Rouge: A Novel

Written by Mona Awad

Narrated by Sophie Amoss

A National Bestseller
A USA TODAY Bestseller
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Electric Literature, Tor, and Literary Hub

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a “Grimm Brothers fairy tale for the modern age” (Good Housekeeping) and “darkly funny horror novel” (NYLON) about a lonely young woman who’s drawn to a cult-like spa in the wake of her mother’s mysterious death. “Surreal, scary and deeply moving—like all the best fairy tales” (People).

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Time, Vogue, The Guardian, Goodreads, Bustle, The Millions, LitHub, Tor, Good Housekeeping, and more!

For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.

Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781797164755

Mona Awad

Mona Awad is the author of the novels All’s Well, Bunny, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. Bunny was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award and the New England Book Award. It was named a Best Book of 2019 by Time, Vogue, and the New York Public Library. It is currently being developed for film with Bad Robot Productions. All’s Well was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Awad’s forthcoming novel Rouge, is being adapted for film by Fremantle and Sinestra. This spring, Margaret Atwood named Awad her “literary heir” in The New York Times’s T Magazine. She teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Syracuse University and is based in Boston.

Reviews for Rouge

[Linda Patin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Weird and beautifully written. I laughed several times at phrases and the use of words.

[razanne mustafa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

very strange story, but never did it lose my interest. i loved how unique it turned out to be.

[Felice Bickmore · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not a bad book and with this one it is difficult for me to articulate exactly what it is that I didn't like exactly. I liked the narrator and I wasn't bored by it. I just didn't really enjoy the story and find it compelling or suspenseful.

[Laurie Paul · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Too much like All’s Well with some of the themes. My least favorite of her novels so far. Narration was good, but the fake French accent gets a little annoying in long passages. Overall just ok.

[Erin Kelly · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

DNF. I loved Bunny but Awad’s last two books did not do it for me. This one had nothing for me to latch on to. Flat characters, fragmented sentences, a bit too whimsical for me.

[Laura · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The narrator is perfect for Awad's writing style. Wil never look at Tom Cruise in the same way ?

[M A · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to get into the book and finish it but this book dragged on and on.

[Sophia Nielsen Carroll · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved this book almost as much as I loved Bunny. Fabulous narrator.