Aesthetica
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Narrated by:
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Chelsea Stephens
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By:
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Allie Rowbottom
About this listen
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.
©2022 Allie Rowbottom (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Stranger Here is the brutally honest, surprisingly hilarious story of one woman's journey from one extreme of the weight spectrum to the other, and of the unexpected emotional chaos it created. Insightful and unsparing in her self-examination, Larsen depicts the exhilarating highs and devastating lows she experienced as a result of her weight loss, the incredible joy of finally beginning to look like the image of herself she's always carried inside her head, and the crushing pain and confusion of feeling like a stranger in her own body after losing the weight that has always defined her.
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Good book with some disappointments
- By Ina Landry on 04-22-18
By: Jen Larsen
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Must Love Otters
- By: Eliza Gordon
- Narrated by: Caitlin Davies
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Emergency-call operator Hollie Porter is saddled with a job she hates and a boyfriend who’s all wrong for her. Reaching a breaking point, she cashes in a gift certificate and heads to Revelation Cove in British Columbia. Flying solo and newly single, Hollie hopes to reflect and discover her purpose among the beautiful surroundings but instead ends up unintentionally providing comic relief for the staff and guests alike. Even concierge Ryan, a former hockey star with bad knees and broken dreams, can’t stop her from stumbling from one (mis)adventure to another.
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Having a hard time finishing.
- By Janet on 01-13-20
By: Eliza Gordon
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With or Without You
- By: Caroline Leavitt
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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After almost 20 years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind.
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not my cup of tea
- By Grekis on 12-23-20
By: Caroline Leavitt
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The Bucket List
- A Novel
- By: Georgia Clark
- Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the critically acclaimed “lively and engrossing parable for women of all generations” (Harper’s Bazaar) The Regulars comes a deeply funny and thoughtful tale of a young woman who, after discovering she has the breast cancer gene, embarks on an unforgettable bucket list adventure. The Bucket List cleverly and compassionately explores Lacey’s relationship to her body and her future. Both are things Lacey thought she could control through hard work and sacrifice. But the future, it turns out, is more complicated than she could ever imagine.
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page turner
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-19
By: Georgia Clark
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Private Citizens
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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The story's four whip-smart narrators - idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda - are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friends stagger through the Bay Area's maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each other's lives once again.
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Too dour and cynical.
- By Zanriel on 01-18-17
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CUDDLE ME ALREADY
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What a fun romp!
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Great short story collection
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What listeners say about Aesthetica
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Mia Caliendo
- 01-06-23
Weird but felt unfinished
There are many interesting and horrifying parts of this book, certainly brings the ugliness of social media and image to the forefront, but as a cohesive story, I felt the ending didn’t bring it all together. Something felt missing.
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- M. K. Roach
- 12-18-22
Should have had deeper meaning but didn’t
Really not worth the time. Not at all a statement about the skewing of body image on social media. Def skip this one. No message, no meaning. Just sensationalism.
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- K DeAngelo
- 04-24-24
Truly Awful
I would not recommend. This was a waste of time. Not worth it at all.
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- AletaC
- 12-17-22
Disappointing!
A book that contains many emojis that must be verbally described is not a good candidate for an oral book. At the end of the story, all I could do was ask myself “what was that all about?!?” A cautionary tale, perhaps? But one I certainly didn’t need…
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