Yeah this one was lackluster for me. I liked the premise a LOT and the middle was really strong. The beginning was a weak set up and the book seemed to abruptly end on a weird note. If you want pregnancy dystopia, go to FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD instead.

This novel is like a little bit of a reality of "The Handmaid's Tale" set in present times. It is not as violent and it is more about the culture and what women would do to secure a good life for themselves and their families. It's about American dream and how far fetched it is in reality. What is the line of the relationship between a woman that is a nanny or a segregate of somebody else's child. How far would you go to make your company successful and impress your boss. What would you hide from the ones you love to protect them. Would you carry out the promise you made to someone to carry their child even after things are not the way you thought they were? How do you see a women's body? As an instrument to bring life or as a miracle of life?
Joanne Ramos takes the readers on a ride to question all of the above thoughts. This novel has a lot to chew on and ponder and discuss. It would make a wonderful book discussion in women's book clubs.

For fans of the Handmaid's Tale, you will really enjoy this one! However, it hits a bit close to home with the thought that this could someday be reality

Imagine a world where humans are bred like cattle, but in a spa.
This is the premise for the story. Women are recruited to be surrogate mothers for rich people who select the 'host' based on health and ethnicity. They are kept at a health spa full of massages and healthy living. They are monitored regularly and wear bracelets that keep track of their activities, heart rate and so on.

What is in this for the surrogates is money. They sign contracts that may be very lucrative and so most of these young women are in dire need of cash: immigrants, single mothers, students.

This is an interesting idea and I'm not entirely sure places like this do not already exist, even if illegally. The characters in the book represent the different moral viewpoints of this type of baby farming, from those who think it is a good use of unwanted monthly eggs to those who believe they are being exploited through their poverty. The characters also stand for each type of surrogate: the rich girl, the student, the immigrant. All a little too contrived. The themes also cover racist aspects where the ideal baby is fair skinned and light-eyed, the attitudes and conditioned behaviours of the immigrant Filipino women.

The novel is easy to read with a thin plot over the concept of the 'farm'. Towards the end the pace increases as the plot kicks in. Until then the book describes the life and process the surrogate mothers and the auxiliary staff endure, without much of a story.

#NetGalley #TheFarm

From reading the synopsis, I thought this book was going to be a little dystopian with The Farm being the new way that women have babies, but it wasn't as dystopian feeling as I wanted it to be. Instead it was a weird take on surrogacy that kept me feeling icky the whole time.

Jane is an immigrant and after a disastrous time as a nanny she finds herself in desperate need for a job. Her cousin refers her to The Farm where she will go and live and become a surrogate for a wealthy person who is unable for one reason or another to carry her own child - all expenses paid but this will take her away from her home and her own child. Jane agrees and she ends up in dormitory living with other surrogates and things get weird!

This was an interesting concept for a book and for most of it it worked. There were some moments were I was shaking my head not understanding the reasoning for one scene or another, but overall it worked.

I didn't love this book as much as I thought I would because of my previous comment that I was hoping for a good dystopian feel. For the life of me, can't remember exactly how dystopia I was imagining, but I had preconceived thoughts and it didn't quite rise to it. I would read another by this author because the characters were interesting and wanting to know where they would end up kept me reading until the end.

Well written story. I loved the characters and format. I liked being able to see everyone’s point of view and why they decided to become surrogates. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like the farm actually existed or will exist in the near future.

I thought from the synopsis this book was going to be a bit more gritty than it turned out to be. The Farm aka Golden Oaks is a luxurious place, like a spa, were women can make enough money to change their financial situation. They won't become rich or anything, but can make a fresh start. There's an unfortunate caveat to this and that is giving your body to an organization for 9 months to carry a child of the extremely wealthy.They will control every aspect of your life until you give birth: who you see, what you eat and what you do to say the least.

Jane our main character is not only naive, but can't seem to make one good decision. Everything she does falls apart due to her ignorance. That indeed exhausted me. If it wasn't for her cousin Ate (Evelyn) helping to take care of Jane's daughter and consistently getting her out of disastrous situations Jane would've been destitute. Jane makes friends at The Farm who lead her astray and one who helps her to unstained the lay of the land. Money does but everything and it's quite disturbing. It appears that The Farm preys on the downtrodden, helpless or selfless do-gooder.

This was an interested read. Again, not what I expected. It was a decent window into the lives of the immigrants who cater to and take care of the elite, their children and homes. How they are treated and overlooked.

Thank you to Random House for the advance eARC of this book.

The Farm is a kind of dystopian, but also hard to categorize. The book is about Ate and Jane and how Jane needs a job. Ate runs this unofficial nanny finding service that is highly regarded. Ate cares about little except for money and her disabled son, Roy. Almost all of the characters in this novel are Phillipina or Asian and this is refreshing. Jane makes mistakes with her family and is fired from her nannying job. Ate gets her a job at this baby farm (for lack of a better term). There are all of these rules and oppressive practices being done at Golden Oaks. The Reader thinks this is a clean, respectable place, until you really think about what Golden soaks is doing: using women when they are in dire need of cash, to farm babies like cows do milk. The clients are rich and powerful and only see them (the women) as wombs. Sometimes they take interest in the carrier (surrogate) but the women are rarely called surrogates or acknowledged by the client unless something goes wrong. I found this book to be wrapped up rather quickly and unsatisfactorily. It kind of ends abruptly.

I was really looking forward to reading The Farm especially after hearing so many good things about it. However I was really disappointed, I couldn't connect with the characters and I just found this story boring. I didn't like the storyline and I had to DNF it halfway through.

I was invited to read this work of science fiction by Net Galley and Random House; it’s for sale now.

At the outset, I was thrilled with this story’s audacity. The Farm is a luxury retreat that exists for the purpose of pampering young surrogate women that are carrying babies for the most privileged families. In some cases the mothers that will claim these babes after birth are sterile; some waited until they were too old to bear a child naturally; and some just don’t care to deal with the discomfort, the pain, or horror of horrors, the stretch marks.

Mae runs the show. Her talent scouts look hither and yon for suitable young women, and though few white women are available, those that are paler are considered most desirable. Most of all, they need to have incentive, which pretty much translates as desperation. The fees for carrying healthy children to term and through delivery are hefty; money is the carrot as well as the stick, and impoverished young women with helpless dependents will do a great deal to avoid penalties, to earn a bonus.

The set up makes my feminist heart sing.

Our primary protagonist is Jane, a Filipino with a tiny daughter of her own. Who doesn’t want the best for her child? The surrogacy fee will permit her to move her baby, her aging cousin, and herself out of the tiny, nasty dive that is their current residence, and in return for being sequestered away from her family for nine months, she will be able to give her daughter a much better head start in life. Her cousin Ate will watch the child while Jane is away; she is so young that she won’t even remember having been separated.

But piece by piece, we see what appears to be a reasonable business deal descend into a dystopian nightmare. Such things as constant surveillance, personal communication that is monitored without regard to the women’s privacy, and other Big Brotherish components make it clear that the surrogates are little more than meat. Their health is important only as long as they are pregnant; they are kept from their loved ones and deceived in nefarious ways, all with the end result—a healthy baby for each client—as the sole consideration.

Up to the climax I am riveted. For three-quarters of this story, I am making notes and occasionally exclaiming over it out loud. But unfortunately, the message that I believe Ramos intends to drive home is more or less tossed out the window in the end. I don’t want to spoil it and so I won’t be specific, but it is a massively wasted opportunity. In the end, I am left with my mouth hanging open, not in surprise but in disappointment. I read back a few pages to see if I missed something, because surely a writer competent enough to write the beginning and middle so cleverly wouldn’t write an ending as stupid as it seems to be. But actually? I’m afraid that’s what’s happened.

This book was tough for me. I went into it because I was completely expecting, based on the hype, a dystopian novel similar to The Handmaid's Tale or similar work. Instead this is more of a novel that raised the issues of disparity between the classes told through unique characters. The stories were compelling and interesting.

#TheFarm #NetGalley

This was not what I thought it was going into it, but it turned out to be a good thing. I am not a huge fan of true ‘dystopian’ books, and this is NOT one of those books, sorry to disappoint you if that is what you were looking for. However, we find ourselves in a world where women can ‘choose’ women they would like to be a surrogate here at The Farm, where these surrogates live for the next nine months. You have no freedom, you are monitored constantly, have to sign in and out if you want to leave, and any mess ups on your part could cost you the large sums of money you are supposedly being paid at the end.

I do think this scenario was actually a little scarier than a pure dystopian scenario, because it was something that could be more likely to happen in real life, and the way these women were manipulated and have to agree to give up 9 months of their life at The Farm is scary.

I don’t think I ‘enjoyed’ this reading given the tough subject matter. Ramos focuses on a young woman, Jane, who has a small child and cannot see her due to her ‘client’ not allowing her to have visitation. Jane really struggles with this and it is heartbreaking.

This story is very well told, but is not an easy one to read. The ending was tough for me, because I felt that it fell so short of the rest of the book. We had been building up throughout the book and the ending came out of left field and felt rushed.

TW for abortion, abuse, and manipulative situations.

Synopsis: Set at Golden Oaks (“the Farm”) an all expenses paid spa-like facility for women serving as surrogates (hosts). This is a place where wealthy clients hire hosts to carry their babies. The selection process and the rules the hosts must follow are very strict, however the payoff is a significant amount of money if you carry the baby to term.

The story focuses on:
• Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines who is working hard to provide a better life for her daughter
• Ate, Jane’s aunt who got her the job at Golden Oaks. Her goal is to make enough money to provide for her family back in the Philippines
• Mae, runs Golden Oaks. She is very career driven and will do anything to achieve her goals.

Review:
The story started slow for me and it took me some time to figure out what was going on. Once I got into it I couldn’t wait to find out what happened!

Parts of the book reminded me of the bachelor. How I imagine producers talking to contestants to “make them happy” and in turn get good tv footage. In this case it was Golden Oaks staff discussing the status of the “hosts” and how to keep them happy so that in turn the clients are happy. The hosts also have to sign ridiculous contracts which reminds me of the kind of contacts the bachelor has. Maybe I’m watching too much of the bachelor/bachelorette?

The story covers topics of wealth gap, fertility, gender politics and what you do to protect those you love. I think it does a great job at it and makes you think about these things, you’ll need someone to who’s read the book to talk about it! I’m glad I read this as part of the new “the skim” reads book club and we are having a discussion at the end of the month!

The Farm: sign a contract, be implanted with someone else's baby, be controlled in your diet, actions, and relationships until that birth.

This is fiction, but it doesn't feel like it. It also feels contemporary and real, and the parallels between the world of surrogacy and nannying are stark. Although it took me a few chapters to get into this book, once I did I had trouble putting it down-- I got legitimately worried about these characters, something that I hadn't done in a while.

What a timely, rage-inducing, rage simmering below its powerful words novel! I have loved this new movement of taking our rage and putting it into action. Joanne Ramos surely does that by taking her rage and writing this amazing novel. I don't want to give a lot away but just read this. Read this phenomenal social commentary!

"The Farm" by Joanne Ramos introduces us to commercial surrogate mothers. They are paid and sent to ‘The Farm,’ a luxurious, spa-like facility, to await the birth of the embryos they are nurturing for wealthy clients. We meet three of the surrogates: Jane, a poor Filipino woman who agrees to be a surrogate to give her own daughter a good life; Reagan, a privileged white woman looking for purpose in her life; and Lisa, the rebel who befriends Jane and Reagan. Their lives are controlled and regulated by Mae Yu, the director of The Farm and a ruthless, well-educated ambitious Asian woman.

The book is best when it concentrates on the back stories of each woman and reveals their motivations and reactions to life at the Farm. The story actually became rather exciting when Reagan and Lisa concoct a wild escape for Jane so that she can see her daughter, who she thinks might be very ill. But Jane’s brief touch of freedom is quickly cut short.

The novel raises some important and troubling questions. Who controls and has responsibility for the fetus prior to birth? Should the client be able to restrict who the surrogate sees, what she does, what she eats? Does the surrogate lose her personhood by making a contractual agreement? How do we ensure that these women aren’t enslaved? The surrogates are referred to as numbers by Mae and the staff at the Farm. They are also actually spied upon. Do the ends justify the means? What does the whole concept suggest in terms of the disparity between the super-rich and everyone else? Ramos doesn’t answer those questions but she raises them for our consideration.

The ending was a bit strange. Ramos could have left it more open-ended, which would have enhanced the need to discuss some of the open questions. The ending was just too pat, too perfect, too Pollyanna.

Thank you to the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
Unfortunately, I have tried reading this book on 2 separate occasions and during that 2nd attempt, I have only managed to make it halfway through so I'd rather stop here and state that this book just wasn't for me.
I wish the author, publisher, and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the chance to read and review, "The Farm" by Joanne Ramos. While the great description is what initially drew me in, I felt like this book fell a little flat for me. The characters did not keep me interested and I found it hard to continue to be engaged while reading. The feelings I got while reading this book just felt very negative.

This was one of my most anticipated reads for the year, and sadly it fell pretty flat. It was a slow read, and the times when things seemed to finally pick up, the momentum would be lost within a few chapters. It wasn’t necessarily bad, I just had much higher expectations after reading the synopsis.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

What happens when IVF and surrogacy become really big business? You wind up with a luxury home like Golden Oaks, or "The Farm," as it is familiarly known, where surrogate mothers wait for their wealthy donors' children to be born. Not surprisingly many surrogates are immigrants and we watch one of them, Jane, as she pines for her actual young daughter while awaiting the birth of the baby in her belly. A cautionary tale, well told.