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

tldr; a solid read, i enjoyed it a lot!

i started this thinking it would be similar to american psycho (for some reason, i think the concept of CEO-focused “thriller” put me in that headspace) but really, it’s about a woman who just let herself get manipulated by everyone who thought they were better than her because they were of a different status, and she let it happen because she thought it was what she earned/deserved. i thought this was a really interesting concept and i loved the way that it was told in a significantly more intimate way than a lot of other books that center around the themes that this did. i started out the book really disliking maxine because of the way that she spoke about her life and the people around her, but she’s really a study of nurture over nature. you can see just how much potential for emotion that she had basically ripped away from her because everyone in her life told her to shove it down.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this!!

I think when writing a pseudo-memoir, you have the opportunity to make it as sensational as your imagination allows. There was nothing sensational in here. I kept waiting for the juicy scandals, the jaw-dropping reveals, but they just never came. It was all very tame, and frankly a little boring.

I read this confessional style novel as a page turner; the story begins as the visionary head of a cosmetics company whose corporate ethos was telling women they were beautiful already - very much a female gaze corporate entity - is about to be fired by her board for something explosive, though we do not know what until much later in the book.

There is so much here: an exploration of power and ambition; an indictment of sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, and racism; an examination of women's lives controlled by men vs women, and while there are differences between the two, this novel examines and muddies that gap. The protagonist, Max, is complicated and multifaceted, and while certainly not perfect, she is utterly compelling. I don't know if it is due to my love of Jean Smart's portrayal of Deborah in Hacks or not, but I definitely see similarities to Max and Deborah.

This is a thought provoking novel that I greatly enjoyed. Thank you Penguin Dutton and NetGalley for the ARC!