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2.5⭐• body horror • literary contemporary • the dark underbelly of wellness culture • racial and cultural identity • a music prodigy • with an edgy tone • single POV •

This isn't a novel to be read lightly—it's well-received by many readers, so take my rating with a grain of salt. It certainly conveys an indelible message. Unsurprisingly, the flowery prose pulled me out of the story. By the end, I wasn't even sure how we'd gotten there.

A very disturbing and frequently gross novel about the quite literal horrors of the beauty industry. This frequently made me feel icky, yet I kept going wanting to know the ending. Not for the faint of heart, there is some body horror and some additional eluded to elements to be wary of. 4⭐️

Very interesting and different sort of book than what I normally choose. That's what I like. Mixing things up a little. Body horror and the obsession with beauty. Very similar underlying themes to the movie that came out recently with Demi Moore 'The Substance' -yet very very different vibes. Fascinating, sad, and SO hard to put down. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I‘m rating this book 4⭐️ because it kept me reading when I would‘ve probably quit at 30%. This was probably the weirdest book I‘ve read in my life and now I can‘t wait to read her next one! (Luckily, I have an ARC)

This book is so out of my comfort zone, but I can‘t put it down! At 60% and it just gets more weird and intense 😅

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️a horrifying read exploring the dark sides of wellness and beauty industry, especially when you have many billionaires out there doing whatever the fuck they want. Body horror, gore, graphic and sad! Commentary on race, beauty standards, immigration, misogyny and capitalism rolled into one compelling speculative fiction. A MUST READ!

I‘ve been really enjoying the trend recently in books dealing with the horror of the beauty industry and how it preys on women in different ways. I loved the extra layers added to this story by the really deep and touchingly detailed story of the Chinese-American piano prodigy and her relationship with her parents and American-beauty status.

#skeletoncrew #hauntedshelf

This one feels similar to Mona Awad's Rouge but with less focus on grief and more on how privilege and racism inform beauty standards and how wealth can take a reasonable idea to an unreasonable extreme. I enjoyed the novel, but the story feels a little young, like it's lacking a layer of meaning that life experience might give it. Or maybe that was part of the point.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

I‘m here for fiction that explores the darkness of the beauty and wellness industry. “Natural Beauty” additionally delves into cultural identity. The most moving parts of the story for me were with the protagonist and her immigrant parents. The true horror is found in contemplating that these storylines aren‘t implausible… how far are people really willing to go for beauty and power? Who sets the standards? Who pays the price? 🎧

Just started this and so far it‘s weird and compelling ;)

#Scarathlon #SpookyGhostClub @Clwojick

This book mixes horror with speculative fiction while presenting thoughtful social commentary about the beauty industry and the lengths people go to in order to be deemed beautiful by society.

The second half of this book goes a bit off the rails, but I was more than happy to hang on tight and enjoy the wild ride.

This was a shocking story that blended themes of coming of age, mystery, and horror. There were quite a few underlying messages in this book about being driven to perfection and the tool it take on us as young women. It looks at the beauty industry from an interesting perspective. It was fun but not my favorite. Horror rarely is my chosen genre, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it and was also shocked by a lot of the narrative. ⭐⭐⭐

I read five books in September and enjoyed them all!

"At least she was beautiful while it lasted. She was really very ordinary before..." This, in an essence, sums up this strange, beautiful, body-horror novel of the wellness & skincare industry. Things get gross, graphic, & very brutal, but it's all for that transient spell of beauty. How is beauty so soul-affirming when pursued through creative means (the arts) but so damaging when it's about manipulating insecurities via potions & procedures?

I tried to read this. I really did. It‘s like a fever dream mixed with MidSommar-like situational disassociations and some sexual violence. Felt like a bad trip. Bailed hard.

This book was SO interesting and SO good. It was such a good mix of psychological horror, whimsy, and real life implications. It also talked a lot about heritage and culture and assimilation which connects to the summer class I‘m taking which is pretty cool. Also i love anything that attracts suspicion to the wealthy

Ohhh this was great! It reminds me a bit of Our Wives Under The Sea, just that speculative fiction that seems normal but the more you read the weirder things get and you want to stop the characters but also cannot look away. These are some of my favorite books and I think this one will be with me for a long while.
So many?? About beauty and how far will people go, also how complacent are "you" questions I find fascinating.

Haunting. Beautiful. Horrifying.

The first half of this book is a great scathing critique of the “wellness” industry and I really enjoyed it. But the second half becomes a dystopia wherein dream and reality were hard for me to parse. I love a dystopia, but it felt like too radical a shift and didn‘t work for me.

This riveting read builds with mounting horror as the main character starts a job in an exclusive beauty shop that sells supplements, creams, potions & cosmetics- along with treatments that seem to have spectacular results. But it‘s soon clear that things aren‘t quite as natural as they are purported to be… Body-horror, plenty of fodder to discuss beauty in today‘s standards as well as artistic expression and growing up feeling like an outsider.

Wow, this is bizarre. This is the literary horror story of a piano prodigy who falls on hard times and ends up working for Holistik, a high end store for organic beauty products and treatments, only to discover the dark underbelly of a corporation focused on a singular “objective” standard of beauty and pursuing it at all costs. The writing has beautiful moments of profundity balanced with the grotesque. A #netgalley and my March #doublespin