
In a debut novel as radiant as it is caustic, a former influencer confronts her past—and takes inventory of the damages that underpin the surface-glamour of social media.
Drug abuse, eating disorder, toxic relationship, sexual assault.
At 19, she was an Instagram celebrity. Now, at 35, 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.
Don't just take our word for it...
“In a book about looks, the language is tasked with turning words into images. Rowbottom’s buzzy and exacting vocabulary evokes a picture already resting in our minds and on our newsfeeds . . . Aesthetica asks whether someone devoted to beauty can decide to know who they are, rather than simply change it. Anna is stuck between ways of seeing: viewing one path as necessary and another as indulgence, past and future, eternal and ephemeral. No matter which we choose, we somehow always end up right back where we started, still believing we can somehow make ourselves over.”
– The New York Times Book Review
“This debut novel follows a 35-year-old woman undergoing a surgery to reverse the plastic surgeries she underwent while she was a teenage Instagram influencer living under the thrall of an abusive manager and lover. Allie Rowbottom’s book is as dark as it sounds, but it’s also vital, written with real anger and compassion. One of the best American novels so far about social media, it’s a chilling look at the state of today’s world—both real and virtual, although those boundaries keep blurring.”
– NPR
“Indispensable . . . The novel is uncanny in its ability to zoom in and lay bare the effects social media has on our perception of youth, beauty, and relevance, but it also raises questions about whether using your body as currency can ever be a form of self-empowerment, the cost of excessive self-promotion, patriarchal power dynamics, and whether the staggering amount of time and money spent to become visually “perfect” is ever really worth it.”
– Glamour
Taste the very first page
I am on my phone, of course I am. But the screams start, sudden as the sound of my own name. I look up. It’s only a group of girls, huddled by the hot tub. They lift arms, devices, as if in prayer; they still themselves before the lens, a ritual. Three flashes and again, they shriek, each omg another post, another like, another love. They are alive in their bodies, together in their bodies; I feel their oneness inside me, like hunger.
The plate before me is empty, though. Just the rind of a bacon cheeseburger to remind me what I ate. On this white daybed. In my bikini, which is also white. Ketchup dripped down by chin, landed on my breasts, smatterings of B-movie blood I wipe with my whole hand, lick clean. I lie back, body bare and distended. I’m satiated, but the feelings always passes and the meal was freighted, like everything today, with the possibility that it might be my last.
I fish a bottle from my black and white striped bag, snap the cap, swallow a pill with spit. I suck a vape to erase the chemical taste, blow cones of watermelon smoke towards the girls. They’re cute, but each one needs a tweak to achieve true …
You might also like
RomanceDebut NovelIncludes a Dog
Any Trope But You
A bestselling romance author flees to Alaska to reinvent herself and write her first murder mystery, but the rugged resort proprietor soon has her fearing she’s living in a rom-com plot instead.
ThrillerContemporaryDebut Novel
Tilt
Annie is nine months pregnant. She’s shopping for a crib at IKEA. That’s when the massive earthquake hits. There’s nothing to do but walk.
Historical FictionDebut NovelMagical Realism
Junie
A young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms.
Good Girl
An electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of self-discovery and a portrait of the artist as a young woman set in a Berlin that can’t escape its history.
Dead Money
Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery.
After the Ocean
A painful unsolved mystery resurfaces after decades of confusion, sending one woman and her daughters on a journey of redemption in this emotional story about intergenerational trauma, family, and the beauty of Puerto Rico.
Unromance
A recently dumped TV heartthrob enlists a jaded romance novelist to ruin romance for him—one rom-com trope at a time—so he never gets swept off his feet again…
Motheater
In this nuanced queer fantasy set amid the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, the last witch of the Ridge must choose sides in a clash between industry and nature.
Historical FictionDebut NovelLGBTQIA+Gothic Fiction
The Resurrectionist
A twisty gothic debut set when real-life serial killers Burke and Hare terrorized the streets of Edinburgh, as a young medical student is lured into the illicit underworld of body snatching.
The Serpent and the Wolf
A thrilling romantasy debut combines high-stakes political intrigue and a steamy, slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romance.
What It’s Like in Words
A dark, intense, and compelling account of what happens when a young woman falls in love with the wrong kind of man.
Like Mother, Like Mother
An enthralling novel about three generations of strong-willed women, unknowingly shaped by the secrets buried in their family’s past.
Historical FictionDebut NovelIncludes a Dog
Eleanore of Avignon
The story of a healer who risks her life, her freedom, and everything she holds dear to protect her beloved city from the encroaching Black Death.
The Truth According to Ember
A Chickasaw woman who can’t catch a break serves up a little white lie that snowballs into much more in this witty and irresistible rom-com by debut author Danica Nava.
Mistress of Lies
A villainous, bloodthirsty heroine finds herself plunged into the dangerous world of power, politics and murder in the court of the vampire king in this dark romantic fantasy debut.
Catalina
by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college.
Historical FictionDebut NovelMagical Realism
Masquerade
Set in a wonderfully reimagined 15th century West Africa, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale exploring the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future.
Whoever You Are, Honey
This darkly brilliant debut novel explores how women shape themselves beneath the gaze of love, friendship, and the algorithm—by a thrilling feminist voice for the age of AI.
ThrillerDebut NovelIncludes a Dog
You Know What You Did
In this heart-pounding debut thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Celeste Ng, a first-generation Vietnamese American artist must confront nightmares past and present...
Lovers and Liars
Three wildly different sisters reunite for a destination wedding at an English castle in this heartfelt and rollicking novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters.