Sarah's Reviews > Rouge

This is the best fucking thing I’ve read all year.

I laughed. I cried. I was (very) disturbed.

This is weird, and ambiguous, and never attempts to explain itself and maybe it’s just because the primary theme is grief but the whole thing just works.

I need to process for a bit. But promise to come back and write a proper review.

…

Okay I’m back. I’m leaving my initial thoughts because I think they summed up my feelings nicely. In Awad’s latest book, we follow Belle, a woman who has a complicated relationship with her mother. She is in California to lay her mother to rest and handle her mother’s affairs after she dies suddenly. They both have complicated relationships with beauty and the beauty industry.

It is, on the surface, a scathing critique of the beauty industry, in the way that it preys on the low self esteem of others while also holding up impossible to meet standards, and othering anyone who doesn’t fit the traditional white/blonde/thin mold.

But I think primarily it’s a story about grief and the effects thereof.

The writing is a 10/10. I absolutely loved not only the commentary but also what Awad was doing with some of the language later on in this fever dream of a book. There were entire paragraphs I highlighted so I could keep them in my kindle. Awad manages to match rhythm and pacing of sentences to the feeling and tone of specific chapters. As the protagonist veers further off rails so too does the writing.

I don’t know if the premise is more bonkers than Bunny, but it’s definitely out there. For a book about grief, I found myself laughing at so many parts. I will never see Tom Cruise’s face again and not think of Rouge. (Also, for those of you wondering about Seth, Seth is an Egyptian god of chaos...)

But then when I got to the end, and this sad strange tale lays all its cards on the table, I had a good long cry through the last couple chapters. Because it’s a book about mothers and daughters, and how sometimes we’re messy but the love is still there.

As both a mother of a daughter and a daughter myself it hit me right in the feels. And I think that’s where this book succeeds where Bunny had let me down a little bit. I know parts of Bunny went right over my head. I was never an Ivy Leaguer. Didn’t go to college when I was supposed to. Bunny is an experience I couldn’t relate to, but this- I got it. The craziness didn’t feel hollow. I wasn’t standing around scratching my head asking what the heck just happened.

It’s a slower paced novel, and I can see where it might feel like a drag for some, so just a heads up if that’s not your thing. But the book kept me guessing so often that I couldn’t not turn the page to see how it would all end and I thought the ending paid off in a big way.

I already have All’s Well sitting on my shelf and I absolutely can’t wait to pick it up. Rouge will be a day one buy and I’m already looking forward to re-reading and annotating it to hell.

If you have enjoyed Awad’s writing in the past, or can relate to any of themes I’ve mentioned here, this is one you can’t miss.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced review copy.