture but also the need to understand other people's experiences and struggles, not just our own. Really couldn't put this book down and cannot wait to see what Lawrence writes next.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for gifting me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I love a fictional autobiographical writing style and this was exactly that. You feel like you're reading a documentary about a person's life and it's so fun to get immersed in that world for ~350 pages. There was so much to unpack in this book about misogynistic stereotypes and what women willingly allow to happen to them because it was they genuinely believe they deserve. I am a female in a male dominated industry with a regional leadership role and am much younger than each of my counterparts, so I could really relate with a lot of this subject material. It made me really grateful that I have always placed myself and my work ethic first in order to dispel some of these same issues that other women probably still deal with on a daily basis. I also took a special interest as someone who consumes a lot of cosmetics content on social media and that gave me another unique perspective on some of the subject material. This author took a risk with this story and I really enjoyed the payoff.

I actually really enjoyed this one, the main character to me seemed to be purposely unlikeable. We are led to believe that the main character is not at fault for the majority of the book but when new information is revealed we are made the question the main characters entire story. I personally loved that we didn't know what to think by the end of the book. I gave this book 4.5/5 stars.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of Sheer.

This was a really strong story of an antiheroine -- the book felt very in the moment of 2015 in a good way.

Maxine Thomas is the founder of Reveal, a highly coveted makeup brand. When we meet her in 2015, she is under fire in her own company and waiting to hear if she will be fired by her board of directors. Through the nine-day period leading up to the board meeting, we learn how Max got to where she is. Her childhood, days tinkering with makeup in her dorm room sink to create her products, her personal life and her outward disposition as the leader of her brand.

While Max wasn't always the most sympathetic main character, I did find her interesting and engaging. Sheer delves into a lot of the politics of working as strong woman (and a queer one at that) in a patriarchal society. Max is told to hide parts of herself "for the sake of the brand." It's a well told story of a woman in the workforce trying to get her artistic vision to come through and the hardships she faces along the way. Four stars.

I received this advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.

thank you NetGalley for this ARC!!

I actually really enjoyed this! though times have changed a lot since 2015, sadly a lot of the things regarding womanhood in this story are still true. I liked that the ending wasn’t the happy one that you’d expect. it ended on a more somber note which just reiterates the misogynistic issues highlighted throughout. the last 2 books I’ve read have had characters that lacked depth. Maxine was the total opposite. I felt like I KNEW her and felt all of what she was feeling. I also LOVEDDD the fictional autobiographical style that this had. similar to seven husbands in a way. this made me sad, angry, hopeful, and proud to be a woman all at the same time. STAND ON BUSINESS MAXINE!! 4/5!
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Excellent commentary on sexuality in the 1990s to present day - don't ask, don't tell.
Excellent commentary on makeup - covering up vs enhancement.
Queer Women aging in business. Queer Women starting in business. Queer Women taking up space. Queer women being authentic - where does that happen?
A great read!

I was excited about reading this book, seemed like a great premise and an interesting story. I was enthralled through the first half, but somewhere around the middle, I stopped caring about the FMC. She became hostile and unlikable and I didn't really want to finish the book. The interactions with the antagonist made me actually root FOR the antagonist and the abrupt ending was slightly jarring.

An interesting read, but too clinical in the last half.

In Sheer, Vanessa Lawrence takes aim at the glossy façade of the beauty industry—and the people who thrive within it—with a narrative that is as cutting as it is compelling. At its center is Maxine Thomas, known to the world as Max, a woman who has clawed her way to the top of the cosmetics world through a potent mix of creativity, obsession, and sheer determination.

The novel opens in 2015 with Max on the brink of professional ruin: the board of the company she built from scratch has suspended her in the wake of a scandal. From there, the story rewinds, tracing Max’s journey from her college years to her reign as a beauty industry mogul. What unfolds is not just the rise and fall of a founder. Instead, we have a layered exploration of what it means to be both a creator and a product in a world that commodifies everything, especially women.

Told in first person, Max’s voice is sharp, confident, and, at times, deliberately distant. This lack of emotional warmth can make her difficult to connect with, but it also serves as a powerful narrative device. Max has learned to survive by constructing herself like makeup. She is very often seen as something polished and untouchable. The further we read, the more we understand how that armor formed, and who helped shape it, for better and worse.

Lawrence plays brilliantly with the metaphor of transparency in both the literal sense of sheer makeup and in the figurative sense of truth, exposure, and vulnerability. Beneath the shimmer and strategy, this is a story about exploitation, identity, and the blurred line between empowerment and manipulation.

Sheer is not just a scathing critique of the beauty industry.it’s a mirror held up to society. Ferocious, smart, and devastatingly observant, this is a debut that doesn’t flinch.

#PenguinBooks #Sheer #VanessaLawrence