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    Beautiful You
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    Beautiful You
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    Beautiful You
    Audiobook7 hours

    Beautiful You

    Written by Chuck Palahniuk

    Narrated by Carol Monda

    2.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a law firm with no love life. So it comes as a shock when she's invited to dinner by C. Linus Maxwell, a mega-billionaire. After dinner, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris where Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the development of new sex toys. So effective are these devices that women lock themselves in their room and stop coming out...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateDec 4, 2014
    ISBN9781471278945
    Unavailable
    Beautiful You
    Author

    Chuck Palahniuk

    Chuck Palahniuk’s fourteen novels include the bestselling Snuff; Rant; Haunted; Lullaby; Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher; Diary; Survivor; Invisible Monsters; and Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. His story collection Make Something Up was a widely banned bestseller. His graphic novel Fight Club II hit #1 on the New York Times list. He’s also the author of Fight Club III and the coloring books Bait and Legacy, as well as the writing guide Consider This. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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    Related categories

    Reviews for Beautiful You

    2.5/5

    184 ratings25 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 2/5
      Disclaimer: I received this from LibraryThing for free in exchange for an honest review. Also, this is a review of the audiobook version and I have not read it in print.I honestly don't even know where to begin. It's genuinely weird and gross - but any fan of Palahniuk could've told you to expect that - but I was not expecting this brand of weird. The first half read like badly-written fanfiction, so bad that I couldn't tell if it was meant to be satirical or serious. The phrase "angry red erection" was used. I still don't know if I'll ever recover from that. Now I am not a person that's adverse to people talking about sex, but I genuinely did not expect explicit detail - flitting between 99c-romance-novel to weirdly clinical in a heartbeat - to make up for what felt like over half of the book.The characters were flat and boring. Penny was samey, average, predictable; Maxwell was predictably boring and pointlessly evil à la Cackling Villain trope, albeit hypersexualized; Baba Greybeard was tolerable at least, though she felt like an awkward deus ex machina no matter how much she was foreshadowed; Alouette felt generic and forced. The dialogue sucked. Everyone felt unnaturally open sexually, when I would've expected at least one of the main or even minor characters to be repressed, but no - all that mattered to any of them was sex. The end was a disappointment for sure, and I'm absolutely not joking when I say that it comes off as fanfiction. I'm not sure if it's intended as satire but I expected better - not Fight Club, but at least better than whatever castoff garbage this is. It seemed like a fifteen-year-old's idea of edgy, which is a pity because the premise is good but the execution was absolute rubbish. Not to mention the Phoebe twist being glaringly obvious from early on, and it was the only twist I can recall, given that the blurb gives away the sex mind-control angle straight away.The plot was weird and interesting enough to keep me listening, although honestly if I had read the physical book and not spent the ~8 hours knitting I may have just given up. I won't give it a listen again, for sure. The library might want it though. I just expected far better of Palahniuk.
    • 3/5
      For me the first hundred pages I read in one sitting and LOVED it. After that I got a little bored. I know part of the problem is expecting so much of Chuck Palahniuk. I think if this was an unknown author I would be on here telling everybody that they have to read this guy he is insane. Of course we all know Palahniuk is insane so we expect it along with greatness. I would still recommend but I am just a little disappointed.
    • 4/5
      I should never read even partial reviews from people I don't know and trust because I'm just yelling at my computer screen "It's satire you ignorant fucks! It's a condemnation of misogyny and consumerism and rape culture and if you didn't get that, then you're probably part of the problem." Is it my favorite of Palahniuk's books? No. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot. Does it occasionally try to hard? Oh, heavens, yes. But, did it make me laugh and think? You betcha--and that was all I wanted, so I call it a success.
    • 4/5
      As an avid Palahniuk reader, I can say that this isn't his best. But is fun and bat shit crazy like a good Chuck book. But don't start reading his work with this one, please XD
    • 1/5
      I did not like this book, it did not cook, it was a rook. This book was about a filly who was very silly. It was outlandish and absurd, although in the end mostly a turd. I also found that the underlying message of the book was that women are little more than slaves to their biology. A little tickle in their lady parts and they can be controlled like mindless zombies. I am not a feminist, and actively dislike feminists, however this struck me as a somewhat over simplification of half the species. Or I just completely missed the point of the novel. Either way it stunk.
    • 2/5
      Please note, I absolutely did not finish this book. 35 pages was all I could take.It would be all I could do to avoid rolling my eyes so far up in my head that they actually went 360 in front of her face if I was forced to cope with Penny in person. I am not going to spend my leisure time reading about this angsty, unself-actualized human being. I have even less interest in reading about the quotidian douche-baggery of the secondary characters. There is enough of this shit in real life.Though I must say, these characters are so well-written that I experienced the same high levels of seething misanthropy I feel upon encountering such persons face to face.
    • 1/5
      I swear to god, the thing I love/hate most about Chuck Palahniuk is that he makes me enjoy reading things that in turn make me want to claw my own eyes out.
    • 3/5
      A sex toy is put on the market that makes men completely obsolete. Yet, after a couple uses, the toy breaks and the women are addicted and under the control of the maker of the sex toy. Super dark, and while I thought the premise was interesting, I did not enjoy the end of the book.
    • 4/5
      Palahniuk's novels are self-described as transgressional fiction, literature which include characters who feel restrained by societal norms thereby break free of these norms in unusual or illicit ways. The protagonist and antagonist in this novel are Penny Harrigan and C. Linus Maxwell (aka "Climax-Well." Penny is a Bridget Jones-like character, who has completed law school, failed the bar exam three times, and is currently employed at a prestigious NYC law firm as a glorified gofer. Maxwell is a wealthy, Steve Job-like technology entrepreneur who has studied ancient sexual wisdom from Baba Gray-Beard, a reclusive sex witch who lives in a cave on the side of Mt. Everest. Although Maxwell is known for dating the first female president and actresses, he requests a date from Penny, when she falls into a conference at her law firm. During one date in Paris, she encounters Maxwell's former love interest, an award-winning French actress who warns Penny not to ever have sex with Maxwell. However, she does. Using the knowledge he has acquired from the ancients, he wants to develop a product line of sexual toys known as Beautiful You, which offer women a better sexual experience than they have had from any man. Believing Penny has ideal genitals, he uses Penny to perfect his sexual enhancement products. In 136 days, the same length of his previous relationships, he breaks up with Penny; however, making her financially comfortable for the remainder of her life. Beautiful You is a great success shortly after it is launched. Penny announces to the press that as the researcher's guinea pig she was co-developer in the product line.However, like the personal computer and cellular phone, the introduction of this new technology was not without a social impact. Soon women began isolating themselves from their significant others, absenting themselves from places of employment, and failing to take care of their nutritional and personal hygiene needs to spend more time pleasuring themselves with their Beautiful You products. Even Penny has to go into hiding fearing for her life taken in revenge for the now abandoned men. Realizing the social trauma that Penny has helped cause, she travels to learn the ancient sexual secrets from Baba Gray-Beard in able to withstand the erotic influence that Maxwell still has on her and to know how to help the women ensnared by Beautiful You. Although this novel does contain sexual scenes, they are less explicit than one would fine in erotic romances. Like many of Palahniuk's novels, I considered this one better classified as speculative fiction, satire and social commentary. The sexual toys serve as a metaphor for many technological changes that have been introduced in the last 50 years. For example, how has smart phones effected how people communicate? I found several scenes as laugh-out funny, such as a bonfire created by abandoned men to burn the sexual toys. Although this novel contains humorous moments, I enjoyed it because it made me as the reader think about how technological changes assumed to be inocuous might actually have harmful consequences.
    • 1/5
      I finished this yesterday at work, meant to review it when I came home but after work and the fourth of July party, it slipped my mind.

      Let me just say this - -- this is a bad novel. Its just bad. In every way. I tried spending yesterday at work thinking of how I'd review it, but there isn't a way to even review it. Its that horrible. It doesn't work in any sense, at all. Not even as a serious novel, or a parody, or satire, or humor, or anything, it doesn't work. Its so illogical, how EVERYONE behaves, how the devices work, how the plot unfolds, how anatomy, science, etc, none of it works. It doesn't even work on a parody/satire level either, and it really comes off more as Palahniuk being pissy that people went out in droves to read Twilight/50 Shades, rather than other novels. Hey, I get it Chuck, Twilight/50 Shades/etc. are pulp crap, but ya know what.... it sucks.... people (women) loved those books.... and those same women spurned your books, sucks, but, you can move past that, just write good books..... like you haven't done since basically your first 3 or so novels.

      I thought his first two books of his (soon-to-be) Hell/Dante's Inferno trilogy was bad.... but this is absolutely trash and completely fails in every category possible as a novel. I am still in utter shock just how horrible this schlock was, it was almost his parody of a novel, and a humorous attempt to see if a publisher would publish this crap on just his name-sake alone. Maybe that was his true attempt at parody, to see if he could write a novel so bad that nobody would publish it - just to find that they still would due to namesake/name value.

      If you can find one redeeming quality/value to this novel, I'd LOVE to hear it.
    • 2/5
      I pretty much always enjoy reading Palahniuk and Beautiful You was still decent overall, however it felt repetitive and lacking in depth. Hard to explain considering his tendency to go overboard with background details, but this one seemed to have entire sections that should have either been excised or expanded.
    • 2/5
      This is my first book by Palahniuk. The narrator/main character is a woman, which isn't unheard of coming from a male author, but in this case I can attest that NO WOMAN EVER would speak or act like this one. The premise is ridiculous, so it is slightly entertaining, but that's it.
    • 2/5
      Not sure why I read the whole things, clunky and uneven development
    • 1/5
      NOT A BOOK FOR YOUNG READERS!!! Heavy Violence and Sexual Content.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 ans 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.
    • 4/5
      If you can get past the graphic anatomical descriptions, this is really an interesting satire about our obsession with pleasure. Aside from the detailed lessons on sexual anatomy, the other reason I didn’t enjoy the book more was it took so long to get to the unique and twisted Chuck Palahniuk-type story.
    • 1/5
      I've always listed Chuck Palahniuk as one of my favorite authors. I've read just about all of his books and even the one's I didn't love I usually still enjoyed up until some of his recent books like Pygmy and Damned which have just completely missed the mark for me. I requested Beautiful You from Goodreads and it was the fact that I got it from Goodreads and really try to complete and review everything I get for review that pushed me to even finish this book. While Chuck's books have always pushed the limits and used vulgarity that hasn't bothered me this book was just vulgar and outrageous while simultaneously really boring. I didn't really care about the plot or the characters. There were some glimpses of themes as far as consumerism, human desire and such that could have been interesting satire but this book was just so poorly executed. I was just waiting for it to end. I know I'll be picking up the sequel to Fight Club that's coming out but unfortunately I don't see myself wanting to continue with any more of his books from now on because it's just become a chore to read each of his new books. It's really a bummer.
    • 2/5
      A very rich man determines to take control of the world's women by creating a line of sex toys that they are unable to stop using.
    • 1/5
      I wanted to see how the ending would be handled, so I kept listening to the audio---just not my favorite listening experience even though I give him credit for coming up with a totally different idea for control of the world...to say the least. I agree with the other "one star" review---Yes, it was written as a novel but was it really worth putting his creativity into this? I always like reading what other reviewers have to say because I learn from them and I do appreciate the comments about what this author, in some opinions, was really doing with this "satirical" work. Still, I am delighted to be DONE with it!!!!
    • 4/5
      This book got more absurd the longer you read it. Penny isn't special, she's failed the bar four times and gets coffee for lawyers. One day at work she runs into the world's richest day. Unbelievably, he takes her out for dinner and slowly seduces her. Penny is the luckiest girl in the world. She soon finds that he is also AMAZING in the bedroom. He gives her, her first of THOUSANDS of orgasms. The only downside? Penny discovers that the toys and lotions Maxwell is using on her are going to be mass produced. Penny is a test subject for a line of Beautiful You products that will soon change the very fabrics of society. The sex toys are amazing. Too amazing. Women only want to pleasure themselves, nothing else is important, friends, family, hygiene all thrown to the wayside as they search for more batteries and more Beautiful You toys. As society begins to crumble, Penny suspects that something is "wrong" with the products and she may be the only one to stop it. Absurd, eye opening, and funny. Claassic Palahniuk. Word to the wise, this book is dirty and erotic. If you listen to the audiobook like I did you might want to make sure your windows are rolled up at all time, you don't want people to give you weird stares. Just saying.
    • 3/5
      Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. I try so very hard to like your work. All the cool kids do. I'm coming to accept I'm just not a cool kid. This book had an interesting premise, but the graphic porno talk just made me queasy. I'm not a prude by any means, and I appreciate pushing boundaries, but this seemed more a joke on us in how gross you could get. An experiment of your own perhaps? I try to step out of my box (no pun intended) and force myself to question my own boundaries, but apparently this was a line in the sand I just couldn't cross -- I'm pretty sure I need a shot of Penicillin now.I appreciate that it might be a take on the Fifty Shades of Grey phenom (no, haven't read but have heard about). And a more pornographic take on the romance novel that a segment of women enjoy (not me). It was just too over-the-top and degrading to women. I am curious what that very last celebrity mentioned in the book had to say about being included in the story. That did make me laugh.
    • 2/5
      Ugh. Come on Chuck. It's getting really hard to claim that you are one of my favorite authors anymore. I mean, for 10-15 years, you've been my "go-to" favorite author. And now? It's getting kind of embarrassing - and untrue - because I've either felt indifferent to or I've hated your recent stuff. Beautiful You slid from a "meh" into a "yuck" pretty quickly for me - and not just because of the graphic sex. This won't be one that I'm rereading (or listening to again). Sorry Early Reviewers, this one was a dud.
    • 2/5
      The satire in this piece is clear. It riffs off of themes straight out of chick lit and grocery store romance novels. Throw in a clichéd, sci-fi “end of the world” scenario and you’re all set. It was unoriginal, lewd, and unnecessary. I wasn’t sure if he meant for it to be a ‘serious satire’, an oxymoron if there ever was one, or just a book to get a laugh. It was dreadful, but only for how ridiculous it was.Basic, boring story line and flow. Intro to unattractive girl, girl bumps into boy, boy is a millionaire, boy whisks girl off feet. She’s in love. There’s the “end of the world” thing, but it’s so farfetched and ludicrous it’s not worth mentioning…it all just spirals into the absurd and never regains from the fall.Characters Development: Ugh. Where to start. The characters are one-sided throughout. Literally ripped from the 50 Shades of Grey story line, Penny Harrigan and C. Linus Maxwell, as the leads, do little to make the story riveting or worth following. The supporting characters were poorly developed and in the end it comes off as a deranged story line from the soap-opera, Passions (if you know what I’m talking about, then you know how awful this really is)!I would NOT recommend this book to anyone, not even fans of Palahniuk! I'd tell fans (I may or may not still consider myself part of that crowd, after this gem) to hold out until he returns to what made him interesting, whatever that may have been...I'm concerned he may have been overrated all this time... Anyway, whether it’s supposed to point out the silliness of works like 50 Shades of Grey or Sex and the City, and make us reflect on how that’s affecting our society today, or if it is supposed to be a work to give frat boys some laughs, I couldn’t tell the difference. I feel like it makes me want to reevaluate how I perceive, or had perceived, Palahniuk’s earlier works.I received this book in audio format from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers giveaway.
    • 5/5
      Insane! Whirlwind plot, Palahniuk does it again. I received this book as an audiobook, and that was very difficult. I could not listen to it at work, I couldn't listen to it around the kids. This is a porn novel, basically. I don't know if men feel the same way as a female reader, but that was how I felt. The descriptions were so vivid, I felt myself reacting to Penny's crazy situations. I recommend this "novel" over audio. Not recommended for children or YA.
    • 2/5
      As a long time reader of Palahniuk's, I was very disappointed with Beautiful You. The theme of the corrupting influence of absolute power is one he has tackled before, and much more successfully in novels like Lullaby and Rant, and this novel adds nothing new to those works.There are quite a few structural issues as well. Characters act very inconsistently throughout, with their personalities serving scenes on an individual basis. The passage of time ebbs and flows erratically, and characters move about the story in incomprehensible ways. In a better novel I could write off some of this, as the story does partially take the form of a dark fable that doesn't need to be so beholden to reality. But for me this just didn't work and these problems just became increasingly distracting and only pointed out the flaws in the narrative.
    • 1/5
      Uhh, No.What started out as an interesting premise, quickly degraded into what I can only describe as an adolescent erotic fantasy.The big 'reveal' was totally expected, and the story was neither funny or suspenseful. Perhaps a true Palahniuk fan could tolerate this 'story', but I can find nothing to recommend. I will not use spoilers, suffice it to say stay away.Struggled to finish this book, but already quit one this year (Owen King's Double Feature) and refused to quit another.Wish I hadn't started this one though, WAY too many volumes on my bookshelves that would have been a better use of limited reading hours.