e-Audio, 07:48:03
Narrated by: Gail Shalan
Release Date: April 15, 2025
Published by: Books on Tape (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers)
Read from: April 6-7, 2025
Stand-alone
Source: PRH Audio (I received a free e-ALC from the publisher and their app. This did nothing to influence my review. I also received a physical ARC that I used to read in tandem with.)
Content Warning: Adult/Minor Relationship, Alcoholism, Emotional Abuse, Drug Use, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Drug Abuse
For Readers Interested In: 2sLGBTQ+, Thriller, Horror, Socioeconomic Status, YAFull to the brim with romance, class exploration, and friendship clashes comes a new YA psychological thriller exploring the dark secrets of the wellness and beauty world.
Perfect for fans of Nine Perfect Strangers and Jessica Goodman novels.
What if living your most authentic life leaves you dead?
Frances Bean was always content living life on the perimeter. Until she is paired up for a class project with rich and popular Julia, daughter of famous wellness guru Deena Patterson. The “magic” skincare products, healing sound baths, and extravagant parties of Deena’s company DEEP never really interested Frances before, who wears the badge of goth outcast and bookworm proudly. But face time with the girl she has been crushing on for years is starting to give her a new outlook.
When Frances gets an exclusive invite to Femme, the young ambassadors of DEEP program, she is blown away by the beauty and luxury of Julia’s world and Femme’s focus on empowering girls to be their most true selves surprisingly strikes a chord. Before long Frances finds herself invested in Femme, a whirlwind romance with Julia, and a future that feels hopeful.
But when an infamous DEEP party takes a dark turn, Frances wonders if the allure of being a part of Julia’s life was actually just a deadly distraction…
*MY THOUGHTS*
This one is a hard one for me to review because I was interested, but the thriller/horror part was no where to be found. It was just a messed up bunch of people hiding behind this wellness club. I thought there was going to be so much more “thrilling” aspects to it and it just wasn’t.
Ok so the cover got me. I saw that she had this thing on her face and there was what looked like blood and here I am thinking the wellness stuff that she was putting on her face was doing these things to her, but yeah no such luck. It’s less a horror story and more just a thriller. But again, someone pitched this to me as a horror book and now here I am disappointed lol Disappointed because the thrilling part isn’t all that exciting either. She’s basically drugged to make her unreliable so I was like ugh, but the way it was done made it a bit unique so I wasn’t THAT mad. But even still, it wasn’t ground-breaking. I just wish there was more. Most of the stuff that was “thrilling” didn’t happen until later in the book so it was a bit boring.
The story itself was ok tho. I was hella interested in the club thing that they were in. It was more like a cult. They were all brain-washed and trying to keep this one person safe when in reality none of them were safe. It was really a mind eff of a situation. This part I enjoyed. I think it was because I had actually just finished a different book about cults, so I was looking for all the parallels that were also in this book. And seeing the two of them side by side, it was a lot. The way it actually lined up was the scary part lol
The characters were ok, not necessarily ground breaking tho. I don’t want to say why because I don’t want to spoil anything, but yeah. And the friends of the main character were all cool, but also just weird. One of them was really rude, even if she was right. Idk, I thought things could have been handled differently. But again, they’re also teens so I had to remember that too. They never talk about anything lol
This was ok, but not like groundbreaking or anything. Kinda sad tho because I was so excited for this based on the cover and the promised horror aspects, but it just fell short. It made it right in other ways so I’m not too mad.
Overall, I give this
