Absolutely loved this book and the deep exploration of a cast of characters within its pages. Seeing through the eyes of multiple different people and witnessing their trials and tribulations while just trying to stay afloat in the whirlwind city that is Seoul, South Korea was fascinating.

The pacing threw me off a bit at times, but overall it was an extremely enjoyable read and I’d highly recommend it.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for a complimentary copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

If I Had Your Face
By: Frances Cha

REVIEW ☆☆☆☆
I started reading If I Had Your Face without even glancing at the synopsis, which I never do. I'm glad because I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked this book. From the first page, I was absorbed and needed to know more. The four women narrating the story all have troubles and dreams. The horrifying measures women take just to be beautiful are, unfortunately, nothing new. This particular culture leans toward the extreme end of the the spectrum, but what choice do women have? The struggle, the pressure, the assumptions, the unattainable ideal, are universal and infinite. I'm glad the author took a story down this road with four women who have much in common but don't know this. This story is thought provoking and engaging. The characters have distinct authentic voices that ring true. It was easy to spend time in this world. I recommend for women who question the idea of perfection and conformity.

3.5 Stars
What did I just read? But in a good way!
I have no idea where to being with Frances Cha's novel because it was really good but hard to explain. I found myself trying to explain it to my husband and he just looked at me confused.
It is definitely a book that you have to read to get.

The themes Cha writes about are universal even though she is writing about Korea.
I thoroughly enjoyed every character. Even the ones I thought I would despise i actually grew to love because Cha writes with such urgency and nuance for each of them. Allowing them to develop throughout the story in a way that i rarely see.

I am usually not a fan of multiple point of view books; however, this one was really well done. The way that a continuous story was woven through multiple characters making it one cohesive story was beautiful

I didn't know much about this book going into it, and I'm kind of glad I just jumped in with both feet! It was the type of story that seemed to drop us into the characters' lives for a bit, then send us all on our way at the end, no wrapping up required. And I can dig that!

While I think the book could have used a stronger plot thread to pull the reader through, it was almost refreshing to read a story that was so character driven. Might I even say it was meandering? I know some readers need a "point" to a story they read, but this one was less about having a point, and more about commentary that leaves you thinking. Particularly about how different societies view and treat women.

We shift in POVs between four women, and I loved visiting each of them. Every new chapter was like being a fly on the wall to their inner most thoughts, as well as what was happening around them. My favorite character, though, was Ara. Due to a childhood accident, she can't speak and either signs or writes/types things out for people to read. She is keenly aware of how people view her because of her disability, and is good at reading others. She jokes about how she can appear vulnerable, but is actually the baddest B (possibly TOO bad??), and knows exactly what she wants from her life (though maybe the K-pop star she's in love with is a bit of a misstep).

I became really invested in the characters and story toward the end; so much so that when the book ended, I made an audible noise of surprise and sadness because I honestly thought there was still more to read! But the ending is SO sweet that I couldn't stay sad.

Beautiful cover but dry and depressing Lit Fic. Felt like it was translated from Korean into English. I hope Korea isn’t really like this.

While I enjoyed Cha’s prose in pa articulate, this book somehow missed the mark for me. I very much appreciated the various perspectives from the four main characters, but in such an average length, I never really got to know them very well outside of perhaps Kyuri.

As another reviewer points out, the author doesn’t dive as deep into the themes of beauty standards and sexism in Korea as I would have liked. Moreover, I would’ve enjoyed stronger character development and more solid story arcs.

Though this book wasn’t my favorite, it certainly wasn’t uninteresting either. I look forward to reading whatever Cha writes next and hope it will be more developed.

Special thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the copy in exchange for my honest review!

I honestly wouldn’t have picked this up on my own but Abby @bookmarkedbya chose this as her first book club pick and through her giveaway I won a free e-ARC. (Thanks Random House and NetGalley!) I’m really glad I read it though! At first I wasn’t sure where it was going and I had to jot down some notes about each of the women so I could wrap my head around their connections, but it came together really nicely in the end. I realized I don’t know much about South Korea, their culture, and their extreme societal pressures to get surgeries to be “beautiful” so I appreciated learning through this book.

Ultimately, this just wasn't my cup of tea. I will try it again at a later date, but I couldn't get into it.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for the eARC!

If I Had Your Face was not really what I had imagined going into the novel, but I loved it so much more than I thought I would. I absolutely recommend this novel and I'm already looking forward to Cha's next book!

This story is such a beautiful examination of the ways in which women are controlled by societal expectations - beauty standards, misogyny, sexism, status and class, family and background, etc. I also really enjoyed this novel as an exploration of the ties that bind friends to one another. These very different women are joined by some darker shared experiences, early life together at an orphanage, and the need to protect/support one another. I also enjoyed how this book explored the many different roles or archetypes women take on in society - mothers, young professionals and career women, lovers, sex workers, wives, the artistic ingenue, the introverted k-pop megafan, etc.

I really enjoyed the style of the writing and the storytelling format; it just really worked for me. It felt informal and personal, like I was listening to friends talk about their lives and gossip about one another. For me, it made the story and the experiences of these women really immersive. The structuring of chapters felt like series of small vignettes that included the women reflecting on their lives so far, secret whisperings of their thoughts about the others, and then also the progression of the current-day storyline. It felt like I shared their experiences and feelings so much more than if this had been written in a more traditional format.

At first the ending felt quite abrupt and almost unfinished, but as I sat with the story, I've started to feel like the ending was perfect for what this story was trying to do. This book isn't trying to be a completely linear story that will be packaged beautifully in a bow at the end. Instead, it's about being plopped down into the lives of young women who moved from a small town to a big city trying to get by and make more of their lives - whatever that means for each of them. It's a meditation on what it means to live and survive in societies that don't make it easy for women to exist in the way they want to.

All in all, this was a fantastic book. Highly recommend!

It’s taken me a bit longer than it should have to read this boo, but I am glad I waited until I had actual time, Frances Cha does a fantastic job painting the portrait of modern Seoul and modern Korea in general with its obsession with beauty and only today. My exposure to Korea has primarily been from the lens of K Dramas and I relished an opportunity to read a book, set in a realistic Korean setting. The experiences of the women in the book aren’t ones I can necessarily relate to but I see their universality nonetheless. Is there a future? Do I live for today? Do I have a family to rely on or do I build my own? What is real beauty?

So yeah, read this book. I don’t do 5 star reviews much but this is definitely one,

This was one of the books I was most anticipating for 2020!

If I Had Your Face focused on the lives of 4 girls who live in the same building in Seoul Korea. Ara is mute from an accident, obsessed with a Korean boy band artist, and is tough as nails. She has her roommate Sujin who helps speak for her and has been her closest friend. Miho is a successful artist figuring out her relationship with her boyfriend. Kyuri, known for her beauty (which she bought), lives day to day drinking and tending to the room salon to make money. Lastly is Wonna, entering motherhood for the first time (though very pessimistic about it), needs to find balance between work and her future child.

This book allows you a glimpse into the lives of these women. There is no forced drama created for the intention of having climax then resolution. It's simply what is presumably going on in the lives of these women the moment the book is written as opposed to a "reality TV" type book. Some may say it's slow paced, but I think that makes it more realistic and less cliche. Frances Cha has some insightful and very beautifully written words, one of my favorites written about the little mermaid (in relation to Ara being mute):

"In the original story, the little mermaid endures unspeakable pain to gain her human legs. The Sea Witch warns her that her new feet will feel as if she is walking on whetted blades, but she will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. And so she drinks the witch's potion which slices through her body like a sword...... isn't that a beautiful story?" The actual section of the story has much more written, but it'd be too long to post, though I wish I could!

There's a couple of plot ideas that I'm not fully sure how they relate to the book/could have been taken out. For example, Ara is obsessed with Taein from a popular boy band. It's part of her character, it makes her weird and delusional almost to the point of an obsessed middle school girl. But overall it didn't add much to the story for me and could have had the same effect if it wasn't mentioned. Another topic is Wonna. She had a really interesting beginning, but then her POV didn't seem to fit in, especially with the fact that she didnt even talk to/know the other girls in the building. It seems like an "us" and "her" type situation where she didn't belong. Lastly, I truly enjoyed Kyuri's story. She was my favorite character and I feel like this book was hers. She even said "I would live your life so much better than you, if I had your face." (Which by the way was so elegantly written). I wish so badly that more of the book had been written to focus on her, or that she had been the main character instead of 4 main characters. She is very complex and I don't think the audience got to know her that well. Other then Kyuri, I don't see how the plot related to the title. I think the title is really intriguing and grabs the audience, but in the book, appearances/looks were only mentioned casually as if to say someone is pretty or not, though it was not an underlying theme.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. I think it taught me a little more about Korean culture and it was an enjoyable read with characters who were well built up. Thank you NetGalley for my ARC copy!

This is a fascinating and heart breaking story set in South Korea. I fell in love with so many characters in this slice of life story.

“I would live your life so much better if I had your face.”

Painful and poignant, debut novel If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha gives us a window into the distressing lives of women in modern day Seoul, Korea.

Although set in our world, the world Cha paints is so unlike our own, it is unrecognizable. Here, women are mistreated in ways incomprehensible to our 21st Century. Life is bleak, with no way to truly get ahead and achieve happiness. Women are expected to marry and have children, but they know that even if they can find a man to fall in love with them, that man will inevitably cheat on them. Women are also expected to work and make a living, even though there are still very few jobs available to them. And above all, women are expected to be stunningly beautiful, beautiful in such a way that plastic surgery has become a necessity, meaning women often have to put themselves deeply in debt to make themselves look better.

Ara, who has been mute since a mysterious accident in her teen years, is a celebrity-obsessed hair stylist with one goal—meeting Taein, a boy-band singer who she idolizes.

Sujin, Ara’s roomate, is an orphan with an ugly face, determined to work at a room salon, which is basically a bar where attractive women pour drinks and have sex with the customers. However, she can’t achieve that goal without rebuilding her entire face.

Kyuri, already completely transformed by surgery, works at a room salon, and she has always taken a cold, clear-eyed approach to life, but when she makes an impulsive mistake with a client, it could destroy her life’s work.

Miho, a talented painter who spent some time in New York City, is confident in her abilities, but feeling insecure in her romantic relationship with the rich heir to one of Korea’s biggest companies.

Wonna is newly married to a man she does not like or respect, trying to become pregnant, but she is becoming increasingly worried about how she will afford to raise her child in such a vicious, unforgiving economy.

The lives of these five women are largely separate for most of the book, sometimes entwining for brief periods (except for Ara and Sujin, who are roommates), and it is largely a slice-of-life style book, with no overall plot or change to tie it together or move it along, which is not something that you see very often these days. On the whole, I enjoyed it, but readers should know that it is slow-paced and that you shouldn’t expect big action, because it won’t come.

The characters were also hard for me to connect to, and at times, I even didn’t like most of them, but I still found their tragic lives compelling, and to me, that speaks highly of Cha’s writing.

The writing in this book is one aspect that stood out to me; it was written both beautifully and brutually honestly, which is quite a feat. I loved her prose, which included so many short, scathing lines that cut down to the soul in such an effective way. One of my favorites comes from Wonna, about her husband: “I married him because I was tired and it was already too late for me, even though I was still so young.” This novel certainly shows a dark side of humanity, so there is a decent amount of drinking and sex involved, although no starkly explicit scenes.

This novel is dark, deeply sad, thought-provoking, and one that might not make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, but is certainly worth the read.

I found, If I Had Your Face, to be a unique and interesting read. I loved being immersed and learning about Korean culture. The plastic surgeries were fascinating. I really had no idea what this book was about before I picked it up.

I love books that are told from a multiple person format. I really feel like that style helps me to connect with the characters. I'll admit, this one was a little confusing at first, but once you found the rhythm it was smooth sailing.

Overall, I liked this book, but by the time I was finished I found that I was asking myself "what was the point!?" And I was still waiting for a big moment of sorts. Thank you to Ballantine Books (Random House Publishing Group) and NetGalley for granting my wish to read this book.

I was really excited when I first saw this title. It not only sounded intriguing but it also gave a glimpse of a life that I wasn't familiar with at all. One that I read a few stories about here and there but that was about it. I hardly read books that aren't fantasy based but this was one I knew I had to read.

Starting the book I didn't really know what to expect or have any expectations. I was just interested in learning about these 4 women and the circumstances of their lives. The book is character driven since we look into each of their lives and how they came to know each other. The book made me think quite a lot about several things which is what I liked the most. The unbelievable beauty standards that women have to follow. The misogyny behind it all as well. The way things are so differently presented to women and men. The price and toll that adhering to society takes on these women as well. The sexism they have to endure at work and so many other aspects of their lives. The book was honestly very raw and we saw things here for what they really were. I also learnt quite a lot from this book. As much as I enjoyed learning more about a different society than my own, it also gave me chills a lot of the time.

The women had such interesting stories I just wish we had gone more in depth. I felt like I knew them but like there were also parts of them that were shielded. I felt like there was a lot that we could have discovered about them and perhaps more we could have felt. I enjoyed the authors writing style since it was very easy to read even if the topics were not. I liked that we got to read from each of the characters points of view and to see how different each one was. Like I mentioned previously the story is very character driven so there isn't much in terms of plot. It's kind of like a memoir and you're having a look into someone else's life and story. The end really left me with questions. It didn't end in a cliffhanger, just in a way that makes you wonder what happened to them after you closed the book.

It's definitely different and very eye-opening. Would definitely recommend if you're interested in reading something different and if you'd like to see what a different culture is like. I'm honestly looking forward to reading more by Frances Cha.

This book was such a fascinating look at the lives of four Korean women fighting against patriarchy, societal standards, ridiculous beauty ideals, tragedy, abuse, and more. It wasn’t always easy to read, but it was eye opening for me to read more about a culture I’m not very familiar with. The parallel character chapters kept things interesting and evolving, even though it took me almost half of the book to really lock in who was who.

Fascinating tale of four women faced with impossible Korean standards of beauty and more.

"If I Had Your Face" is told from four perspectives connected by a shared struggle of what it means to be a woman in today's South Korea:
- Ara, a mute hairstylist obsessed with k-pop and plastic surgery
- Kyuri, a beautiful hostess at a high-end bar entangled in an slippery situation with a client
- Wonna, an unhappily married hoping to become a mom, worried about making ends meet
- Miho, a US-educated artist with a crazy rich boyfriend.

What I absolutely loved about this book:
- relatable female protagonists
- each of the beautifully written perspectives oozes emotion
- intimate study of the Korean culture around gender, social status, wealth and beauty standards
- set in my beloved Gangnam district of Soul, a modern East Asian megacity to diversify my reading repertoire.

Cha's debut novel was a delightful reading experience. I feel attached to the four women we meet in the book, and I'm definitely going to be thinking about them for a long time.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book. Frances Cha really captured the gap between the rich and the poor in S Korea. I watched Parasite and this enhanced my knowledge of the culture of S Korea. It was well-written and the characters were very well fleshed out. I hope this author writes a sequel or another unrelated book. I highly recommend this book.

This book reminds me of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 in that it conveys the struggles of ordinary Korean women. Whereas Kim Jiyoung focuses on the story of one Korean woman (with a little from her mother and grandmother), this one interweaves the stories of four Korean woman (Ara, Kyuri, Wonna, and Miho) and, through them, their friend Sujin, who wants to get plastic surgery.

If I Had Your Face explores false beliefs of what will bring happiness, and it explores the bonds of sisterhood. This is an important book that I wanted to love. It feels like there's a narrative distance, and in at least the first chapters the women reflect back on their past and things that are going on elsewhere. This writing style didn't work for me.

DNFed @18%

4.5 Stars

[book:If I Had Your Face|52696537] by [author:Frances Cha|18481112] is a fascinating and somewhat disturbing look into Korean culture via four young women who all live in the same apartment building in the large city of Seoul.

The first chapter is told from the point of view of Ara, a mute hairstylist who is obsessed with the lead singer of a K-pop band. She has a violent altercation in the beginning of the book that I wish would have been explored more thoroughly by the author.

Kyuri is a former prostitute, now working as a "room salon girl" who entertains wealthy men while they drink. She has had tons of plastic surgery and is rather obsessed with her own beauty (and beauty regimes) as well as others' lack thereof. <i>"Up close, I could see that her face was devoid of surgery-her eyes were single lidded and her nose was flat. I would not have been caught dead walking around with a face like that."</i> Kyuri is a great character with more depth than one would think. <i>"I like how engaged he is in her story. I can't remember the last time a man asked me about my day and then actually paid attention to the answer, forget finding it interesting."</i>

Miho is Kyuri's roommate who is a talented artist and dating a very wealthy man. There is more to this story-line than meets the eye! <i>"For all its millions of people, Korea is the size of a fishbowl and someone is always looking down on someone else. " "There is a limit to how much Korean men are willing to endure female money, especially if they are wealthy themselves."</i>

Wonna is a not-so-happily married pregnant woman, stressed about the financial burden of raising a child. <i>"If there was a marriage handbook of do's and don'ts, the first chapter should be titled, 'Buy a King-Size Bed.' With a queen bed, my husband always falls asleep first and I end of glaring balefully at him as he shifts way past the halfway line."</i>

This book told in alternating voices is a slice of life, with many unanswered questions, but I think that was the intention of the author. I had to google plastic surgery in Korea as a read the first chapter and wow, it's almost a right of passage there. Scary. I worked in a plastic surgeon's office a long time ago and saw the good and bad. I think it's horrifying what these young people put themselves through to achieve beauty.

Thank you to Netgalley, Frances Cha and Ballantine Books-Random House for granting my Netgalley wish to read this novel! It was wonderful. I look forward to the author's next book!