Absolute banger.

Cassie works in Silicon Valley. She splits herself to get through the day. ‘Fake me’ does the sales pitches, the workshopping, the hustling required of her. Real Cassie has a black hole over her. She sleeps with the ethically non-monogamous chef. She does tapas with her friends of convenience. Anything to keep the black hole at bay.

This was a pacy, smart and vicious book. Etter writes compellingly and weaves together a number of timely themes: late stage capitalism, tech start up culture, inequality, abortion, sexism, Covid, narcissism and childhood trauma. The consideration of these is elegantly included and feel really natural in the world of the novel.

10/10 cover too!

Pick this book up if: you enjoy My Year of Rest and Relaxation, I’m A Fan or Motherthing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

“There are moments I am perfectly ripe, too, moments when I am the fruit bursting with the reddest of seeds.”

this book is one for the existential crisis girlies !!

going into ripe, I thought I’d struggle reading a lot more than I actually did; I’ve seen a lot of reviews discussing the bleak tones and thought it would be too overwhelming for me. Update- it was unbelievably validating.

The notes on “hustle culture” and the ignorance implied through the “believers” all add together to create a very “me vs them” world, which rings all too true for so many people. I loved the structure of this book; breaking up the story with definitions and little pieces really helped to build up our main character’s past.

Being swept up in Cassie’s mind meant that this book is very easy to read; I found myself getting nervous as I saw the page numbers climbing because I didn’t want it to end.

Overall I rated this book 4.5 stars but rounded to 4 stars for goodreads.

I couldn’t get into this at all and so only read about the first 20%. It was just far too introspective for my tastes, even as a fan of sad girl lit, and I found the inserted definitions and references to the black hole annoying.

Sad girl novel set in Silicon Valley. Interesting writing format, almost like a dictionary, never seen this done before and I appreciated that it added something new to the genre. Although overall, sad girl novel at its core.

A delicious, strange cover yet so intriguing to read. That's the impact of the cover to reading this book. I'll reserve my thoughts for now, but this one is a optimistic figure of finding oneself. I'll compel all my thoughts when I have a finished copy of this instead.

Barbed critique of the capitalist model and of Silicon Valley in particular - a moving, often funny, often poignant description of loneliness and dampened ambition.

Cassie is working at a tech start up in Silicon Valley. This job sounds like a true nightmare and everyone she works with is awful on steroids. She has a coke habit just to get by and is basically shuddering with anxiety every moment of the day. This is kindly illustrated by the black hole that follows her around.

This book is just so full of tension and I think that element is done so well, you never feel any let up. Everything she does is stressful! she’s having a fling with a man in an open relationship who can never truly love her, her mum is horrible, her friends are either stressed out too or just complete nightmare fuel. And obviously it’s San Francisco so everything is expensive and all she can do is try to get by!

Would recommend but with the caveat that if you are deeply anxious then maaaaaaaaaaaybe hold off

Cassie works at a tech company in Silicon Valley and she has to put her fake self on to survive it, Fake enthusiasm to cope with the workplace bullying and all the effort put into pointless activity. This is a bit of a depressing read with homelessness, and poverty on the edges of the excesses of the wealthy along with Cassie’s alienation and loneliness. I found it hard to put this book down, I liked the structure and the writing. A compelling read.

The download date was unfortunately missed, I would be happy to re-review if it became available again. I have awarded stars for the book cover and description as they both appeal to me. I would be more than happy to re-read and review if a download becomes available. If you would like me to re-review please feel free to contact me at thesecretbookreview@gmail.com or via social media The_secret_bookreview (Instagram) or Secret_bookblog (Twitter). Thank you.

First, just let me say that I received such a lovely and genuine email from the author herself attached with the ARC copy, which was a pleasant surprise🥰

I have a mixed feelings about this book. There are elements I really love, such as a depiction of modern work culture full of toxic and fake relationships and unrealistic standards to follow. The author managed to write it so vividly that you could feel the dread and at the same time I was just nodding because we all experienced similar situations, which makes you laugh when looking from the distance. I also think that the author successfully depicted more serious part of the story in a way, that she chosen a black hole almost as a standalone character that gives a reader a sense for the anxiety that the main protagonist is dealing with.
Unfortunately, there were also sections I didn’t like. I wasn’t a fan of more philosophical monologues which supposed to be profound, instead, I find them quite juvenile.

Ripe
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Ripe is the story of Cassie, a depressed young woman trying to find her way in life with a stressful corporate job. Cassie has been followed by a black hole her entire life. Watching, waiting.

I related to Cassie on so many levels. I have suffered with depression for as long as I can remember, and there were so many sections of this book that seemed they were written about me. Cassie’s relationship with her mother is identical to the relationship I have with mine, so this book really hit me hard with the emotions!!

The writing was stunning. I tabbed, highlighted and annotated the shit out of this book because the entire thing was just beautiful. Whilst being beautiful, it was also completely soul-sucking and harrowing.

This was not an easy read by any means, with lots of talk of depression, abortion and suicide. But I found myself completely gripped from start to finish despite finding some moments very hard to read. The author has managed to make this a truly compelling read even with the harrowing content.

This book was haunting in the best and worst ways, and I absolutely loved every moment of it.

There are too many cliches in this Silicon Valley novel: the energetic CEO, the robotic employees dressed up in company clothes, the arrogant managers, the extreme working hours, the drugs, the excess.....and then there is our protagonist: Cassie, the new girl, and the only person trying to stay sane and humane in a world gone mad.

Cassie is over the moon when she is hired at the tech start-up, but soon grows disillusioned with the company culture and work ethic.

And well, that's pretty much it...
Not much else is happening.

She has a boyfriend, she may be pregnant, she uses cocaine to keep going. I kept waiting for some action on her part, some whistleblowing or rebelling against the company or some big life choice, but no...it's all very passive (and maybe the idea is to show that resisting is difficult?).

The writing is good, it reads very easily and I raced through it.

But I had expected something more original and thought-provoking.

I am a strong believer that this book should be a contender for the best book of 2023.

What this book achieves is something that should not be sold short. Before even talking about the plot the way Etter is able to bring in real world elements such as Covid and the California wildfires and weave them into the novel is so seamless that anyone who didn’t know about them being real world events could 100% believe they were just as crafted for the story as the characters were.

The story itself is strong due to its criticisms of capitalism and hustle culture. The setting of silver valley is perfect as it represents hustle culture perfectly. I think the character of noor in the story shows how toxic capitalism is as the desire for money and to be a part of a high status company eventually took him from his family who were supposedly the most important thing to him but were so easily dropped for a chance to work for a Silicon Valley company. I also loved how the people working in Silicon Valley were called believers. Personally, I think this is due to the fact that they are sold the idea that we live in a meritocracy and as a result that if they work hard they will be happy but from the main character Cassie as a reader we can see just how false this is.


Talking about Cassie the main character is one who has an interesting perspective to read about throughout the whole time she is shown to be an outsider and it is very easy to see why due to everyone being so different. The others attempt to assimilate and conform to how the rest of Silicon Valley are but due to the inability to fully conform there is a clear struggle to survive in this world. Her inability to fully conform is highlighted by what she called her fake self the other workers don’t have this as the fake self is there actual personality like Sasha but with Cassie she has to switch to be able to do the unspeakable acts that are asked of her because in reality it is not her.

One thing I also enjoyed about this book is everything about blackholes. As someone who loves physics every mention of Hawkings and recent and past theory is something that really had my heart set on loving this book from the beginning. The use of the black hole as a metaphor is well done as through Cassie’s black hole is used to show how she is being consumed by this new and exhausting world that does not care for her and her individualism.

Thank you NetGalley and verve books for allowing me to be an early reader to this fantastic novel

I was immediately drawn in by the unique format of Ripe - the definitions of relevant words preceding passages of childhood memories were really clever. The plot was a great concept, but I feel like it fell slightly flat in the follow-through. The description of the black hole and the accompanying visuals were excellent, and the send-up of tech start-ups was uncannily accurate. I just wanted more about the "Believers" as I wasn't quite sure where that characterisation went. Overall really unsettling tone and can't wait to see what the author does next!

Ripe is a timely and deeply compelling novel that follows one woman struggling to reconcile the marked difference in the quality of life between those who are rich beyond their wildest dreams, who never have to worry about money, and those in abject poverty who are living paycheck to paycheck, as well as the various other joys of living in a capitalist society such as intense burnout. 33-year-old Cassie left her humdrum town in which there were no prospects in order to seek opportunity and uproot from a dysfunctional family unit to begin working at a new tech start-up known as Voyager in Silicon Valley. It isn't long before a long list of issues culminates in her becoming disillusioned and exhausted: she is expected to work long hours at a relentless pace with an almost cult-like dedication to the business, commute by train each day from her pricy apartment in San Francisco and cope with her bullying boss Sasha's impossible demands.

Forced to wear the company uniform, Cassie self-medicates with cocaine and cold brew - stimulants to keep her going. This is hardly the route to more stability but desperation drives people to crazy things. Naturally, this could not continue ad infinitum and soon things become even worse - Cassie discovers she's pregnant after a uncharacteristic fling that occurred as she had desperately been craving the salvation of a lover's caress; not knowing how to deal with the unwelcome news she naively pushes it to the back of her mind. She also begins having some more serious mental health issues that appear to make her lose her grip on reality and her struggles to pay basic living expenses whilst colleagues splash out on frivolities deepen bringing with them a sense of anxiety, depression, rage, despair and deep-seated anger that manifest themselves more than ever before.

This is an incisive and compulsively readable yet all too familiar and distressingly sad commentary on today's employment conditions and the unimaginable chasm that exists between the top 1% of earners and those struggling for necessities. Viewed through the eyes of the unravelling Cassie, Etter has filled each page with palpable tension and emotion of just about every persuasion making it a hard-hitting and claustrophobic read. It's a thoughtful, topical tale that is addictive in that you can't seem to turn away from the dire circumstances Cassie finds herself in, and just when you think it can't get any worse it does. Bleak, intense and often surreal. A sign of the times. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed this. It used a really imaginative premise to describe themes around mental health and burnout. It's not a genre I normally read, and I am very unfamilar with both american, and corporate work culture, but i found the way both were depicted very interesting, its so dystopian and feeds into the amount of anxiety in this book.
I am glad I picked this up, even though i found i needed to really pace myself reading it in order to appreciate all the details.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Cassie is overworked by her Silicon Valley employer and forced to make difficult choices in her job, while at the same time battling struggles in her personal life.

A thought-provoking novel on the realities of life in the modern world.

I found this to be such a brilliant read. It is incredibly insightful, really exposing the difficulties that young people face as they try to make their way in life. I found myself invested in Cassie's journey and fascinated by the choices she made. Sarah Rose Etter's writing style is intelligent and sharp, making the book extremely absorbing.

Writing about difficult topics such as anxiety and depression is a hard thing to get right but everything was presented in a careful manner and the particularly shocking moments were very well-written.

I think that a lot of people will be able to relate to this book and I highly recommend it.

Thank you NetGalley and Verve for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This was a weird and very dark book. Definitely have to be in a good mental health space to read this one. It's very well written and I flew through this.

Ripe is certainly an original novel and quite gripping. When it works, it does really work to evoke a sense of the bleak emptiness of modern living. When it doesn't work, it feels a little gauche and shallow.

So what works? descriptions of the horrors of city living were relatable and vivid. There was also a good sense of the absurdity of the modern corporation - the endless meetings, action plans, the 'fake selves'. What didn't work so well for me was the truth of the protagonist's depression, which never progressed beyond the 'black hole' terminology. Also some of the characters remained stuck at the level of caricature - especially Sasha. Finally, I didn't think the frequent dictionary definitions added anything to the narrative.

I was also not sure that the ending was particularly satisfactory - it seemed to resolve nothing.

An ambitious and interesting, but flawed, first novel.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review

Wow.....I'm stuck with a 4.25 - 4.5

I devoured this within a few hours. The writing....THE WRITING ughhh for me I loved it there were so many quotes I've taken note of. This story is depressing. It doesn't hold back from expressing the feeling of loneliness, feeling like you have to have almost another version of yourself to deal with things like your job or interacting with people.

One part when Cassie is with the Chef will stay with me forever I loved the line and the others following it about knowing sadness her whole life. Those hit me and wow.

The ending felt....I don't even know how to describe it but I just wanted something else. I liked how the black hole could be taken as magic realism within the story itself or even a metaphor for Cassie and her mental health, depression, loneliness, anxiety etc.

I even spilled tears reading some of this it was just the damn ending knocking the rating down. Will definitely be looking out for more work by Sarah Rose Etter.