Cruelty Free
Cruelty Free by Caroline Glenn takes a satirical look at Hollywood, fame, beauty standards, paparazzi and anyone in the sphere around fame, including bloggers and podcasters, but it’s also a tale about how grief can break someone and how far one will go just to relieve that ache, however temporarily.
Cruelty Free follows Lila Devlin, a beautiful famous actress who seemed to have her dream life until her baby daughter Josie is kidnapped. Once Hollywood’s darling, because she was out with friends the evening her daughter was kidnapped, public opinion immediately turned negative (never mind that her husband, also an A-list actor, was also out with friends that night), and she was branded “Unfit Mother” and even suspected of having murdered Josie.
When a body is found a few days after an unsuccessful ransom delivery, Lila’s marriage cannot survive, and she spends the next 10 years traveling in anonymity before she feels ready to return to LA, where she is inspired to start a skincare company in honor of Josie - but soon finds herself more concerned with avenging Josie than honoring her.
Cruelty Free is told partly from Lila’s perspective and in part through the “oral history” of the “Devlin baby” case, really just a collection of interviews of anyone who had an opinion about Lila, her marriage, and the case, including many people in her immediate sphere. This makes it easy to sympathize with Lila, even though she is not very likable, not to mention turned murderer, but we can see she really has no one in her life she can trust, even before she turns to vengeance against those she holds responsible for Josie’s death - including police detectives, reporters, bloggers, and podcasters - anyone who was more focused on her than on her daughter’s safe return.
Cruelty Free spends a lot of time on other’s opinions of Lila - opinions which obviously matter to her, and the time spent with Lila, and her new partner in business, the bedroom, and crime, Sylvie, is mostly focused on the killing and disposing of bodies, which means there isn’t a lot of time spent on Lila’s actual character, so even by the end of the novel, we are not sure of who she is or her true motivations - but it’s possible she isn’t either, so perhaps that’s intentional.
I listened to this on audio along with reading the ebook, thanks to NetGalley, William Morrow, and HarperAudio Adult, and I recommend the audiobook. Jaime Lamchick does an amazing job making the voices of not only Lila and the immediate characters, but also the participants in the “Oral History” feel distinct, so it was a pleasure to listen.
Also: read the labels on your beauty products, kids, make sure you know where those ingredients are sourced.
