Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Rouge

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Rouge by Mona Awad

40 reviews

maziodynes's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.25

Read this one for book club!

I really enjoyed Ms. Awad's writing style paired with her unreliable narrator. This was a surreal story centering around a mixed race woman and her relationship to her white mother and the beauty industry. Over the course of the book, it spirals down into a warning of a metaphor about grief and owning our traumas to heal (rather than escape)

Belle has this ritualistic obsession with skincare and a society that fetishizes differences while trying to sell a fantasy of being perfect and uniform (young, beautiful, white) even though this is impossible. The cult in this book preys on people like her by GIVING them the fantasy - however, to do this, they

take away something that makes us who we are, that makes us human. They say this is what makes you "ugly."

I absolutely loved this concept and thought it was executed well. The ending was beautiful.

My biggest complain was the pacing. Her writing style is so good, so readable, there were just too many words for the story she wanted to tell. It could have been more concise.

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yilliun's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense 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

3.0

Awad is known for her “weird” stories that have the reader questioning what’s real and what’s imagined. This book definitely fits into that description.

The deeper Belle got into Rouge, the harder I found the storyline to follow. I just felt confused about the last quarter of the book. I was also expecting the body horror to be a bit more explicitly gross, but it was more of a mind trip than anything else.

I did think it was an overall okay commentary on the beauty/ skincare industry.

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abicaro17's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Belle is a stylist obsessed with beauty and skin. When she finds out her mother died in an accident, she flies to LA to face her past and confront the mysteries of her mothers odd, rich, skincare obsessed friends. This book is weird. Like no better way to say it: weird. Belle is basically so obsessed with being beautiful like her mother that when she finds the skincare "cult" her mother was a part of she immediately joins hoping to be as beautiful as her. This is a book of envy, vanity, madness, and manipulation. It is veryyy slow but it's just weird enough to be original and pretty good. I think my main complaints are with pacing and lack of explanation or a thoughtful ending. Like we never find out pretty much anything about Rouge and Hud Hudson or his brother. If you liked A Certain Hunger you'd probably like this.

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caroisreading's review against another edition

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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.

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minamouse's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.0

I.....

I don't know what to say about this book. I was so confused, but drawn in. I think I actually ended up finishing the book with more questions than answers. I think I might actually need to reread this book, because I just felt like I missed something.

Are they vampires? How long was that house on the cliff and why could no one remember how to get there. Was her mom's soul somehow in the shoes? Why jellyfish??

Even in all that confusion I still think this book deserves a 4 out of 5 ⭐.

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