Aesthetica, Allie Rowbottom
Aesthetica, Allie Rowbottom
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Aesthetica

Author: Allie Rowbottom

Narrator: Chelsea Stephens

Unabridged: 7 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/22/2022


Synopsis

At nineteen, she was an Instagram celebrity. Now, at thirty-five, she works behind the cosmetic counter at the "black and white store," peddling anti-aging products to women seeking physical and spiritual transformation. She too is seeking rebirth. She's about to undergo the high-risk, elective surgery Aesthetica™, a procedure that will reverse all her past plastic surgery procedures, returning her, she hopes, to a truer self. Provided she survives the knife.

But on the eve of the surgery, her traumatic past resurfaces when she is asked to participate in the public takedown of her former manager/boyfriend, who has rebranded himself as a paragon of "woke" masculinity in the post-#MeToo world. With the hours ticking down to her surgery, she must confront the ugly truth about her experiences on and off the Instagram grid.

Propulsive, dark, and moving, Aesthetica is a Veronica for the age of "Instagram face," delivering a fresh, nuanced examination of feminism, #MeToo, and mother-daughter relationships, all while confronting our collective addiction to followers, filters, and faux realities.

About Allie Rowbottom

Allie Rowbottom is the author of the memoir Jell-O Girls, a New York Times Editors' Choice Selection, Amazon Best Book of the Month, Indie Next Pick, and Real Simple Best Book of the year. Allie's essays and short fiction can be found in Vanity Fair, Salon, Lit Hub, No Tokens, NY Tyrant, The Drunken Canal, Alta Journal, Bitch, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and has taught fiction and nonfiction at the University of Houston, CalArts, and Catapult. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the writer Jon Lindsey.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Barry

valley of the dolls but for people who know who caroline calloway is......more

Goodreads review by Terrie

"Aesthetic" by Allie Rowbottom is a powerful debut novel! Social media does crazy things to people in their drive to gain followers. Nineteen-year-old Anna's insatiable drive to be an influencer takes her from her mother's home in Houston to the unknown of L.A. and directly into the clutches of sex,......more

Goodreads review by Jasmine

Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom takes a sharp look at the dark side of social media. While Anna waits to go under the knife to reverse all of her past cosmetic procedures, she reflects on her short stint as a social media influencer. Anna is 35 and works at a cosmetics store, but when she was 19, she......more

Goodreads review by Meike

Confession: Most of this novel tells a very predictable story that remixes current cultural discussions, from Kim Kardashian's manufactured body to structural abuse à la Harvey Weinstein on to female enablers like Ghislaine Maxwell, but there is a very, very interesting discussion about female empow......more