youthjuice

A type of body horror that crawls under your skin as you read it. It’s not the usual genre of reading that I enjoy, and most parts disgusted me so much that I wanted to put the book down. But I’ve been dying to read this, so I did bear with it. The protagonist is nauseating; her dialect screams pretentious, and her mind works in fucked up ways. I get that’s the point, some comparing this to American Psycho, but that story is way better. I totally understand the commentary on modern society;the fucked up-ness of social media personalities, big corporations, the craze for the “newest health and beauty fad”. I get it, down to the turmeric vapes and cashew cheese. I know it’s supposed to be relatable, in an edgy way where “we all are supposed to feel like that, but the protagonist actually lives out our delusions”. I understand the underlying theme of girlhood, transitioning to womanhood. The struggles we face as girls, stemming from our adolescence and staying with us until we become a woman working a 9-5 in a big city. It’s just not that great, honestly. The writing style is a bit try hard- it’s as if she picked up a thesaurus and just keyboard smashed every big word. But more than that, it’s tacky. The protagonist is a nail biter- she bites her entire nails off, ripping skin down to her wrists. All of that, written in gory, explicit detail with a plethora of nouns and adjectives. It’s such a unique sub-genre that makes it so unrelatable, for me at least. Perhaps that’s the point? But I was really looking forward to this book and disappointed with most of it. This is something that teenage me probably would have loved; tones of self harm, drug abuse, delicate descriptions of sad,lost girls. I get it and I appreciate it, but this just wasn’t my favorite book.