Youthjuice: A Review and Discussion

For fans of body horror, gore, and unstable narrators, Youthjuice by E.K. Sathue is for you.

I have been eyeing this book in the store for months; the cover is eye-catching . The front is a baby pink color, and a slender hand holding a small container full of milky fluid fills the center. And, from the underside of the container, a dribble of blood trails down the hand. The cover is sinister, clean, and pretty; It encompasses the nature of the novel perfectly, in my opinion!

The story follows Sophia, a young woman with hints of a troubled past, and the strange goings-on of HEBE, the popular beauty brand she begins working with. We are quickly made aware of Sophia’s obsession with beauty and perfection, as while she works at HEBE she constantly comments inwardly on the pristine, youthful appearances of the women around her. We learn that Sophia has an intense nail-biting habit, leaving her hands scarred and torn. She hides her hands with gloves, ashamed and disgusted of her imperfection. The obsession of beauty and perfectionism is constantly there in her mind, weaving its way through the entire narrative in an elegant deterioration of her morals and sanity.

While the character does spiral into madness throughout the story, it becomes clearer through flashbacks and inner monologue that Sophia has always had a strangeness to her. Sophia often reminiscent about her past, being a young girl with her best friend Mona. We are aware Mona is no longer with us from the beginning of the novel, but we are not yet aware of the whole story until later. When I was reading this book, I at first thought that maybe Sophia’s strangeness was due to the traumatic loss of her friend, and as the truth unraveled, I was both intrigued and appreciative of where the story was going and how Sophia’s character was exposed and explored.

In the present, Sophia lives with her friend Dom, a popular fashion and beauty blogger who is heavily addicted to drugs. When Sophia starts her new job at HEBE, Dom is supportive and happy for her friend. However, when Sophia is hired on to a secret new product launch team, things start to change.

Sophia is hired to work on the marketing for a new line of anti-aging cream: Youthjuice. Her boss, Tree Whitestone, lifts Sophia up, praising her ideas and treating Sophia like someone of importance. She assigns Sophia the task of testing Youthjuice and keeping a log of her experiences. The cream works wonders on Sophia’s hands; her scars vanish, skin turns smooth and glossy, and any evidence of nail-biting is erased. She becomes obsessed with it quickly, and throws herself into the creation of the Youthjuice line marketing. She neglects her relationship, which in all fairness she didn’t seem too invested in from the beginning, and deprives herself of socialization if it isn’t work related.

Meanwhile, girls are disappearing. Girls that, mysteriously, all have worked at HEBE. Dom notices, and she begins to question her friend on her strange behavior and the missing girls. Sophia claims to know nothing about the missing women and brushes Dom off haughtily. But Sophia does know, now. Tree has brought her into the inner circle and told her the sickening truth about the product.

When Sophia learns of the truth behind Youthjuice, she does not react how one would expect. She loves the cream and the wonders it has worked on her hands, and she loves feeling important and embraced in Tree's inner circle at HEBE. These are the women Sophia aligns herself with. Beautiful, dewey, bright-eyed young ladies with ambition and power. The girls all obsess over their skin, hair, makeup, and clothing,; an environment Sophia can immerse herself in. One of superficial things, things that conceal and hide and perfect.

What really drew me into the novel was the gradual peeling back of the character’s layers, and the realization that our narrator is not your typical woman. From the beginning, there are signs that Sophia is different. In fact, we are aware from the start of the most kept secret of HEBE. The first chapter starts with a paragraph admitting to the horrors that occur in the story, and Sophia refers to herself as the mastermind’s apprentice. After this short preview, we are thrown into the first day Sophia is on the job. Right away, we see the main character idolizing others at HEBE, like the CEO Tree Whitestone, and internalizing this percieved inferiority as a character trait. As she moves through the story, this complex causes her to put Tree and others like her; powerful, youthful, perfect, on a pedestal. She follows Tree and her ambitions willfully blind to the moral issues, because to Sophia, it is simply the price she must pay to reach the podium her idol graces.

For lovers of horror, you may, like me, have thought the story feels similar to a recent successful horror film, The Substance, which was released in 2024 around a month before this novel was published. In The Substance, a former expertise show star is fired for being “too old” by a chauvinistic male boss. She then becomes obsessed with youth and the glory of being a beloved, sexy young TV star. She is made aware of a secret organization that produces “the substance”, a serum that, through a grueling process, allows the body to split and form a younger, perfect version of oneself that shares the original conscience. Demi Moore and Margret Qualley star in the film as the shared bodies, and throughout the movie we watch Demi Moore’s character spiral into madness as she grows envious of her other self’s success and beauty as her replacement on the show.

There are differences to the two stories, but what truly stands out as a shared idea is the notion of youth and beauty being the modern currency and the ultimate segway to success in life. Both the book Youthjuice and the film The Substance explore the dark sides of the beauty industry and the misogynistic constraints on a woman’s success and self worth that festers in the wake of perfectionism. One interesting difference in the two is the fact that in the film, the perfectionism and pressure to be young and beautiful is heavily influenced by a male character. However, in Youthjuice, the novel is predominantly female. Any male characters feel brief and unimportant. The constraints and madness that blooms from the perfectionist industry is fostered solely by female characters in the novel.

I find the focus on women and their part in the madness to be a very interesting pathway to dissect in the conversation of feminism, the beauty industry, and unfair beauty standards. Because while I wholeheartedly believe we live in a patriarchal system and a world where unfair standards and constraints are placed upon women by men, I think there is another side that is not often talked about; the compliance and willing victims. The women in this story take the constraints of the beauty industry and use them to climb the ladder of success, specifically in HEBE, the all-women company, instead of using their power to take a stand against the constraints. So, why, in an environment full of women, are their standards not more realistic? Why are the women of this story leaning into unfair standards and going mad with lust for youth?

I think the answer is complex, and the book explores this angle quite well. We are shown women that are intelligent, independent, and strong, but these same women grovel at the fountain of youth and the promise of beauty. What is between the lines in this story speaks loudly. It feels as if the world of this novel is inspired by the effects of men and their unfair standards, but it has enslaved the women of our story and turned them against each other, and against themselves. Experiencing this story through the eyes of Sophia, a troubled girl longing to find her place and her calling, feels quite real, and it feels almost impossible to fault her for her spiraling. It is something that most women have experienced in the real world, that climb up the societal ladder and struggle to find our footing in society while all the while attempting to live up to unfair standards. And to watch Sophia experience that familiar struggle while being thrown into morally wrong practices feels relatable. She is looking for a place to belong, and once she finds it, it is already too late for her to untangle herself from the web of dependency and trauma-bonding that Tree Whitestone has spun for her.

I think Youthjuice was an incredible read, and I adamantly suggest that lovers of body horror and those interested in the dissection of modern beauty standards read this book. The writing is interesting and immersion, and the story has a disturbing relatability that I feel can spark a lot of important discussion about the beauty industry. If you like this book, I recommend also to watch The Substance!