Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Rouge

I loved the idea of this book, and the prologue immediately drew me in. Belle was such a compelling character at the start — the fact that she was obsessive and single minded interestingly gave her character a lot of depth. However, about a third of the way through, I started to lose interested and contemplated DNFing this. What kept me reading was a spoiler (

Egyptian mythology

) which in reality wasn’t there. It became extremely repetitive and boring; They could have cut out the 5-7 hours in the middle and it wouldn’t have mattered much. I ended up putting this on 2x just so I could get through it.

I liked the wordplay in the latter chapters (

eucalyptus / apocalypse, vanity / insanity, serve / sever

); The writing was otherwise fine, if at times repetitive. The pacing was also very weird. The start was fine, the middle was slow and drawn out, and the ending felt rushed.

Besides Belle in the first third, I didn’t like any of the characters nor was I invested in any of them — except, maybe oddly, her dad.

I wish we found out more about him or explored Belle’s Egyptian heritage more. Also, if you’re going to hint at Egyptian mythology, do *something* with it.

Otherwise, the characters were quite flat. This was probably deliberate for everyone associated with the spa, but it would have been more impactful if the book was shorter. I’m not sure the narration helped; I found some of the accents quite grating.

While I apprciate the message this is trying to convey, I really, really wish the rampant racism/colourism which Belle has also internalised was confronted head on. Instead, all we get is a sense at the end that

Belle is starting to move on

. This is what the book should have spent more time on, rather than the aforementioned repetitive middle section. I get that not every book has to explicitly say racism is bad, etc., but there was so much happening that I don’t think this point was adequately conveyed as is.

Overall, I feel like the book focused too much on being an absurd horror story at the detriment of being a biting critique of the beauty industry.

Content Warnings

drownedsewerrat's review against another edition

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Tom Cruise subplot was gross. Also why do we have to keep relisting the skincare routine just leave it in a note somewhere at the top of the book. Kept throwing new subplots in without making progress on literally any of the other ones already happening.

Content Warnings

mispaintedlady's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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