A review by maziodynes
Rouge by Mona Awad

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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