Rouge

Solid 3.5 ⭐️! Awad has that delicious voice that is distinctly her and while I tend to avoid saying “just keep going, it’ll make sense eventually” when recommending a book, I feel like this is the mindset you need when picking up one of her books in general.

Awad really tore up the beauty industry with a fever dream fueled passion. Reading the lifelong struggle with a beauty standard from an Egyptian lens punched me in the heart, especially since the time line shifts from adult Belle to 10 year old Belle quite frequently.

As with ‘Bunny’, less is more when discussing the book so go in blind if possible.

Merged review:

Solid 3.5 ⭐️! Awad has that delicious voice that is distinctly her and while I tend to avoid saying show more “just keep going, it’ll make sense eventually” when recommending a book, I feel like this is the mindset you need when picking up one of her books in general.

Awad really tore up the beauty industry with a fever dream fueled passion. Reading the lifelong struggle with a beauty standard from an Egyptian lens punched me in the heart, especially since the time line shifts from adult Belle to 10 year old Belle quite frequently.

As with ‘Bunny’, less is more when discussing the book so go in blind if possible.

Merged review:

Solid 3.5 ⭐️! Awad has that delicious voice that is distinctly her and while I tend to avoid saying “just keep going, it’ll make sense eventually” when recommending a book, I feel like this is the mindset you need when picking up one of her books in general.

Awad really tore up the beauty industry with a fever dream fueled passion. Reading the lifelong struggle with a beauty standard from an Egyptian lens punched me in the heart, especially since the time line shifts from adult Belle to 10 year old Belle quite frequently.

As with ‘Bunny’, less is more when discussing the book so go in blind if possible. show less

This took me ages to get through, like the literary version of flypaper or a finger trap, and was also not what I was expecting. I got the themes, don't worry Mona, but did not enjoy the experience. Belle absolutely infuriated me, and dear lord in heaven, why would anyone choose Tom Cruise as the ideal of male beauty? I did like the world-building, from 'Mother's Californian cliff top house to the soul-sucking jellyfish and roses of the Maison de la Meduse, but the story was one long, drawn-out trip combined with a criticism of modern beauty standards (which I actually agree with: who wants to look and keep looking like a sex doll?) The only lure that kept me reading was the hope that Belle's breakdown would explained in real terms, show more which would have been easier to swallow than the never-ending fairytale/mythological references.

The book's insanity can be captured in this line: “The only journey that matters in the end, Daughter of Noelle.” “Retinol?” I whisper. “The soul. A journey of the soul, of course.” And the white jellyfish in my palm quivers. show less

Mona Awad wrote this surreal, dreamy, horrifying gothic fairytale of a book that, at first, I wasn’t quite convinced was for me. I wanted straightforward storytelling. I wanted believable, trustworthy characters. And that is not what Rouge is about.

I spent about two thirds of the book thinking I was going to DNF it, just give up and walk away, not realizing that the fever dream prose was getting under my skin. And then BAM! an emotional whallop came out of nowhere and hit me right in the feels and I raced through the last third of the book, crying and gasping and loving every moment.

5 stars, highly recommend, you should read it.

Snow White? More like Snow Whaaaaaaaat!?, amirite.

This is the second [a:Mona Awad|7104825|Mona Awad|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1680614278p2/7104825.jpg] book I've read, and while I can tell from reading other reviews that they're certainly not for everyone, they're absolutely for me. After [b:Bunny|53285047|Bunny|Mona Awad|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1588043687l/53285047._SX50_.jpg|58221942] and now Rouge, Awad is officially one of my Favorite Authors of All Time™, and I'm gonna track down all of her other books.

It's neither fantasy nor science-fiction, but rather a cuckoo-bananas modern fairy tale about vanity and loneliness, envy and Otherness, grief and family. It has that same show more unsettling horror baked into it that all of the best fairy tales have, and I loved every moment of it. It goes so far into the Depth ( show less

I am struggling to review this book without being too negative, because I think there is a large audience who would get something out of it. Fans of this author's brand of "weird" or people who like reading about damaged women who are preyed on by cults would enjoy this. In the end Rouge was trying too hard to be edgy (lots of reviews describing it as a "fever dream") but it lacked substance.

Rouge is kicked off when Belle's mother dies unexpectedly in a mysterious accident, so Belle must travel to Southern California to tie up loose ends. She and her mom had this complicated relationship, most of which is either repressed or is described through her exceedingly unreliable memories. The night after the funeral, Belle puts on a pair of show more red shoes that she finds in her mom's apartment, which lead her to a mysterious spa by the ocean. After that, she starts to possibly descend into madness brought on by youthening "free treatments" from this spa that her mother was frequenting (and plowed all her money into) before her death. This is all dressed up with lots of allusions to classic European fairy tales (most notably, The Red Shoes, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, and, to a lesser extent, Beauty and the Beast and maybe Bluebeard) and some Egyptian mythology.

This seems like it could be a great satire of the beauty industry, but I found it more frustrating than enjoyable. First, it was far too long, with two male characters whose existence seemed completely unnecessary. There's a section in which her spa treatment and its aftermath, and her *second* spa treatment and *its* aftermath, are described in detail, with the same events, dialogue, imagery, etc. repeated. (I'm aware that in fairy tales things often happen 3 times, with the third time being the change in the pattern. I still think there would have been a more succinct way to allude to this idea. The middle 100 pages felt loooong.)

Of course the main character is a featureless dope with no personality or motivation (of course!). This is also a fairy tale element, and it's one that works fine when you're reading or listening to a short story, but it becomes tedious over the course of nearly 400 pages. Plus we've now had decades of woman-forward retellings of classic fairy tales, so it's not at all mind-blowing to point out that "princess" characters are hollow and bland.

Finally, what bugged me the most is that so many things just didn't make sense. If it's all in Belle's head and she's having a psychotic break brought on by grief about her mom, that's fine. However, there are elements that can't be explained by the "it was all a dream/psychotic episode" interpretation, so I think we have to conclude that there's something supernatural going on. If the explanation is "shrug, things happen in this world that we can never understand or explain" that's also fine! But writing a surrealist book is not a license to give up on trying to make its internal logic cohere. If it turns out there's an *actual* conspiracy afoot, then waving your hands and hoping all the plot holes go away is not a very satisfying strategy.

It turns out that (SPOILER) there's an evil cabal of soul-vampires led by the Egyptian god Seth who are using the contemporary beauty industry to harvest *some* souls (but they also have a perfectly legit beauty product business on the side--I guess even 4000+ year old supernatural beings still need to make bank). What? Starting to try and explain all this, and then dropping it when it becomes inconvenient is frustrating. "Just because" or "I wanted to be edgy" is not good enough. (The implication is that they have to find particularly needy/insecure people's souls to harvest, and preferably those should also be people of color [?] or maybe only self-hating mixed-race people [?]. Also, they have to find and groom these people *from childhood* so that they can eventually steal their souls 30 years later. Surely there has to be a more efficient way for soul vampires to operate and find "excellent candidates." No? Maybe not.)

Also, there was 100% too much Tom Cruise. I get it, but come on. show less

Beauty Products Addiction
Review of the NetGalley Kindle ARC eBook obtained in advance of the official Penguin Random House Canada release (September 12, 2023)

This morning, I applied three layers of an antioxidant serum enriched with Firma-Cell, followed by seven skins of a roaring water kelp essence, followed by the IsoPlacenta Shield to smooth and tighten. Then the White Pearl Pigment Perfector mixed with the Brightening Caviar for Radiance. Then of course the Diamond-Infused Revitalizing Eye Formula, the Superdefense Multi-Correxion Moisturizing Cloud Jelly, and two layers of broad spectrum Glowscreen, physical and chemical.

I was curious to read this latest novel by Montreal-born writer Mona Awad who has been previously shortlisted show more for Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, for “13 Ways…” (2016). Its promo synopsis promised a “horror-tinted gothic fairy tale.” It does live up to that advertising, but I have to confess it was the extended passages of beauty product applications (one example of several is quoted above) which horrified me more than the secret cult into which the main character is ensnared. That is likely an indication that this sort of surreal fantasy was not for me.

Mirabelle is drawn back to California from Montreal, Canada after the death of her mother Noelle. She discovers that her mother had gone into serious debt while becoming addicted to beauty treatments at a secretive spa. Belle finds herself drawn to the cult which seems to work on sort of a Dorian Gray principle: a person’s aging is somehow drawn off into a white amorphous jellyfish creature which enlarges and grows red in the process. In its final state, the succubi-like inhabitants of the spa indulge in a ritual which leaves the original person drained. Will Belle manage to free herself from the cult before it is too late.

While this sort of beauty treatment addiction and obsession is not really my genre I was intrigued enough to read this to its satisfying conclusion. Fans of the genre will likely enjoy it more than I could appreciate.

I read this Advance Reading Copy of Rouge in eBook format thanks to the publisher Penguin Random House Canada and the Net Galley website in exchange for which I provide this honest review.

Trivia and Links
There is a Q&A with author Mona Awad at Mona Awad explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships in new novel for The Next Chapter, CBC Radio, September 8, 2023. show less

I have read this book three times! Between November and January 2024, I read it through twice as an eBook, thinking I’d write up a close reading review of it for this blog… and never got around to it. So I had to re-read it in December 2025 so that I could write this review, at long last. It was important to me to finally get this written because I love Mona Awad’s writing, I particularly love doing close readings of her work, and I’ve not got this book out of my head. In fact, it became more relevant to me as, between 2024-2025 I actually dipped my toe into the world of skin care, which on my first (and second) readings I was only vaguely aware of.

Every time I read this book, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and gave it show more another star! So yes, my first reaction was 3 stars because I just didn’t relate to the skin care aspect of it, the second time I picked up more of the motifs and themes, and the third time my mind was blown by everything Mona Awad layered together.

It’s incredible to me that I read this book three times in two years and found something new to appreciate about it every time. There are very few authors who can do that for me.

It might also have helped that my third read of this was in paperback and my first time I’ve properly made the effort to annotate a physical book, and I do think that helped me engage more closely with the text and the act of highlighting literally highlighted for me the clever use of language, and how Mona creates such incredible, visceral, seductive and intoxicating prose.

I have a long blog post with my thoughts and analysis on Rouge, which you can read on my blog, if you're so inclined. show less