One of the benefits of reading is the ability to “visit” or somewhat function in daily life in places you’ve never been to. Frances Cha takes you on such a trip where you live alongside the young ladies trying to survive in Seoul, Korea.
I never knew room salons existed or that plastic surgery is such an important aspect for women in Korea. After finishing the book and reading the author’s notes of actual experiences in Seoul, I researched and found some articles about both of these habits; one terribly degrading and the other terribly dangerous.
When one of the five main characters gets her facial surgery, the operation is so severe and botched she can’t even chew food. She suffers through the extended healing and the final product is the same popular face that everyone in Korea strives for. So for her, the pain was all worth it. What a sad and hollow value to have instilled in you from birth.
The room salon is basically a quiet dark place where a man can go to sit with beautiful women, drink and laugh, and have sex or whatever you desire. The women who work at these salons strive to become a 10% girl. These ladies are hired at the exclusive salons that offer the top 10% of beautiful women. After all the plastic surgery, most of these women look identical. What a sad life to live.
Frances exposes all of these inequalities, but then she shows the very human, personal, and sincere bonds these ladies form with one another. This love and friendship are what gives them their strength. Sadly, they don’t realize how manipulated and shallow their life is as they strive to meet society’s expectations.
This is not a feel-good book, but it’s definitely an eye-opener. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style; one can feel Ms. Cha’s support and understanding of her characters. After reading about her time in Seoul, it’s easy to see how she made these young women seem so real and dimensional.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to Random House- Ballantine and NetGalley for making it available.)

Frances Cha writes in a compelling style about 4 young women in Seoul, South Korea trying to make their way through life. Since I know very little about the culture there I was very intrigued to read about these women, their lives, concerns, hardships and aspirations. The chapters alternate from each women and “are narrated” during their daily lives. Hearing about the struggles each one has just to survive in this culture, the emphasis on beauty, drinking, class status and the opportunities, or lack there of is eye-opening. There seemed to be no real plot to this storyline with the exception of trying to get by and survive. Makes me want to read more about the South Korean society to understand if this writing is unique or if the society really functions in this way. I thank Net Galley for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

4 🌟
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even if the ending is realistic I still want to know what happens
I like the ending but i NEED answers
this book had a great discussion about beauty standards and the pressure of plastic surgery though. I really liked Kyuri's perspective, especially just because her way of thinking is so different from mine.

SO, WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
This book contains the perspectives of four girls who all live in the same apartment complex: Ara, Miho, Kyuri, and Wonna. Each girl is an individual with their own stories tat lightly entangle as we get this beautifully brief glimpse into their lives and the past that shaped their lives now. This book is but a snippet of their lives as they navigate the expectations put on them.

this book was good, great actually. The discussions were poignant and relevant and very informative. I enjoyed this extremely. I really liked the setting of Seoul, Korea, and the examination of the treatment of women and the expectations put on them. Coming from the perspective of an African (Eritrean) American. This book was a really interesting examination of a culture that I am interested in. There was no reason to not give this book 5 stars but at the moment it doesn't have the 5-star feeling maybe after leaving it for a bit and thinking about it I may bump up the rating. I will definitely be picking up whatever this author puts out next.

That is to say, if you are a person who enjoys plot. There is not a single plot, it's a very character-focused and character-driven story so if that is not your thing you may want to enter knowing that information. I recommend it either way but obviously you know your reading tastes better than me.

Have a great day!
I hope you and your family are staying healthy and safe during this time.

It is my opinion that the purpose of a book – whether fiction or non-fiction – is to introduce the reader to new ideas. To take them out of the familiar and in to the unfamiliar. To introduce new people and hopefully have them stay with the reader far after the book has been finished.

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha is an excellent example of this. In it we are taken to Seoul Korea and surrounding suburbs. We are introduced to several young women who live in the same apartment building. Through them we step foot in to a society that is as familiar as it is unique. And through them hopefully understand that despite the differences in language, the desire for a better life is universal.

While the four young women who are the main characters live in the same building and close to one another, their stories are separate. Yes, they are all acquaintances and interact with each other throughout the story, but each woman is her own person. And while there is an underlying thread that connects them, each young woman approaches it in their own way.

I absolutely loved each of the female characters in If I Had Your Face. They are all so relatable in one way or another – because honestly, who hasn’t fantasized about meeting their favorite artist and falling instantly in love? Cha’s writing makes each one of them so believable and it is easy to imagine them sitting around and gossiping over food and drinks.

Whether you are a fan of k-pop, Korean dramas, or not, I honestly believe most readers will enjoy If I Had Your Face. I found it to be a fascinating look at a slice of the world that is so familiar and yet so different than our own.

Actual rating: 4.5 stars!

I was extremely (and pleasantly) surprised by this book! I received an ARC back in October 2019 and had forgotten what it was about by the beginning of this month when I started reading.

First of all, the book title is absolutely perfect, and all four of the characters are memorable and distinct. They each have some trauma and depth to them, with current problems and past conflicts that define how they are today. Mihoe might've been my favorite, not just because she's the most creative one and her art freaked me out, but because of the way her story ended - not in heartbreak but in a determination to enact vengeance and rise as high as the stars.

Kyuri might've been the most interesting to me, purely because of her occupation - a room girl. These girls basically entertain men by sitting with them, talking to them, and drinking - a lot. They have to be stunning, and in order to get this way most of the girls undergo countless surgeries.

I knew about the cosmetic plastic surgery phenomenon over in South Korea, but not to this extent. I learned there's such a thing as jaw surgery, hairline surgery, and other insane adjustments, all in the name of beauty. Nose jobs, lip fillers, eyelid surgery, armpit injections (???), and so on. It's astonishing to read, even in this fictionalized story, how completely girls are sold on the idea of becoming model-like if they only change their entire appearance. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, and dozens upon dozens of surgeries. I can't imagine the time and dedication needed to handle the stress and financial debt. This whole phenomenal is horrifying, yet I find it really fascinating, and I'm glad I learned more by reading this book.

Ara was also an enjoyable POV, especially since her perspective was so distinct. She was rendered mute in high school and has to go through life writing down her thoughts on paper + white board or typing them on a phone keyboard in order to get her voice out there. She's obsessed with a k-pop boy band called Crown, which is another aspect of the South Korean culture I find interesting - the k-pop phenomenon. The way agencies treat their celebrity clients, from their diet and exercise regime to their appearance and reputation outside of the group they represent. I particularly enjoyed Ara standing up for herself to that mean girl, Cherry. It was an unexpected scene, but I was cheering her on the whole time.

Finally, Wonna. Her story was devastating in its own way. She's suffered through three miscarriages and seemed on the verge of experiencing a fourth. She doesn't love or even respect her husband, who absolutely adores her, because she only married him because his mother's dead and she wanted to get pregnant. Another tidbit I learned: South Korea's birthrate is the lowest in the world because no one wants to / can afford having kids. It's clear this will be the case whenever Wonna has a child. Financial troubles are obviously universal, so it was hard but relevant to see Wonna's struggles.

Will definitely be looking for other books from this author! I flew through "If I Had Your Face" in two days!!

“I would live your life so much better than you If I Had Your Face.”

In a culture that only values females for their youth and beauty, is it any wonder that plastic surgery has become an almost-mandatory South Korean ritual for teen girls?

The story is told from the perspective of five young Korean women:
• the non-speaking hairstylist Ara, who “speaks” for her envious roommate Sujin,
• the pragmatic and surgically-enhanced room salon girl Kyuri,
• the discontented housewife Wonna, and
• the non-surgically-enhanced artist Miho.
All had abusive childhoods. All live in the same office-tel (apartment house) now. All have ambitions for their future.

In the book, the focus on the now, rather than the future, and the surface, rather than the inside, leads to tragedy.
After all, “Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world.” [Note: Though South Korea is actually fourth behind Lithuania(?), Russia and Guyana in 2020. Still that’s a race you don’t want to win.] While some of the girls’ lives change, there isn’t much movement within the book. It is a case of telling rather than showing. Therefore, I give If I Had Your Face 3 stars.

Thanks to Ballantine Books, Random House and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

"I would live your life so much better than you if I had your face."

Before you decide to pick up this book, be aware that this is not YA, but Adult fiction. I personally didn't mind and enjoyed that aspect more because nothing was sugarcoated and this book was raw. I feel like this is the best adjective to describe this book: raw. Set in Seoul, South Korea, we are meant to follow four different female protagonists who all live in the same building. I was truly surprised, and shocked, to discover the extent at which women are ready to go to fit the beauty standards set by society. They go through extensive plastic surgery that could potentially permanently damage their bodies. I knew of course that South Korea was the leader in plastic surgery but damn I didn't think it was that much and actually reading about it gave me chills. These women work in a room salon and therefore they have to be beautiful for their customers, they have to be beautiful for society and to fit the standards and conventions established by it.

Whilst reading this book, I was transported to South Korea. The author's writing is absolutely entrancing and I truly felt like I was there with the characters. I learned so much about the Korean society and even discussed it with one of my classmates who has been there before. It was an immersive read, definitely character driven, that tackles social issues, social classes, sexism and misogyny to an extent I was not expecting. It was definitely eye-opening for me because I'm ashamed to admit that I am not familiar with the Korean culture. I definitely want to get to know more however.

I enjoyed that the author wrote without any taboos about how challenging the lives of women is. The expectations set on their shoulders are high and the pressure must be unbelievable. Beauty is the only way women can evolve in society because their faces and bodies are their assets. If they are beautiful, then they can marry well, hence the importance of plastic surgery.

To conclude, I would repeat again that this book is definitely eye-opening and it got more truly curious about South Korean culture. It is a thought-provoking read that made me question many ugly things about the way our western culture influences other cultures and the extremes at which beauty standards are taken.

Frances Cha has done something wonderful with her debut novel, If I Had Your Face and I'm here to spread the word.

In this engaging and touching novel, Ms. Cha introduces readers to four women who live in Seoul, South Korea. Each woman is different and the same: Kyuri, a beautiful but tragic woman working in Seoul's room salons; Ara, a mute who has a back story that shows she's tougher than she looks; Miho, an artist loving a man in the shadow of her friend; and Wonna, the only married woman of the group with her own problems. Each one is living under the unrealistic beauty expectations in a society that values beauty, to the detriment of many.

I loved reading this book and it kept me engaged to the point where I was able to forget about the current situation we're in right now. Ms. Cha really made the women fully-realized characters and I wanted to know as much as possible about them. I was stunned by the way they talked about plastic surgery like it was a normal thing. Especially Kyuri since she knew first hand what being beautiful could do, for good or ill. To be beautiful is to be better, seen, loved. But it may also mean being taken advantage of, thrown aside and forgotten.

I especially enjoyed reading the back story of each woman, which the author peppered throughout the novel. It made me want more and I was invested in each character for the entire novel. I finished this book feeling hopeful for all of them, which is something we need right now.

I absolutely will be recommending If I Had Your Face to my readers.

I saw this book on bookstagram and knew I wanted to read it. I absolutely loved it. It drew me in and I didn't want to take a break. Definitely did not disappoint!

What an incredibly powerful story about the rich inner lives and struggles of young women in South Korea. Frances Cha created a wildly detailed world for her characters in If I Had Your Face, and it provided much more context to the pressures and nuances of South Korean culture.

In terms of what gave me pause, I often struggle with books that are largely character-driven portraits without much actual plot momentum. The ending of this novel felt a tad rushed, like it was trying to achieve larger narrative developments and characters arcs in the last 30 pages or so after 250 pages unpacking these characters' backgrounds and interactions more than moving the story along.

I just wish there could've been a little more; I felt incomplete when I finished the book.

An absolutely beautiful story about female friendships and how they can shape you, help you and sometimes save you. The story flows seamlessly between the characters and you feel as if you're immersed in their world. Pick up this gem of a book. Happy reading!

There's a line in Frances Cha's debut novel If I Had Your Face that speaks to the release as a whole, without having much to do with the plot: "In New York, you can talk to anyone about anything at any time and have a conversation so long you'll fall a little bit in love with that person, and then never see them again."

It's spoken during a conversation between one of the main characters, Ara, and a friend, Miho, while discussing the differences between relationships in America and Korea. The exchange is emblematic of how If I Had Your Face, out now via Ballantine Books, allows those unfamiliar with modern Korea to get a peek into Korean culture. And all the while the reader gets a glimpse into the lives of the four main characters, maybe falling a little bit in love before the story ends abruptly. Cha drops you off in the middle of their existence, then pulls you back out before their difficult situations and unpleasant experiences are resolved.

Besides Ara, a mute hairdresser who is obsessed with a K-pop star, there's Kyuri, a top-tier room salon worker who has had numerous cosmetic surgeries to try and meet Korea's extremely high beauty standards. Kyuri's roommate, the previously mentioned Miho, is an orphaned artist who went to school in New York City and is dating a rich heir. Finally, there's Wonna, a newlywed trying to have a baby while struggling to make ends meet. The single thread that draws the four women together is their living situation. They all live in the same apartment building — or officetel — in Seoul.

While the reader doesn't leave If I Had Your Face with a cut-and-dry conclusion, they will walk away with insight into a Korea that is not often portrayed in Western media. The unspoken popularity room salons. The pressure to wed. The declining birth rates. The fixation on image and class. The wealth disparity. And the motivation behind plastic surgery, not for vanity, but for a chance for a better life. Beauty can bring you power, love, and a better career, if only you had a different face.

It's obvious Cha is a good writer. The language and story pacing is just right. But I never felt like the characters lived and breathed. The five characters were stereotypes with dark backstories that didn't add much depth. Their voices were very similar and it was obvious which character the author was living vicariously through. One character was perfect while the others were flawed, but in ways that came across as the author being judgmental of their choices. I got the impression the author was poking fun at them which made it hard to connect.

The setting and story is something I haven't read before, so in that way it was entertaining. If you're looking for a glimpse into a world most Americans don't know about, this is a very good book to broaden your horizons. I imagine this would make a good book club choice.

I received a copy from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Story: 3 stars
Character development: 2 stars
Writing/prose: 4 stars

"If I had your face" follows the stories of four women living in Korea, faced with unrealistic expectations of beauty and marriage while carrying the burdens of the traumas of their past and present as they navigate the world of idols, room salons, strict social hierarchies, and difficult economic situations.

This book was one of my top anticipated of the year and certainly delivered on what I expected from it, which was a deep dive into the darker parts of Korean culture, and some grim and hard-hitting themes.

This novel is a debut from an otherwise accomplished journalist, and although Cha certainly knows her stuff when it comes to the topics she’s addressing, the book is far from perfect, and yet still incredibly engaging and suspenseful in a way that doesn’t often let up.

Basically, if you read books for the characters and not for the plot, then you’ll enjoy "If I had your Face." With a style unlike many other contemporary adult novels, the story is less about traveling from start to finish and more about being dropped into these four women’s lives, getting to know them, and then being pulled out again once we’ve learned a good deal about them. This means that there isn’t exactly the neatest of conclusions, a warning for those who don’t like open-ended finales, but which is actually realistic to the scope of the story and matches its overall tone.

Nevertheless, I wish the book had been a bit longer, since it is relatively short for its genre, not necessarily for the purposes of the conclusion, but in order to spend more time with these girls in more contexts and depth.

A good deal of the book falls into backstory, which means that there is a fair bit of telling over showing and that the mix in timelines can sometimes cause you to re-read a sentence or two. This, mixed with the length of the chapters, which switch between the four perspectives, also means that it can take a while to come out of one section and settle into the next.

But it makes up for these imperfections by how very well it explores these characters, who each become fully-realized and realistic portraits of morally grey women. The themes that these characters portray are somewhat obvious, even from the start, but are still so intriguing that the book is hard to put down.

I rated "If I had your Face" 3.5 out of 5 stars but am not disappointed in the least, and will be watching to see if and when Cha embarks on the journey of another work of fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the early copy in exchange for an honest review!

What a fascinating novel! There are multiple examples of novels which look at the lives of women through three or four characters but this is the first I've read set in Seoul. This alternates the stories of four women - Kyuri, Milo, Ara, and Wonna- all of whom are struggling with their sense of self. Plastic surgery and K-pop figure greatly (I learned something). You might like one of them, you might disagree with their choices, but you will find yourself immersed in their lives. This doesn't have a straight line plot but is character driven so readers looking for clear resolutions should keep in mind that that's not always possible in life. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Great debut and an excellent read.

I'm not sure what to say about this book. It's a sad and disturbing look at the lives of these four young women and yet it didn't feel like a complete story about any of them. It was hard for me to keep the women straight - I suppose partly due to the unfamiliar names. The ending of the book was abrupt and left me hanging. I was literally looking for the next page thinking it couldn't possibly be the ending.

As a glimpse of the sad lives these women led, the book was a success. As a real story about them, it didn't quite do it for me.

Envy became the green-eyed monster when Shakespeare dubbed it so in Iago’s warning to Othello. Today, we just call it access to Instagram. Scrolling endlessly through a sea of heavily altered photos has the capacity to make any of us feel envious of others, or even go so far as to make us think, “I would live your life so much better than you if I had your face.”

So ponders one of the main characters of the appropriately titled “If I Had Your Face,” the first novel released by former CNN travel and culture editor Frances Cha. Set in South Korea, four rotating perspectives make up Ms. Cha’s debut; we begin with Ara, a mute hairstylist with a feverish obsession with a K-pop star. Next, we hear from Kyuri, a heavily surgurized beauty and employee of a high-end room salon, in which men pay large sums of money for good liquor and the company of attractive women. Wonna is the unexpected addition, a married woman living in the same building as the others, seemingly incapable of being happy with her kind husband. Finally, Kyuri’s roommate Miho is a naturally beautiful artist with a wealthy boyfriend.

All four are deeply damaged from their pasts filled with cruelty, abandonment, tragic accidents, and loss. Yet the quartet are doing their best to get by, living in Seoul’s fashionable Gangnam District. We follow each one of them roughly an equal number of times throughout this short novel and witness their present internal and external struggles, with backstories slowly poking through. The women can often be startlingly honest about their hardships, revealing themselves to the reader fairly early on. It is only the question of Ara’s muteness that lingers into the back half of the novel.

Their situations may be unique, but all four feel the collective cultural pressures weighing down on them. South Korea is well-known for having exceedingly high beauty standards, likely why the country has the highest ratio of plastic surgery procedures per capita, as Business Insider reported in 2015. Among the most common procedures is the double eyelid surgery, a procedure to enlarge and define the eyes by adding a double eyelid, as opposed to the single eyelid with which many South Koreans are born.

Though many Western countries tend to see such surgeries as elective emblems of vanity, leading with appearance is highly important in modern South Korea. Headshots have been historically required on applicant resumes, though President Moon Jae-in was reportedly attempting to get rid of that requirement. It was also rumored that he would seek to end the employer’s right to ask applicants about their families or even physical attributes. As “If I Had Your Face” character Miho explains:

“For all its millions of people, Korea is the size of a fishbowl and someone is always looking down on someone else. That’s just the way it is in this country, and the reason why people ask a series of rapid-fire questions the minute they meet you. Which neighborhood do you live in? Where did you go to school? Where do you work? Do you know so-and-so? They pinpoint where you are on the national scale of status, then spit you out in a heartbeat.”

Where not much can be done about one’s background, a single controllable status-determining factor can at least be one’s appearance, making it no wonder that so many, including characters Kyuri and Sujin, go under the knife.

Ms.Cha’s debut is filled with biting commentary about the position in which women find themselves in modern South Korea. With such an onus on appearance and social rank, women’s lives come to be dominated by envy, and our main characters are no exception. Each one of them, through their narratives, seems suspended in space, desperately grabbing out for something unreachable, believing that getting a hold on that whatever is missing will fill the hole inside of them.

Ms. Cha’s debut has the potential to provide a window into South Korean culture for the uninitiated, highlighting its richness as well as its problems. The book, for all its sharp wit and acerbic asides, is breezily and delightfully readable, perfect for a one-sitting binge. Wanting only for more differentiation between the character voices and a separate perspective of the group’s keystone friend, Sujin, Cha has given us a novel to write home about. Or, certainly, one with which we can distract ourselves from Instagram.

what a fascinating glimpse into Sputh Koreans beauty culture! The novel is based on interwoven friendships that are connected through room skins and the obsession to be beautiful that must be a top priority in South Korea. It is a shocking glimpse into the debauchery and plastic surgery culture of modern day women and men of Soth Korea.

I don’t know how to rate this one. While I enjoyed each individual persons story, it just felt a bit disconnected. I kept forgetting the parts of their story I had read previously and had to flip back to their last chapter and skim it. I found the stories fascinating though. I found the lengths Kyuri and Sujin were willing to go to in order to be considered “beautiful” absolutely heartbreaking. Their friendship was odd, but wonderful. Overall I really enjoyed this one, I just wish it flowed a little better for me.

Thank you Random House for my gifted copy of this book!

I’m on the fence with this one as to whether I’d give it 3 or 4 stars. On one hand, it is beautifully written and features an array of unique characters and a world I’ve never gotten to see first hand, or in fiction. However, given the title, If I Had Your Face, as well as the phenomenal (if heavy-handed) dramas that have been a hallmark of Korean cinema, I was expecting something more plot-driven in this narrative piece. Given the banner advertisement that says “I would live your life so much better than you if I had your face”, I thought this was going to be something sinister, like some kind of Sci-Fi identity theft-meets-Memoirs of a Geisha (because of the secret room salons and emphasis on achieving a specific, rigid standard of beauty).

In actuality, Frances Cha’s debut novel is a slow, slice-of-life story with multiple narrators in which nothing monumental happens to any of them. Instead, Cha serves up unique characters and an opportunity to travel via her vivid and precise writing to a foreign country and experience the nitty gritty, day-to-day life. I have to admit, after reading the first chapter, I went on an embarrassingly long binge of before-and-after photos from the various surgeries mentioned in the book. It is quite astounding, and given the prevalence of surgery and the demand for physical perfection, it is undoubtedly ripe for authors (particularly a Korean female) to delve into, expose, and react philosophically, sociologically, and politically. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a young woman living in contemporary Seoul, here’s your opportunity.