Welcome, or Welcome back! My name is Amanda and this is where I share spoiler-free book reviews and other bookish things. Thanks for visiting. Let’s get Smitten For Fiction.

This review is for a Netgalley arc of Rouge by Mona Awad. I requested a copy of this book after giving All’s Well and Bunny 5 stars.

“Rouge plays with horror and humor in a surreal, gothic tale about a mother-daughter relationship that is also a biting satire on the beauty industry.”
—The Guardian, Fall’s Most Anticipated Reads

About The Book 📚

Title: Rouge

Author: Mona Awad

Publication Date: Sept 12, 2023

Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada

Genre: General Fiction (according to Netgalley), Horror, Retelling

Pages: 384

Content Warnings: death of a parent, depression, grief, profanity, sexual content, alcohol

R Contains profanity, violence, drug use, or nudity.

About The Author

“Mona Awad is the author of Bunny, named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, and the New York Public Library. It was a finalist for the New England Book Award and a Goodreads Choice Award. It is currently optioned for film with Bad Robot Productions. Awad’s debut, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, winner of the Colorado Book Award and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Her most recent novel, All’s Well, was longlisted for the International Dublin Award and a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror. Rouge, her fourth novel, is forthcoming September 2023 with Simon & Schuster. She teaches fiction in the Creative Writing program at Syracuse University and is based in Boston.” http://mona-awad-grou.squarespace.com/about

My Review

› Mona Awad is such a unique author. I’ve never read anything quite like her work. Let’s start with the cover. I love the upside-down red jellyfish instead of a rose. Jellyfish play a part in the story, but I’ll let you discover that for yourself. “Rouge” is French for “red” and it’s all over this novel: red hair, red dress, red shoes, red lipstick.

› Rouge is “a way of being. A way of becoming one’s Most Magnificent Self. Your mother was among our most prized members.”

› In an interview, Awad said she started writing Rouge while on tour for Bunny. She had been watching lots of skin care videos and was using a lot of products and thought, this is kind of dark.

› The dedication said: “For my mother. Because what is the face, is the skin over the flesh, a cover, a disguise, rouge for the insupportable horror of our living nature.” – Elena Ferrante

“Through the hourglass, I saw you
In time, you slipped away
When the mirror crashed I called you
And turned to hear you say…Take my breath away.”
– Berlin, Take My Breath Away, written by Giorgio Moroder, Tom Whitlock (from the movie Top Gun starring Tom Cruise)

› The main character is Mirabelle Nour. She owns a shop in Montreal, Canada, called “Damsels in This Dress”. Like Awad, our protagonist has a dual heritage. Mirabelle’s mother is white and her father, who died when she was five, was Egyptian. With “skin is as white as snow”, her mother Noelle owns a dress shop in California called “Belle of the Ball”.

› Mirabelle has a secret obsession with skincare videos. She uses Universal Brightening Peel Pads, Overnight Glycolic Resurfacing Matrix, triple exfoliating Lotion Magique, Firma-Cell, Iso Placenta Shield, Brightening Caviar for Radiance, Diamond-Infused Revitalizing Eye Formula, and Superdefense Multi-Correxion Moisturizing Cloud Jelly. Her skincare compulsion is sad and a little scary. I can’t help but feel sorry for her, and find myself wishing for her to find self-acceptance.

“A secret between you and the mirror.”

› Mirrors are everywhere in this story. The ocean, the magic mirror in her mother’s closet, shiny red glass product containers. Even the mobile phones are like mirrors. As a child, Mirabelle loved for her mother to tell her the story about the girl who talked to a friend in the mirror. She loved the idea that a friend in the glass could keep her company because she was lonely.

“A mirror there all along the length of the corridor. A crack in this one too, just like in the bathroom. Another mirror, another crack.”

› After Noelle unexpectedly dies, Mirabelle travels to California to attend her mother’s funeral and help sell her condo. She learns that her mother doesn’t own the shop anymore because she had money problems and had to sell it.

› While cleaning her mother’s place she finds a box with a diary from her childhood 1988. There isn’t much written in there. She knows something big happened, however, much of her childhood is a mystery to her. She even has a scar on her forehead and can’t remember how she got it.

› Mirabelle discovers her mother had been visiting an exclusive spa called La Maison de Méduse before she died. One night she puts on red shoes and they seem to lead her to the spa where she meets some strange people. They tell her she’s the “perfect candidate” and give her a free treatment. The perfect candidate for what? What exactly is happening during this treatment? What really happened to her mother? Why is Tom Cruise talking to Mirabelle through the mirror?

› Is it all in her head? Is it really happening? Either way, the world of Rouge is terrifying.

› Characters: 10
› Atmosphere: 10
› Writing Style: 10
disjointed writing and short sentences increase the mystery and tension.
› Plot: 9
› Intrigue: 10
I never once felt like I was taken out of the story.
› Logic: 10
› Enjoyment: 10
Bunnies hopping along the path felt like a call-back to Bunny

My Rating ★★★★★

Average Story Graph Rating 4.18
Average Goodreads Rating 4.09

› Final Thoughts
• With an unreliable narrator, Rouge is a dark fairytale retelling of Snow White. This story is a surreal, sinister, and sentimental fever dream about a tumultuous mother/daughter relationship, grief, and the dangers of obsession that reminded me of Eyes Wide Shut and a fairy tale called “The Red Shoes” written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending this book for review. All opinions are my own.

Do you like audiobooks? Have you heard of Libro.fm?

Support your local bookstore while listening to great audiobooks.
Libro.fm makes it possible for you to buy audiobooks through your local bookstore. Choose the bookstore you’d like to support, and they will get a portion of every purchase you make.
Sign up with my referral link: https://libro.fm/referral?rf_code=lfm449384

Connect With Me 😊

Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram