Books I've Read: Youthjuice

I'm kind of a sucker for anything that skewers the modern obsession with beauty and agning, so this one felt like it was right in my wheelhouse.  Part satire, part horror, and I'm pretty sure, part portrait of a sociopath, this book was pretty icky!

Set maining in the world of high-luxury skincare, the main character is Sophia.  After struggling for several years in New York as a barista, she's thrilled to be hired on the storytelling team at Hebe, a luxury beauty product company founded by the impossibly glamorous and enigmatic Tree.

At first, it's a dream come true for Sophia.  Hebe gives her access to a world she's only ever managed to rub up against through her trust-fund baby roommate.  The new cream Tree asked her to try has even helped erase the scars and damage caused by a years-long, extreme nailbiting habit.

But when the secret ingredient in the miracle cream comes to light, Sophia is forced to make some touhg decisions about how far she's willing to go to stay young and beautiful.

Woven through the present day story are glimpses of Sophia's past and a single event that has shaped the woman she has grown up to be.  It's these sections that convinced me she's a sociopath and made her reaction to what was going on at Hebe soo much more understandable.

I won't give any more detail because to do so would ruin the surprised this innocuous-looking pink covered book serves up.

It's grotesque and relatable and will probably make you think twice before you put your moisturizer on tonight.  Or try out the next hyped product that shows up on your social media timeline.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

American Psycho meets The Devil Wears Prada: outrageous body horror for the goop generation

A 29-year-old copywriter realizes that beauty is possible—at a terrible cost—in this surreal, satirical send-up of NYC It-girl culture.

From Sophia Bannion’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE (hee-bee), a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York’s trendy SoHo neighborhood and named after the Greek goddess of youth, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty, has plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knockoffs and doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence—and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic founder and CEO.

Soon, Sophia is addicted to her HEBE lifestyle—especially youthjuice, the fatty, soothing moisturizer Tree has asked Sophia to test. But when cracks in HEBE’s infrastructure start to worsen—and Sophia learns the gruesome secret ingredient at the heart of youthjuice—she has to decide how far she’s willing to go to stay beautiful forever.

Glittering with ominous flashes of Sophia’s coming-of-rage story, former beauty editor E.K. Sathue’s horror debut is as incisive as it is stomach-churning in its portrayal of all-consuming female friendship and the beauty industry’s short attention span. youthjuice does to skincare influencers what Bret Easton Ellis did to yuppies. You’ll never moisturize the same way again.