 Holy shit that's bright. I'm like I'm chaining my inner traffic cone. Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about fashion victim or hashtag fashion victim by Amina Ektar. I'm hoping to get the last name right. If I didn't get it right, I apologize. I am, I'm getting tired of getting book of the month club books and finding out that I need to go out and get the the first edition for the collection. This book is amazing and it's my first um I'd say yeah I'd say it's my first uh first contestant for book of the year uh this year. It did come out last year um but I don't discriminate when it comes to things like that. If I read a book in a certain year it's you know it's the best of the year. It is only February of course but I mean last year uh Caroline Ketnes's Providence won uh my book of the year and that thing actually came out I mean I read it like December the year before so I was way ahead of the curve there um anyway speaking of Caroline Ketnes she's the reason why I read this. I got this through book of the month club and it sat around just because it looked interesting um but it sat around forever until I saw uh Caroline talking about how great it was and I was like well I'm just gonna go ahead and read it for women a horror month. I'm glad I did and I hate that I waited as long as I did um to read it. This book is a more accessible or just an accessible uh version of American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. Uh it doesn't have the constant constant stream of pop culture references and even though it does talk a lot about fashion and designing and all that stuff it does not harp on the fact um that it's not like there's whole paragraphs of just you know designer names which happens in Ellis's book. In this one you get a very real feeling for the characters there's no surrealist aspect like there is in Ellis's book. There is a down to earth storytelling a terrific narrative voice here that was super refreshing. One of the biggest things that I caught on was the the believability of the narrator even though it's an unreliable narrator. Anya is a terrific delivery device for this story and I'm glad that the book was written in first person because I loved that character. I loved getting just like with Katniss's you. I love Joe Goldberg. They are characters that you have to hate but you love them also. You understand you you understand their motivations. You understand how twisted they are. You understand why they do what they do and you actually end up rooting for them which is something that is completely twisted on its head in uh in our kind of cruelty. That was a great response to the Gone Girl craze um and also to uh Katniss's book You. This one however floats that line with uh like invisible monsters from Chuck Polynyk where it's an a satire of a culture which is the fashion culture. Now Amina Aktarshi used to write for Vogue L LA. I don't know how that's pronounced sorry. Style NewYorkTimes.com NewYorkMag.com where she was the founding editor for the Cut blog. She's written for numerous publications including Yahoo Style, Fashionista, Exo Jane, Refinery29, Billboard and for brands like Bergdorf Goodman and H&M's 10 Years of Style Tone. The but the thing that impressed me the most was even his reading all of that while I'm reading the book it didn't feel like she was shoving her knowledge of the scene down your throat and I appreciated that as a uh closet fan of America's Next Top Model and and shows like that uh even even so much as toddlers and tiaras they watch watching that that culture fascinates me it's almost like you know a train wreck that just keeps happening in different more exciting ways. I'm sorry to people who enjoy those shows but I mean you watch those shows hoping for the meltdowns and hoping for you know the the Shudden Freud the seeing the jackasses getting the comeuppance um which is funny in a book like this because you're dealing with a a psychopath um someone who's absolutely bad shit crazy um and they don't realize it and that's another thing that's great about the book is getting into that that frame of mind getting in there and going okay I can see why why why this would push you know to that to to that extreme why the thoughts because we've all had those thoughts and that's where characters like Anya in this book and Joe Goldberg that's why we relate to them so much is because we understand those thoughts there there's been times for just about everybody's like I could kill that motherfucker right now and that's basically what happens here you getting too many people get in the way and Anya takes care of them um I will say that the the book is much more gory um than I expected it to be I was very I was pleasantly surprised by that aspect I thought I was going to be unfortunately I imagined that I'd be getting a generic thriller type of deal and I was very pleasantly surprised to get more of a Caroline Ketnes a more literary take on your average psychopath story um Adela also Caroline Ketnes and Amina Aktar talk a lot on Twitter and Instagram so they know they know each other if not they don't know each other they know of each other obviously so that was another great thing I like finding creators who know each other and either either work together or that interact with each other I like seeing that kind of dynamic this is fun um but hashtag fashion victim I'm gonna like like I said it's gonna end up being it is sorry it is a contestant for book of the year for me this year 2019 um I don't know what else will come but it's an easy easy five stars and I recommend everybody who liked American Psycho who liked you um who liked uh let's see here uh Invisible Monsters with Chuck Pollanek if you like any of those books I highly recommend going out and getting this one but until next time I have been E you have been U this been another book review I'll talk to you guys later bye bye spoiler alert there were some scenes in this book like uh Zha Zha's be heading and her posing that I was not expecting that level of gore or horror I loved that aspect of it um but another thing that I didn't even want to talk about you know that there was a how how much I liked the ending in the first half of the review reason why I didn't want to talk about it because it came out of nowhere for me I'm not talking about Dr. Dr. M I'm not talking about that in fact I did see that part coming I think that was a little nod to American Psycho's ending or American Psycho's the whole thing but what got me was the tampon massacre holy shit I've never I've never read or seen anything like it ever not in movies not in uh not not in books it's just something that I never would have even thought of I guess being a dude I never would have thought about killing people with poison tampons that are women especially because you know guys don't use them but it's I read that and I was just like holy shit I wish I had thought of that and it's anytime that a book does that to me most of the book did that to me but anytime a huge scene or sequence of events does that to me I'm like I'm always I'm always impressed um because I rarely say I wish I had thought of that and this is one of those times when holy shit I wish I thought of that