Any editor on the planet will tell you that similes are to be avoided at any cost.
Yeah, avoid similes like the plague, so they say. But that one reads so perfectly. Send me your discarded similes. They needs some love. If memory serves me at all, wasn't Jonathan Franzan all similes all the time. I don't have books in front of me -- so I have to check that. and I'll never forget best-seller... Bright Lights Big City - McInerny's simile, speaking of the protagonist's boss: "She had a heart like a ten-minute egg." But you are probably right.
I'm realizing that you get to make every mistake you want after you've sold that first book, after you're repped, after people are trusting your instincts rather than the instincts of every professional that disagrees with you. Still doesn't mean it's a good idea, but nobody is telling you "you can't do that because I said so" as if you were a toddler. Fleisch-Kinkaid on the above passage is 8.9. F-K on my last chapter was 7.6 or so. I aim to keep it under 8.
simply-written books sell better. Thing of it is, you don't need Byzantine sentence structure to convey complex ideas. In fact, the more you edit and proof the more clearly you can express yourself. There's a place for complexity and there's a place for voice, but it's also super-easy to confuse the fuck out of half your audience and that's no way to make a living.