The female cofounders of a wellness start-up struggle to find balance between being good people and doing good business, while trying to stay BFFs.

Have you ever scrolled through Instagram and seen countless influencers who seem like experts at caring for themselves—from their yoga crop tops to their well-lit clean meals to their serumed skin and erudite-but-color-coded reading stack? Self Care delves into the lives and psyches of people working in the wellness industry and exposes the world behind the filter.

Maren Gelb is on a company-imposed digital detox. She tweeted something terrible about the President’s daughter, and as the COO of Richual, “the most inclusive online community platform for women to cultivate the practice of self-care and change the world by changing ourselves,” it’s a PR nightmare. Not only is CEO Devin Avery counting on Maren to be fully present for their next round of funding, but indispensable employee Khadijah Walker has been keeping a secret that will reveal just how feminist Richual’s values actually are, and former Bachelorette contestant and Richual board member Evan Wiley is about to be embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal that could destroy the company forever.

Plot structure/story: 3.5 stars
Content: 2 stars
Overall: 2.5 stars

I wanted to read this book more for research than any other reason. I’ve tried and stopped reading many books by millennial authors; they’re usually so depressing and whiny that I can’t continue. This book was headed that way. And when it got to the sexual assault allegations, I almost put it down, but I wanted to see how the book ended. I wanted to see if there was any redemption or hope in the story.

No. Not really.

The three main characters act as if they want to help others, but their goals are mostly the elevate and puff up themselves. It was absolutely depressing to see so many characters whose lives depend so heavily on other people’s opinions while also focusing so completely on themselves at the detriment of everyone else.

I don’t think I’m cut out to read satire. I can’t handle the blaming and shaming. By the end of the book, everything still sucks, evil prevails, and everyone is a victim of everyone else. I’m not asking for sunshine and rainbows, but I couldn’t handle the victimhood and self-centeredness. (I won’t even get into the normalizing of sexual perversions.)

R-rated for sex, drinking, and swearing.