A bloodthirsty copywriter realises that beauty is possible – at a terrible cost – in this surreal, satirical send-up of NYC It-girl culture.
From Sophia Bannon’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE, a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York City’s glitziest neighbourhood, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty with plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knock-offs, 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, sinister founder and CEO.
Soon Sophia is addicted to her HEBE lifestyle, especially youthjuice, the fatty, soothing moisturiser Tree has selected Sophia to test in top secret. But the unsustainability of HEBE’s system is rapidly growing apparent, and Sophia is going to have 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 hilarious as it is stomach-churning in its portrayal of literally all-consuming female friendship and capitalism’s short attention span. youthjuice does to skincare influencers what Bret Easton Ellis did to yuppies in the ’80s. You’ll never moisturise the same way again.
E.K. Sathue is a pseudonym for the author Erin Mayer. A native New Yorker, she wrote her first haunted house story in Mr. Palladino’s third-grade class and never looked back. Her work has appeared in a variety of online publications including Bustle,Travel + Leisure, Better Homes & Gardens, Literary Hub,CrimeReads, Business Insider, and Man Repeller. She lives in Maine with her partner, Benjamin Perry, and their beloved haunted doll, Persephone.
