A review by vickycbooks
Rouge by Mona Awad

I'm pretty apathetic towards this book. There were some parts I liked, some parts I didn't like. Some parts I understood, some parts that were confusing. Some parts that felt too direct, some parts that felt too subtle. 

I haven't read Mona Awad's debut, but ROUGE was...a book. Sometimes I felt like it was really deep and emotional, like the way that Awad explored Belle's relationship with her mother and all the nuances within, especially within the context of the ending. That her mother (who is white, while Belle is biracial with an Egyptian father) was racist -- buying Belle music like Walk Like an Egyptian and putting on 'ethnic' clothes like a costume. But at the same time, her mother was trying to shield her from pressures surrounding conventional beauty and similar topics, and Belle was grieving her death. 

But sometimes it felt super trite -- the way Belle obsessed over beauty wasn't explored as deeply as I liked, despite it being tied directly into Belle's biracial identity and obsession with beauty being a huge part of the book. 

Sometimes the book felt dreamy, with a rich, dark fairytale-esque quality, while other times, it felt too obvious in what it was trying to do. For example, it felt too blunt the way Awad kept integrating the ominous slip-of-the-tongues in, without there really being any direct connection between a lot of the slips-of-the-tongue (sever, for instance) to what I felt like was happening to cause the phenomenon.

I thought the plotline with Hud Hunter (? is that his name) was a little obvious, but not inexcusable. In a way, it was almost comforting; serving as an expected normality, a tiny thread for the reader to hold onto among many different confusing elements and say, "Yes, I know what the fuck is happening because at least I know/can guess what Hud Hunter is doing." Was it cliche? Sure. But cliches are fun and keep readers engaged. I shudder to think what would become of ROUGE without the Hud Hunter storyline to push it along.

I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with confusing books or storylines (other than confusing books are inherently harder to keep readers engaged, but that doesn't mean they're bad books). But I felt like it was hard to sometimes see where the story was going to go in the beginning. It makes sense in the end, but for the first half, I mostly felt like I was being bombarded with mysterious elements without any crumbs to keep me reading, other than willpower that I didn't want to DNF another book. 

The one shining part of ROUGE was all the symbolism -- it was the one thing I felt Awad did really well in a distinct and meaningful fashion. I think with the story, it would have been very easy for another writer to fall back on something overly gory, instead of building up symbolism to make something dark and creepy, but not blood-soaked. This isn't a book about blood. This is a book about hearts and roses and souls and mirrors.  

 I did think I also enjoyed the ending -- it was satisfying and a little comforting and validated a lot of the symbolism that Awad set up. But was the reading experience worth it? Ehh.  

ROUGE is a lot of mystery, a little bit cult-y, a little bit fairytale, a little bit introspective mother-daughter fiction. I think if the summary appeals to you, you should go for it, but I think a lot of "average" readers won't quite click with ROUGE. It's one of those books that you either love or you feel very apathetic to. 

I did think Sophie Amoss' narration was great and she executed a lot of the linguistic details (slip-of-the-tongues) very well, as well as immersed you in the story. Thanks to Libro.fm for the complimentary copy! I listened on 2-2.3x speed. 
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