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Rytual

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Rytual

By: Chloe Elisabeth Wilson
Narrated by: Ruby O'Kelly
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Marnie Sellick is adrift when she lands a job at the coveted, mysterious beauty brand rytual cosmetica.

The enigmatic founder and CEO, Luna Peters, takes a liking to Marnie, and as the two grow closer Marnie becomes intoxicated by the life that Luna, and rytual, can offer her.

But all is not what it seems at rytual. Luna has a cult-like hold over the all-female staff, and that's not to mention what happens at their weekly Friday Night Drinks.

As Marnie edges closer to the darkness at the centre of rytual's millennial pink facade, cracks begin to show. Luna is hiding something, but will Marnie uncover the truth - and the role Luna has cast her in - before it's too late?

Both a darkly funny deconstruction of the beauty industry and a gripping examination of identity, beauty and desire, Rytual asks the question: what if your favourite cult beauty brand . was actually a cult? Contemporary Fiction Genre Fiction Funny
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Great. Addictive - inception of addiction, really. I couldn’t put this down; it was on play whenever I could manage. I felt the same pull described by the protagonist because it was described so well.

Addictive - literally

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The idea behind this book is phenomenal and zeitgeisty. Overall the book remains intriguing right to the end and deliciously mysterious. I really loved the glamour/sexy dark/fatale energy and imagery, could make for a very cool TV show.

I do really sadly feel like the book and characters read as 2-dimensional and lacked a darkness that I think the book was trying to achieve. There wasn’t a whole lot of depth or insight afforded into the characters, which ultimately made the plot points and character decisions very unbelievable. As a reader (listener), we’re being asked to stretch our belief - and whilst suspension of disbelief is one of the best parts about reading fiction - the style that this was written in didn’t support the core events such as Friday Night Drinks. All this to say, it just felt all a bit disjointed.

I do feel like if we got to lean into a more stylistic, envelope pushing, horror-esque approach (similar to The Substance or The Beauty), it would have allowed us to just fall into the depravity and embrace the anger and cult of it all. I just feel we weren’t given enough meat to sink our teeth into, I suppose.

I was going to give 3 stars but the authors note took it up to 4 as I loved her rationale and breakdown of the characters. I really did love the idea and I remained hooked through the entire book which is I think is absolutely amazing. I do still recommend, I just wish it went a bit further!

Zeitgeisty, intriguing, albeit a bit flat

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