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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — Welcome to Holistik
Chapter 3: — The Backstage and the Worms
Chapter 4: — The Prodigy and the Prison
Chapter 5: — The Ritual of Chaoshan Mud
Chapter 6: — Basement Life and City Nights
Chapter 7: — Rules of the Aura
Chapter 8: — The Girl from the Video
Chapter 9: — Lamb, Lessons, and Becoming
Chapter 10: — Secrets in the Sky
Chapter 11: — Apothecare and the Lake
Chapter 12: — Helen’s Fall
Chapter 13: — The Spoiled Subject
Chapter 14: — Fire on the Mountain
Chapter 15: — After the Furnace
Chapter 16: — What Beauty Can’t Buy
Description
A young Chinese American pianist—once a prodigy, now broke—accepts a sales job at Holistik, a cult-status wellness and beauty empire. The store is velvet and candlelight on the surface, but it runs on surveillance, obsession, and a never-ending list of rules that promise transformation. She meets Helen, a luminous ceramicist tied to the company’s powerful founder, Victor Carroll, and Lilith, the sharp manager with a past. Their attention feels like rescue.
As she rises inside Holistik, her skin glows, her lashes lengthen, and her name is even softened into something more marketable. Her parents’ care depends on her paycheck, and she takes a secret second job at the company’s private “Apothecare,” a hidden spa that sells transcendence—and something far more invasive—under the banner of natural wellness. Step by step, she uncovers what Holistik is really building: not just products, but bodies, lineage, and the illusion that beauty can save you. It’s a love story, a thriller, and a reckoning with what we’re willing to trade to belong.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners drawn to dark social satire about beauty, class, and power
- Fans of literary thrillers with a slow-burn reveal and a fierce heroine
- Anyone curious about wellness culture’s shadow side—and how it preys on belonging