Natural Beauty

An unnamed protagonist grows up as a piano prodigy, but an accident with her parents forces her to give up her passion and take up a job that will help pay their medical bills. She is offered a job at a high-end beauty store and thrust into a world of obscure beauty products and privilege she never had before. But Soon she will learn that there’s more to it then what’s on the surface.

The narration for the book was very well done. Perfect choice for the protagonist. The narrator did very well at making each character sound unique which, given the nature of the plot, is quite impressive. Many characters, especially the women are intended to be very similar to each other, but each voice still managed to be unique in its own way.

This book was such a pleasant surprise for me. Like a lot of what I read, I tend to go in fairly blind and I am so happy I did. I keep my reviews as spoiler free as I can, but if you want the same experience I recommend stopping and reading it now.

At first this book had a very tragic lit quality. The protagonist, who we never actually learn her name, is dealing with a familiar issue, lots of financial obligation but not enough income. She’s very relatable which adds to the depth of the narrative. Her distress and struggles with life as well as her reactions when things do start to go her way feel good and natural. Very quickly you do start to realize there is so much more to this plot than what is initially on the surface. It gets intense very quickly and unsettling in such a fantastic way. The narrative does go into some very not subtle allegories about beauty standards and consumerism, but this doesn’t come off preachy. The balance is fantastic.

I do wish we got a bit more from the ending. It adds to the unsettling and uncomfortable nature, but also goes off the rails just a bit in a way that does finally break the believability of the events. This was absolutely not enough of an issue to kill my enjoyment of the book.

I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone interested in subtle and escalating horror that masks a much deeper story.

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