Rouge
This was a 100% unexpected read by me. I think it just happened to be on my libby and on a whim, decided to listen. It actually turned out to be relatively enthralling. The main plotline is about the main character, who’s really into beauty products and skincare, who goes to San Diego to clean up her mother’s affairs after her mother unexpectedly passes away.
She then gets caught up in her mother’s last dealings with the devil, so to speak, although in this case, the devil is hiding in the guise of a beauty spa, where they suck your soul out to feast upon with beauty treatments. She gets easily caught up in their schemes since she’s as much into beauty treatments as her late mother, and as she gets more and more treatments, her reality starts becomes more drug addled, fantasy laced and you, the poor reader, has to distinguish between reality and non-reality in her now addled mind universe.
The book wraps up reasonably satisfactorily, but you never get a lot of explanations as to how much of the spa society is really devils who suck the soul or just the main character imagining things. The vast majority of the novel is written in a quasi “is this real or is this fake” drug addled mindset, and so its a bit of slog throughout most of the novel. I wish the authoress cleaned up a bit better, but overall, i think one of the things you’ll learn from this book is all about skincare treatments and the adjectives that goes into it. there’s probably a side bar about how society forces its women to go through all these beauty treatments, but i think living in california, its not all that obvious to me. plenty of women i know in silicon valley eschew makeup and aren’t afraid of the sun.
i’d say this is something i’d see more of in asia societies where pale skin really is seen as the ultimate in beauty more so than i do here in california….but oh well.
I can’t say I recommend this book, but i’d say its not a complete waste of time.