Sweet Harmony

The novella length suits this one. It has a simple and direct fable-like quality, and like a fable it uses the specific to highlight the general. For a short book, there's a lot to unpack here - it touches on consumerism, our basic dissatisfaction with what we have versus what we want, abusive partners, relationships with our parents, and more.
It's a smooth and easy read that will pull you in easily. For all that, though, it feels very linear, and there are no real surprises. Her first few novels left me thinking Claire North had a great book in her, but the next couple made me doubt that. Sweet Harmony isn't that great book, but it has smoothed out her wobble.

This is definitely the novella North wrote for the Black Mirror anthology that never happened, right? Because it out-Black Mirrors the actual show. This is easily the bleakest book I've read by North. You can feel the anger seeping off the page and in your bones (I had to put it down a few times to calm down, and that's as someone who lacks much of the personal experience this book will resonate with).

It's a brutal examination of abusive relationships, society's standards of beauty, the commercialization of medicine, the predatory nature of credit companies, and so much more.

Also there's a haggis orgy.