Name: jacq bridge's review of Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter
Item: Ripe
Rating: 4
Author: jacq bridge

Sarah Rose Etter

From an award-winning writer whose work Roxane Gay calls “utterly unique and remarkable” comes a surreal novel about a woman in Silicon Valley who must decide how much she’s willing to give up for success—perfect for fans of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and The Need. A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets. Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels. When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through our late-capitalist hellscape and offers a brilliantly incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

A Novel

Ripe

hessensitive

I don't want to go to this dinner- groups of people make me feel too exposed, I never know what to say, I always drink too much and make a fool of myself.

Aina

Life's greater truth is like that, always there, waiting to slide its knife into the heart of our illusions.

There are moments of beauty and light. It would be a lie to say it is all dread here. Even an oil spill has a rainbow sheen, an iridescent shimmer that trembles over its darkness. Life is this way, too: half suffering, half beauty.

Sometimes, all it takes to fall in love is one small detail: the back of a neck, the space between a thumb and a forefinger, a fleck of gray in green eyes, the wildness of someone's laughter.

‘Life is a series of big moments,’ he said. 'Some days, of course, you’re out there digging ditches. Some days, it's just a Tuesday, you know? But then there are the big moments. And you have to save them in your heart, crystallize them, and put them in a glass jar.'

‘Everyone is fucking everything up all the time. All you can do is show up and try. This is how you get tough.’

‘I get sad sometimes,’ I said to my mother, our bare feet in the patchy, half-dead grass, the sun burning away above our heads. 'I get so sad sometimes that it's physically painful. Sometimes I hope the earth cracks open or the sea sweeps me away.’

When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older, you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play.

The black hole is at its most powerful when I’m alone. When I'm around other people, it tends to stay small, shrinks down to a small point. But if the melancholy gets too great, if it rises up and overtakes me, the black hole swells, a rotating mass that blocks out the world. It smells sweet and metallic, like what astronauts report when they describe the smell of outer space: notes of welded silver, raspberries, burned meat. 

When the black hole expands, it eclipses my heart and mind, sucks all joy and light from my body. The black hole sings and holds a single note, the song of my name. It might seem like it would be easy to resist it. But it's impossible not to hear the call into its depths. It is the siren song of the void.

To survive here, I have split myself in two: my true self and my false self. My fake self rises up to take over when the demands are too great. Maybe there must always be two of us – our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is. 

In my first days here, I thought I was enough. But life moved too quickly for me to stay ahead: I struggled with deadlines, overslept, performed poorly.

How does anyone bear themselves? How can anyone stare into the darkest corners of humanity and return to the office, enter the meeting room, and deliver the presentation? How do we all just keep working?

Irdha C

depressing but good, makes me very glad to have left tech 

jacq bridge

this book put the final nail in the coffin; im a lit fic girlie. apparently some people found this boring but for me i was hooked. sure nothing major happened but its such a good depiction of feeling so very alienated in a capitalist society despite almost everyone around you congratulating you and pushing you even further into the belly of the beast. loved the addition of the black hole following cassie everywhere. im pissed that my kobo deleted all my annotations but guess that means i can just reread again soon:p

Cassie does not have much to live for; any happiness she gets is fleeting and provisional. Growing up, she was very much emotionally abused by her mother, and her father is only marginally better in his negligence and insistence that she needs to move away and live alone the moment she graduates. (Their marriage is a train wreck, by the way.) Cassie moves to SF, California to work in a tech startup that is very much a black company and her job is seriously ruining her life. She’s seeing someone, but he has a girlfriend. Then she finds out she’s pregnant. Every day, she witnesses homeless people commit acts of desperation. Public suicide is a weekly occurrence.  There’s a virus going around and fires causing public health crises but she still needs to clock in to keep her job. She is getting by purely on cocaine, like seriously she’s snorting coke all day just to meet her deadlines. And at all times, she has a personal blackhole that’s more than just a metaphor as it’s following her around and responding to the multiple endless stressors in her daily life. It is quite a depressing read and made me glad that I’m not working in that industry.

I think something that disturbed my attempts to immerse myself fully into the narrative was the dialogue. I get that her “fake self” is meant to speak in a way that matches all the fake people around her, but there was a lot of incongruity between her inner thoughts and feelings and all the words coming out of people’s mouths. Especially how her parents speak to her in the flashbacks. Does any father really try to sound like The Joker when giving his daughter life advice? Idk. And her brother appeared for one scene and never again. I also tried to understand how the definitions at the start of each chapter related to the events slotted underneath them but it felt disjointed to me, like when people tried to be emogirl92 on Tumblr in the 2010s.

This books just perfectly captures how it feel about working and pursuing a job that doesn't really fulfill me. It's depressing but somehow comforting. It's like reading your own thoughts and immersing myself in my own chaotic mind. 

Sheila Mae Moradas

This book makes me want to quit my job and sleep as long as I want. I think most adults who’ve endured the grind of a corporate job can relate to this feeling: crowded train rides, endless deadlines, toxic coworkers, and the relentless cycle of work that seems to lead nowhere. 

It’s a treadmill that drains your energy and spirit, leaving you wondering—does any of it truly matter? What’s the point of all this struggle when the world feels like it’s crumbling and life itself feels so fragile?

Sometimes it feels like we’re all just cogs in a machine, endlessly spinning but getting nowhere. And in those rare quiet moments, you’re left with the unsettling question: is this really all there is? A never ending race toward a finish line that doesn’t even exist?

Most importantly, fuck capitalism. To anyone feeling burned out, I genuinely hope you find a way to take a break and reconnect with what you love. Seek out the beauty hidden in this chaotic world, no matter how small it may seem. That’s what makes this life worth living.

This book makes me want to quit my job and sleep as long as I want. I think most adults who’ve endured the grind of a corporate job can relate to this feeling: crowded train rides, endless deadlines, toxic coworkers, and the relentless cycle of work that seems to lead nowhere. 

It’s a treadmill that drains your energy and spirit, leaving you wondering—does any of it truly matter? What’s the point of all this struggle when the world feels like it’s crumbling and life itself feels so fragile?

Sometimes it feels like we’re all just cogs in a machine, endlessly spinning but getting nowhere. And in those rare quiet moments, you’re left with the unsettling question: is this really all there is? A never ending race toward a finish line that doesn’t even exist?

Most importantly, fuck capitalism. To anyone feeling burned out, I genuinely hope you find a way to take a break and reconnect with what you love. Seek out the beauty hidden in this chaotic world, no matter how small it may seem. That’s what makes this life worth living.



This was genuinely so excruciatingly boring to me. It was so hard to get through I almost dnf. I just feel like overall it was not as relatable to me as I thought it’d be and the plot was extremely bland and harped on the narrator’s extreme “woe is me” mentality. 

Rana Sulieman

Had elements of a 'cool girl' book; complicated female friendships, emotionally abusive mother, non-committal love interest, a bleak, socially isolated female narrator with an ambiguous substance abuse disorder. I thought I would have enjoyed it more than I did, though I did really appreciate the dystopian take on late stage capitalism. 

This one is for the girls who hate the corporate world and feel stuck in this capitalist hellhole. Reading this made me feel seen.

The author’s style of writing is quite unique, one I’ve never encountered before. The black hole analogy depicted is a genius move! I really like how it was described throughout the book. However, I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re going through a depression. It might be triggering to some.

This one is for the girls who hate the corporate world and feel stuck in this capitalist hellhole. Reading this made me feel seen.

The author’s style of writing is quite unique, one I’ve never encountered before. The black hole analogy depicted is a genius move! I really like how it was described throughout the book. However, I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re going through a depression. It might be triggering to some.

Kris Felger

WOW!!!! I wasn't too sure about this book going into it, but it was extremely addicting (no pun intended) Our main character is imperfect and flawed and struggling mentally and I think the author portrayed these well! While the story is short its gripping and written VERY well!

Liyah 🤎

I really enjoyed this book. It was quite sad, but Cassie's, the main character, inner dialogue, was very engaging. The "black hole" functioned as very interesting metaphor. I wouldn't call this book "funny," as in, haha, but funny weird, like some things that happen to Cassie or the people around her are so zany you can't help but laugh. I also really related to the sort of disassociation Cassie experienced while I work operating as her "fake self." I also got the chance to see the author speak at the 2024 LA Book Fest, and she was so funny and engaging and added great insights to my interpretation of the book.

absolutely loved the build only to be left wanting. torn between 'all about the journey' type read versus my absolute reverence for the ability of a writer to stick the landing. will give her another try (i already own book of x)

tiff <3

arwen

loved it. will be reading her other books soon

in my experience an uber driver would never “live love laugh” you at rock bottom. that’s a gig economy comrade tbh

Cass Fox

Short light read. Love the usage of caricatures. 

Cristina S

"Ripe" really manages to stand out among its peers in the sad girl novel genre as it is much more focused and much more grounded in reality than many others. I am not sure what the author's background is but if this is not at least a tiny bit based on some lived experience, she must be a greatly empathetic and / or attentive person. 

What a relief to finally find a book in the genre that does not come off as airhead or middle-class to rich people problems (by which I really mean is the author really is writing what they do NOT know nor even care to know and are nearly cosplaying what they imagine poor people's lives are like. I can discuss this forever). I felt genuine sympathy for Cassie and genuine relatability to her. The reality is that a lot of millennial and Gen Z women will find (and have found) themselves in similar circumstances and seeing this reflected on page can be liberating and comforting. Perhaps this is truly a book that should be on "Must-reads in Your 20's" lists.

"Ripe" really manages to stand out among its peers in the sad girl novel genre as it is much more focused and much more grounded in reality than many others. I am not sure what the author's background is but if this is not at least a tiny bit based on some lived experience, she must be a greatly empathetic and / or attentive person. 

What a relief to finally find a book in the genre that does not come off as airhead or middle-class to rich people problems (by which I really mean is the author really is writing what they do NOT know nor even care to know and are nearly cosplaying what they imagine poor people's lives are like. I can discuss this forever). I felt genuine sympathy for Cassie and genuine relatability to her. The reality is that a lot of millennial and Gen Z women will find (and have found) themselves in similar circumstances and seeing this reflected on page can be liberating and comforting. Perhaps this is truly a book that should be on "Must-reads in Your 20's" lists.

This book really didn't work for me. I didn’t like that were two heavy-handed structural choices with the pomegranate and the definitions. I didn’t enjoy how the black hole was ambiguously neither metaphor nor surrealism. I definitely felt the SF tension of extreme poverty & wealth laid bare, and the way the MC deadened herself to survive her tech job. I appreciated the attempt to weave romance, family, and abortion narratives. But despite all of that it felt like nothing was emotionally at stake here. And I feel like the end was supposed to be a transcendent ascent into oblivion but it just felt so … lackluster?

Amelia Hruby

Hannah

“When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play.” 
I loved this book, I think it was written in. A really compelling way where the author made the mundane thrilling. There was a strong tone of drama and dread throughout that endeared me to the characters like a shared sense of gloom hanging over everything. I think the protagonist is really interesting and her concept of this black hole maybe a physical sense of her impending doom was really interesting and seeing how she interacts with this, the final phone call reminds me of ladybird a bit. I think this was a really unique and good read

Started in August. Got a bit sad and stopped reading until November and then flew threw it in a few days. Really enjoyed it 

Blathnaid

Grace M

A fast-acting poison pill of a novel. Slips past the teeth and tongue with ease and metabolizes in your stomach acid before you realize its lethal effects. 
This book is bleak. It’s well done, it captures morose, dark feelings very accurately. So much so that it feels like the black hole that follows Cassie jumps off the page and anchors itself to you. 
 The black hole metaphor for anxiety and depression is a bit on the nose but it is effective

Emily Perkovich

Filled with melancholy, realist perspective, and a sharp commentary on capitalism. As expected, I loved this, though I did miss the heavy surrealism present in her other work. Not that this is void of it. Just lighter on surreal elements. Thank you to Scribner for the ARC

Irdha C &
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

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Irdha C &Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

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Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter