A modern fairytale meets cult meets critique of our obsession with looking young forever. Mona Awad’s latest novel follows skincare-obsessed Mirabelle as she returns to California for her mother’s funeral, where she must face the (literal) demons of her past and the cultish members of Rouge – an exclusive skincare club her mother nonsensically raved about before she plummeted to her death.

Awad has an uncanny ability to reference beloved fairytales without slipping into clichés. This tale reads like a modern-day Snow White, heavily critiquing the beauty standards that demand us (especially women) to be young and beautiful forever. The book slides from the past to the present without faltering, creating an unpredictable yet seamless narrative that I gorged in two days. Motifs of skin, youth, and power act as a backdrop for more critical discussions of how racism is perpetrated by the beauty industry – a theme that is further emphasised by Mirabelle’s strained relationship with her mother, Noelle.

This leads to another of Awad’s strengths. Her ability to contrast Mirabelle and Noelle while also highlighting their shared vanity and ruthlessness makes their relationship so visceral, you can only hope to read faster to try and unpack the difficulties (and demons) of their pasts. This tense mother-daughter relationship is further brought to life through Awad’s gothic, often gruesome, imagery which is also tinged with beauty (much like the very industry she critiques).

Though the first half of the novel risks slipping into the judgemental, almost bored tone of the protagonist in Awad’s novel Bunny, the second half moves into a skilled, daydream-like voice that made me genuinely worry for Mirabelle’s sanity. Demonic, twisted, and sprinkled with dark humour, this novel is a must-have for fans of Bunny or Chelsea Summers’ A Certain Hunger, or for those who just want a sprinkle of blood in their rouge.