Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Rouge

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Rouge by Mona Awad

5 reviews

caroisreading's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I've fallen deep for Mona Awad's writing. Darkly funny, beautiful, masterful. I'm still trying to absorb what I've just read, through stupefied tears.

"Rouge" is much more than horror, or magical realism, even absurdism. This is a reflective, heartbreaking story about a daughter and mother, a metaphorical lens on grief and childhood trauma. It's wrapped in something familiar to us, borrowing every reference from Grimms fairytales, and is just as disturbing as the originals.

For me, this book has an exciting start, a more dense and repetitive middle, and the most perfect ending chapters I've ever read. Chapter 30, specifically, is creative and emotional genius, and I'll never forget about it.

Without giving too much away, the Tom Cruise reference is incredible in giving the exact visual we didn't know we needed, the smiling mask covering something else.

Please give this a read if you need another mother-daughter story to heal from, like dark twisting plots, unreliable narrators, and have survived the YouTube Beauty world.

Content Warnings

ashyyy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

The only way I can describe this book is comforting horror. Like a blanket that's slowly suffocating you. The narrative voice is more poetic prose and leaves you unsure whether you've slept walked through one chapter or five chapters. It felt like a natural progression of the author's writing style from Bunny.

I didn't necessarily like the protagonist, but that doesn't mean I wasn't rooting for them. Same with the protagonist's mother. I went in loathing her and came out with an angry, but empathetic, outlook.

The whiplash ending was wild. From being tense about the treament to laughing about Tom Cruise to crying over grief in the shape of a jellyfish. What a time.

Content Warnings