Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Beautiful You
    Beautiful You
    Beautiful You
    Audiobook7 hours

    Beautiful You

    Written by Chuck Palahniuk

    Narrated by Carol Monda

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    BEAUTIFUL YOU is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit ala Sex and the City, and fantasy lit ala Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 21, 2014
    ISBN9781490627946
    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.

    More audiobooks from Chuck Palahniuk

    Related to Beautiful You

    Related audiobooks

    Satire For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Fourteen FROM DARK TO LIGHT

      Apr 8, 2020

      Fourteen FROM DARK TO LIGHT
      5 min read

    • Article

      Leonard Pitts Jr.: The Janes: 'We Thought It Was Over'

      Jun 8, 2022

      It opens with a woman’s voice and a black screen. “I had no other options,” she says. “I wanted it over with.” Then you see her. White, gray-haired, maybe somewhere in her 70s. And she continues her story. “I didn’t care how it was done. I was that d

      2 min read

    • Article

      Theatre

      Jul 17, 2023

      Harold Shipman was one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history, with an estimated 250 victims. Actor and writer Edwin Flay’s grandmother was one of the people Shipman killed. Flay explains why he decided to bring this deeply personal st

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Ladies Book Club

      Apr 10, 2024

      “Our brains are shaped with the capability to care deeply but also to kill. This deep ambivalence is potentially problematic. A society filled with people who are inherently very compassionate and very violent might prove unstable.”1 1Emile Bruneau,

      25 min read

    • Article

      Monica, REVISITED

      Oct 21, 2021

      Monica, REVISITED
      10 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      May 25, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Happiest Man in the World

      Oct 31, 2023

      Several years ago, a British man named Harry picked his nose. A hidden camera recorded him in this private moment, then someone uploaded the video to the internet, and soon Harry’s pratfall exploded into a worldwide meme. Millions of people—most of t

      9 min read

    • Article

      Prev Iews

      Sep 8, 2019

      Prev Iews
      3 min read

    • Article

      Bearing Witness

      May 30, 2021

      Lauren Hough is unicorn-level rare: someone who strode on to Twitter cracking witty and street-wise, a sharp-tongued yet strikingly kind presence. She wrote a cracking essay that went, well, pandemic-level viral, was snapped up for a book deal, and h

      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Sep 15, 2021

      Of the 1000-plus books that have landed on my desk since the debut of this feature, not one has been as astonishing as this one. Brooks is Scientia Professor of Evolution at UNSW Sydney, where he founded and directs the Evolution and Ecology Research

      5 min read

    • Article

      Last Call For Gumshoes

      Sep 29, 2020

      Last Call For Gumshoes
      20 min read

    • Article

      Psychics

      Jan 12, 2022

      Psychics
      10 min read

    • Article

      GhoST StoRies

      Apr 12, 2021

      GhoST StoRies
      8 min read

    • Article

      Chost Stories

      Apr 12, 2021

      Chost Stories
      8 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Mar 21, 2024

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Hoax Or Healer?

      Nov 3, 2021

      Hoax Or Healer?
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Beautiful You

    3/5

    212 ratings27 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      When things seem too good to be true, they probably are. Penny finds herself part of a tabloid fairy tale when a billionaire takes a shine to her. Their initial date is tepid but he soon flies her to Paris and begins showering her in champagne and designer labels. The sex is good too. I mean GREAT. Unlike most men, C. Linus Maxwell is only interested in her pleasure. He takes detailed notes and is always looking for feedback on his many sex toy inventions.Soon it becomes clear that Penny is just a lab rat in Maxwell's sex laboratory. Worse, it seems that the sex toy line Penny helped perfect is now enslaving the female section of the population. Women stop going to work and caring for their children. The economy stalls while 90% of its women stay home and pleasure themselves non-stop. Penny must do all she can to topple Maxwell's sex regime before all women everywhere expire or become mindless consumer slaves.This book is way over the top. I thought it would be a clever send-up of the Fifty Shades of Grey series but it was just so gross. I feel that the idea that most women are walking around unfulfilled is rather dated. Moreover, I found the idea that if women had access to efficient sex toys they would cease working is somewhat insulting. Even with the idea of nano-robots invading their bloodstream it was just dumb. All the characters were wooden and devoid of motive. Why does a billionaire want to control all women? He doesn't like sex and he's already rich. Just power? Surely there are easier ways. Why does Penny want to become a sex yogi and live in a cave? Why does she then want to control all women? None of it made sense or could withstand an even cursory scrutiny. Maybe I'm missing the point. Is it supposed to be funny? It just wasn't. And he had the audacity to reference Fight Club. Tacky.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      This was awful!!! I wish I hadn't listened as long as I did.
    • 5/5
      Raunchy and thought provoking. Not for the faint of heart.
    • 1/5
      Absolute filth. I couldn't stop listening - morbid curiosity got the better of me.
    • 3/5
      This was a quite bizarre book. Yes, it is filled with erotica and sexual terms, and the author does have quite que imagination. I laughed and I rolled my eyes, but it was somewhat entertaining. Just go in knowing that it is not a masterpiece (Sorry to the author)
    • 1/5
      Kind of like a plane crash... you can't look away, and you have to finish watching to the horrifyingly awful conclusion. Screaming vaginas. Microbots invading brains and sexual organs. A brilliant, deranged lothario who will even resort to an incestuos-like cloning to bring back his dream woman?!?! Dear ones, I thought MY dreams were strange! I will say this... the book stayed on my mind for days after I finished it. I just don't believe the author wanted THIS kind of reaction.
    • 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.