Venus Juice: When I Tried to Live in LA

With his memoir, VENUS JUICE, author and mystic Luke Simon takes readers on a neo-nostalgic trip into the LA wellness scene of the late 2010s, a land of luxury juice, natural healing, and digital hookups. Looking for Love, Creativity, and filled with questions about how to make it as an Instagram healer, on the surface, the City of Angels seems to hold the keys to all that he seeks—but is everything what it seems?

Known among wellness circles as a co-founder of the popular Maha Rose Center for the Healing Arts in Brooklyn, Simon’s story takes in themes of friendship, celebrity, queer romance, and the social media hustle that has come to color our experiences of love and creativity in the new millennium. From $29 tonics, to a trip to New Age church, to a series of unforgettable dates that only end in self-doubt, Venus Juice is part love letter, part break-up Post-it with a scene too easily spooked by its own shadow.

Known for his humorous IG memes and Sedaris-esque worldview, the book is part incisive portrait and part loving parody of a city—and a culture— where a glossy facade often conceals darker hidden truths. Populated with a colorful cast of coaches, artists, hunks, healers, influencers, nighttime flowers, and health food connoisseurs, at the center of it all, we find one soul learning the meaning of self-love in our increasingly divided and digitized world.

Read more