A review by ceallaighsbooks
Rouge by Mona Awad

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“Just sick, I tell myself. But no, not just sick. I know the word I feel. The one Mother taught me from Snow White that is so many bad feelings at once. That I feel when I watch Tom Cruise with any girl, when I watch Mother put on her hat with the wide brim to protect her pale face. The dark, twisting poison one that aches and eats and empties. And wants. All by itself.”

TITLE—Rouge
AUTHOR—Mona Awad
PUBLISHED—2023
PUBLISHER—Marysue Rucci Books (Simon & Schuster)

GENRE—literary speculative horror fiction
SETTING—mostly in San Diego, California with some flashbacks to Montreal, Quebec
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—mirrors, fairy tales (Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, & others), surface-level beauty, expensive skin care products, vanity, obsession with youth & immortality, the ocean, darkness & shadows, grief, dress shops & retail saleswork, mother-daughter relationship, roses, jellyfish, souls, word slips, secrets, a beauty cult, unreliable narrator, occult beauty practices, memory & disassociation, colorism, envy, inherited trauma & guilt, forgiveness, acceptance & redemption

WRITING STYLE—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕
CHARACTERS—🌕🌕🌕🌗🌚
STORY/PLOT—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

BONUS ELEMENT/S—the interweaving of all the fairy tale themes and motifs was 😚👌🏻

PHILOSOPHY—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
PREMISE—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕
EXECUTION—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

“I had seven different kinds of acid on rotation, each one for what Marva called a different ‘skin predicament’. I had the Universal Brightening Peel Pads and the Overnight Glycolic Resurfacing Matrix and of course, the triple-exfoliating Lotion Magique, a cult French elixir that's still illegal in some countries—the one with the banned ingredient that reeks of sulfur and numbs your face. I also had the infamous blood-colored Eradikating Ambrosia, which smells like turpentine and looks like fresh goat placenta. Each night I rub one or more on my face with a cotton pad, and my skin screams beautifully. Goes an unholy red. I watch it burn in the mirror while an animal scent, a smell of sacrifice, fills the bathroom like smoke.”

Summary:
“With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cultlike nature of the beauty industry as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze.”

My thoughts:
Unique, and unhinged, unsettling and utterly bold, Awad’s story of beauty and secrets, grief and obsession sucked me in like a rip tide. With less than 40 pages left in the book I thought no *way* could this story have anything close to a satisfying ending. The chaos and disorientation, the weirdness and seeming total disintegration of the MC’s entire world and agency seemed so far gone that I just could not see a way that Awad could bring it all back together. Whew was I wrong!

I could definitely see this book not being for everyone as it really pushes the boundaries of speculative literary fiction but I loved it. It definitely even had some Helen Oyeyemi vibes going on a little (reminded me some of BOY, SNOW, BIRD in fact at times). Easily a top read of the year for me.

“Well, Beauty can be scary sometimes, it can take your breath away.”

I would recommend this book to readers who can handle some seriously intense speculative horror and bizarre plot arc developments. This is a big “trust the author” type read. 😅 This book is best read seaside.

Final note: It’s definitely not weird that the MC’s name was the name I used in my highschool French class and I’ve never come across it anywhere else before, right? Like on top of my relating *a lot* to the MC for other deeply personal, uncomfortable reasons? 🤪🫠😅

“‘Red like roses. Red like blood. Red like the algae she steals from the Deep to make her look young and beautiful forever. But it won't save her in the end.’ ‘It won’t? Why not?’ ‘Nothing saves us in the end,’ Tom said, stroking my hair. ‘Not gods or shadow gods. Not heaven or the endless Deep. Not blood or cream red as blood. Rouge, as they say.’”

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

Season: Summer

CW // grief, suicide, death of a parent, grooming, colorism, body horror (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • BUNNY by Mona Awad—TBR
  • BOY, SNOW, BIRD by Helen Oyeyemi 
  • HOW TO BE EATEN by Maria Adelmann
  • MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION by Ottessa Moshfegh
  • THE SEED COLLECTORS by Scarlett Thomas
  • MIRROR, MIRROR by Gregory Maguire
  • A MIRROR MENDED by Alix Harrow
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