Publisher: Recorded Books
Publication Date: October 21, 2014
Source: From Librarything Early Reviewers and Recorded Books in exchange for an honest review. Receiving this book in no way altered my opinion or review.
Rating: DNF
Goodreads Synopsis:
Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk’s no-holds-barred approach to writing continues to win loyal fans and impress critics. Combining a sexually provocative story with a first-class thriller, Beautiful You exposes mega-billionaire C. Linus Maxwell’s plan to rule the world by marketing an extremely potent erotic device for women. Fiction
“His semi-erotic writing is efficacious.”—Publishers Weekly
“A billion husbands are about to be replaced.”
From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Sisters will be doing it for themselves. And doing it. And doing it. And doing it some more … Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, aka “Climax-Well,” a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan’s most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he proceeds, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of orgasmic pleasure for days on end. What’s not to like? This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of sex toys to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell’s plan for erotically enabled world domination must be stopped. But how?
Review:
NOT
A BOOK FOR YOUNG READERS!!! Heavy Sexual Content and Violence.
I requested Beautiful You from an
Early Review program and started listening to it almost immediately after it
was released in October – and I was shocked. I am not even sure how that happened.
I am used to Palahniuk and his shocking crazy books and plots, but this one was
horrifying. The book begins with a rape scene, not uncommon for this author,
but it was very graphic and off-putting almost immediately.
So I stopped listening to the audiobook
and put it aside. As I have been trying to read more my TBR pile that I own – I
picked it up again and brought it to work to listen to during the work day
(since I sit at a computer all day it seemed like a good idea) and it was! I
listened to 4 full discs of the 7-disc audiobook. Then I gave up.
I hate to say that I am giving up on
a Chuck Palahniuk book, I love all of his others (for the most part) but this
one just wasn’t for me and here is why. First off the graphic, violent
beginning, followed by more and more less aggressive but still pretty intense
sexual and striking behaviors. It wasn’t even the erotic nature of the book
that was disturbing; it was the manner that it all seemed to be presented. I
felt awkward and icky the whole time and so I am not going to listen to
anymore.
Overall I think that once you get
past the shocking nature of everything there is probably a good twist on how
sex and pleasure to the extreme is bad... but oh well, I didn't get that far.
And I know that the point of Palahniuk’s books is to be shocking almost to the
extreme, so if you enjoyed this book, more power to you, it just wasn’t my cup
of tea.
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