Review: Youthjuice by E.K Sathue

Rating: 9/10

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.

Silky smooth on the surface and quietly rancid not too far underneath, “Youthjuice,” is a rejuvenating, sickly pink plunge into barbarism and depravity. The lip-gloss and blood lacquered wellness horror of my dreams, at its glossy core, Sathue’s debut is a propulsive story of coming-of-age, hubris, and the dangerous, non-liturgical worship of youth and beauty. If such things are priceless, how far might one go to bottle and sell it? Ling Ling Huang’s “Natural Beauty,” meets “The Devil Where’s Prada,” meets something grotesque in this steaming, Bathory-esque bloodbath that I couldn’t help but sink into. This is a novel that has been languishing on my TBR for an embarrassing amount of time, and it makes it all the stranger that my copy arrived from my amazon wishlist without a note- ominous. Please do step forward, you mysterious benefactor and legend.

HEBE is the hottest and most luxe wellness brand in New York, and ex-barista Sophia Bannion’s life just got a whole lot better now that she is a part of its story-telling team. The brand’s founder and high priestess, Tree Whitestone seems to have taken “Soph,” under her wing-  and buoyed by her boss’ approval, she quickly rises the ranks. Not to mention, it’s to Sophie that Tree entrusts a sample of HEBE’s latest product, their very best yet- youthjuice. Sophie has always struggled with biting at her hands, and they are her biggest insecurity- but when she tests out the new moisturiser, by the very next day you’d never be able to tell. But there’s something about the latest product, Tree Whitemore and the whole of HEBE that feels contrary to the beauty empire’s polished, pure and sustainable brand.

There’s a quasi-vampire-esque feel to “Youthjuice,” and I’m certain that it’s something I noticed not simply because I just finished “The Brides,” by Charlotte Cross, but because it’s there. Athleisure-wearing, green-juice guzzling, glass-office-haunting vampires. If I say energy vampire will you do me a favour and not picture Colin Robinson? Of course this same sensation crops up often in corporate and wellness horror. Dangerous enterprise, the quiet parasitism of such environments, the “peers,” (or rather competitors) whose ambition feeds on ambition, and smiles are oxygen-siphoning. The predatory politeness of the characters in this novel, and indeed the novel as a whole leave a bitter taste in your mouth. That’s how I can best describe “Youthjuice.” It’s the chemical tang that expensive, minimalist lotion will leave on your skin.

The twist, per se, in this novel is one that the cover reveals, and one that I perhaps, if you know anything about Countess Elizabeth Báthory or her modern-day billionaire tech bro equivalent Peter Thiel, have alluded to not so subtly already. That’s fine, because (behind the gore that earns it its Maeve Fly/ American Psycho comparison) the horror comes from the dread of speeding toward this inevitable revelation, simply watching something unfold. The horror in “Youthjuice,” I found to be very effective indeed, even in the absence of surprise, and the character’s (and our own) complicity is far more unsettling than any last-minute pivot.

A fantastic satire that I absolutely devoured, “Youthjuice,” is a toxic, aseptic, retinol-soaked book that chemical burnt my fingertips and exfoliated the pores off of my face. Gloopy, well-written, wonderfully nasty stuff that will pickle you in its metallic formula, I am already rather looking forward to seeing what E.K Sathue concocts next.