Set in a near future dystopia where social classes are physically separated by invisible barriers, this follows two female artists who develop an unhealthily close relationship that leads to a catastrophic chain of events. I wasn’t liking this much at all until the back half, which really worked for me. Lots of interesting things to say about AI, the ownership of art and how insecurities can influence our creativity.

the way my jaw was on the floor…

i think this book has everything you could want from a reading experience—unlikeable narrator that nevertheless keeps you turning the page, obsessive female friendship charged equal parts by love and jealousy, a science fiction concept of maybe even severance proportions, meditations on art/authority/originality/consent, at times, just plain weirdness and others plain tenderness—but this profuseness makes the novel an ambitious project that almost inevitably starts to leak quality through execution.

if enka’s primary preoccupation is that having everything you could want isn’t enough, then perhaps so is the novel’s. in particular, i am unconvinced of its central relationship; enka and mathilde feel one-dimensional, acting more as respective beacons of greed-ridden envy and tortured, principled genius than real people. as much as i was drawn to every other aspect of the book, i wish this one was given more attention, because it starts to effect the entire project. enka’s background as a “fringe kid” who marries into the wealthiest family on the globe is one that i felt could have been examined more; the plot twist with logan is one that i felt could have been omitted with little consequence, since he barely had a personality to begin with (sorry).

i think also what prevented me from feeling more enthused was huang’s prose, which at times brimmed with poetry and feeling and at others (or even the majority of the time) fell to juvenile tendencies like grocery-list telling, plodding rhythm, and plot clichés. the end of the book felt especially trite, though i suppose if one of its messages is that originality doesn’t exist, it demonstrates it in full.

regardless, i was drawn into huang’s world and have a lot of thoughts about the SCAFFOLD as a concept. i enjoyed huang’s natural beauty for many of the same reasons i enjoyed immaculate conception.which is to say i think she does a very good job at building concepts around themes even if the writing itself at times cannot keep up. recommended for black mirror and severance enjoyers who also have a thing for art school arcs that feature entangled friendships and catastrophe!

3.67/5

Thanks to the publisher for the early access copy via NetGalley!

I wanted to like this so bad. The summary sounded right up my alley--horror to do with possession? Sign me up. But the writing style really fell flat for me. Adore the cover and the overall plot, but I just could not get into it the way I can with horror. I'm not sure if that was a stylistic choice due to the content, but I will say that I did enjoy the obsessive nature of Enka. I get the plot, don't get me wrong, but I wish it had been approached with a different style.

3.5⭐️

I actually read this in one day because IT LITERALLY FELT LIKE A FEVER DREAM.

I finally woke up from said dream and have my nifty typing fingers ready to right out my thoughts.

*Slight Spoilers*

I honestly had no idea what this was going into it and then like 30 pages in I read the synopsis and I think it miss leads you a bit. It makes it sound a bit like a horror book and I’m just waiting for weird things to start happening.

Nevertheless weird things did happen but not as much as I was expecting. This is definitely more a character study and I should have gone in more with that perspective. It talks a lot about artsy people and it made me feel very classy telling everyone what I’m reading about, and of course reading it. The pacing was good, I loved the writing style but I think the rest of the character relationships were neglected. Of course Enke and Matilde’s relationship was not, but I think it would have been better if Enke was able to talk more to other people and then we could see all of the other people she knows around her start leaving her or something because of her downward spiral.

Huang writes beautifully and purposefully. Her prose is clean but at the same time rich with nuance. Immaculate Conception packs a lot - themes of female friendship, art, creativity, identity, technology, and yes, obsession. There's plenty to say about the near-future digital landscape and how it imminently shapes us on a core level, but I think the main focus is on Enke and Mathilde's relationship. They're the focus of the novel and it's through their world that we gain any understanding of both the reality and unreality they live in. A dystopian sci-fi meets literary fiction.

I kindly received an advanced reading copy by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4.5*

‘Immaculate Conception’ exists at the intersection of literary and science fiction, set in a dystopian future where the invisible boundaries between social classes that limit access to culture, education, and opportunity have been made physical, dividing the population into the privileged ‘enclave’ citizens, and the less fortunate that live in the ‘fringe’.

The book follows Enka, a fringe citizen who has a rare opportunity to study art at university after receiving a scholarship, and becomes friends with Mathilde, the university’s star pupil. As technological advancements change the art landscape and threaten Enka’s work, Mathilde rises to prominence in the art world, and their lives and friendship eventually diverge, before they are brought together once again, setting off an absolutely wild chain of events.

Aside from being a compelling literary fiction on toxic friendship, and the co-existence of fierce love and jealousy, Huang also provides an insightful metaphor for how location can restrict opportunity, advancement and ability to interact with culture, and an interesting portrait of the intersection between art and technology, especially in regards to AI.

Overall, I wholly enjoyed this book and would recommend to any lit-fic fans, especially if you enjoy novels about art such as Woman, Eating or Sirens & Muses, or if you were a fan of dystopian fiction like The Hunger Games growing up!

Thanks so much to Penguin Group Dutton and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I didn’t know what to expect going into this but I was HOOKED. I love books with commentary, art, and toxicity and so this truly delivered for me.

I think the writing style made it difficult to fully get into the story, it didn’t initially grip me and took a little to get into the groove with it. But it was SO worth it.

This book was thought-provoking, and I think succeeded in everything it set out to accomplish. Highly, highly recommend!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for this ARC.

I really enjoyed Natural Beauty by Ling Ling so I was excited to read her next book. Immaculate Conception was very interesting and it held my attention.

I did find that some elements of the book confusing at times, but overall I enjoyed this one! Looking forward to what Huang writes next.

A deeply thought provoking book. Ling Ling Huang dives thoroughly into the mind making you question society and art. Huang discusses the harsh toll that creative genius can take on the mind. Huang has many interesting opinions about the future impact of technology on the creative scene.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this early! I am already a big fan of Huang’s work, with Natural Beauty being one of my favorite reads of 2024. This newest novel is equally exceptional! It’s strange in all the best ways and kept me hooked the entire time. Huang is such a talent!

Sympathy is a knife, but empathy - and envy- is the hand that twists it. Huang has taken the impersonal antics of the art world and the dying ethics of corporate technology firms to twist love, desire, and jealousy into a string of horrors that question how pure can passion and ambition be if you're willing to pay any price.

I went into this novel completely blind and I thought it was a solid read. I must admit, I am not a huge fan of the author’s writing style. It was clunky and disjointed. I think if I would’ve enjoyed the prose more then I would’ve bumped up my rating. The plot is what saved this story for me. I like reading about codependent and dysfunctional friendships. The main character is deeply troubled and overly involved in her friend’s personal life. Interesting concept and the ending was very good, but it was still short of brilliance.

4.5 stars

If you loved this author's last book, "Natural Beauty", I think you'll love this newest foray into obsession and the art world.

Main characters Enka and Mathilde meet at art school. Enka is there on a scholarship. Mathilde is already somewhat famous as an artist and Enka is immediately drawn to Mathilde by awe and envy. The story chornicles the lives of these two women as they navigate the world of art, artists, and the elite.

This story appears to take place in an alternate present time, as reference is made to the death of Mathilde's father in 9/11. Society is separated by a type of technology that sets up physical barriers between the haves and the have nots. Enka is a "have not" and is deeply embarrassed by her parents and life before her scholarship. As she grows closer to Mathilde, Enka becomes one of the elite through marriage to the son of an extremely rich and influental family.

I have to admit that I found the main character extremely unlikable, which I believe was intentional. While it was sometimes frustrating to be in the head of someone so intensely flawed and destructive, it did move the narrative in a particular way that was effective. I found the ending of the story somewhat unsatisfying, but I think a certain type of reader is going to love it.

If you like odd stories such as Bunny, Catherine House, and Natural Beauty, I think you'll love this book and I would highly recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eArc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 - This is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. If you're at all curious about how AI/technology might affect art, you should read this. I'm finding myself more and more drawn to literary horror as a genre lately. It scratches the itch of deep character development while at the same time keeping me on my toes with visceral visuals and plot twists. Immaculate Conception leans much more heavily towards literary than horror, more haunting than anything. If I had to describe the vibe of this book, it'd be that feeling when you need to be so close to someone you want to crawl into their skin...with a little bit of Ex-Machina mixed in.

At its core, this book is a tragic and haunting exploration of friendship, loneliness, and the search for success and originality in a world of advanced technology. The characters were deeply nuanced, but their inner workings are not spoon fed to you - the author makes you work to understand them. It shows the fallibility of technology, how lives can be forever altered through one small misunderstanding. It's beautifully written and hammers home the idea that technology will never replace genuine human connection, in contrast often eroding it. I loved how the art exhibitions mirror the things happening in the plot to the point where you can't tell what's art and what's technology. I can tell I'll be thinking about this book for a long time. It also ends on a hopeful note, which felt right.

The only thing - I'm not sure why, but I assumed that more of the book would be about the empathy technology mentioned in the blurb, when in reality it's only ~25% of the book. I think this was the strongest part of the book and wished it was explored further.

Enka and Mathilde meet as art students and quickly develop a codependent friendship, spurred in part by Enka’s inferiority complex and worship of Mathilde’s apparently bottomless artistic success. Unable to compare in terms of career success, she mostly leaves art behind while marrying into a rich family and having children. Mathilde becomes a star—albeit troubled, whose trauma peaks with her titular Immaculate Conception work. Enter Enka, whose family offers a convenient solution to “save” Mathilde while Enka effectively mines her consciousness for the raw material for more, profitable, art.
This would make an interesting book group discussion; it covers a lot, from art and capitalism, ethics of technology, cloning, wealth inequality, talent, parenting, trauma and exploitation, and maybe most universally,: what happens when you let your insecurity define a relationship.
I liked it. I think it probably could have gone deeper on one or two of those themes, but the plot keeps moving and overall I was absorbed.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

I really enjoyed Ling Ling Huang’s first book, so I was very excited to receive the ARC for this one (thank you NetGalley). Huang is great at creating a sci-fi world that feels believable and familiar, like it’s a path our society could’ve easily taken. And the relationships feel familiar too — I don’t know if she intends her books to be read this way, but to me, Huang’s writing feels very queer. There’s a kind of intense jealousy and codependency that is achingly familiar to me from my repressed teens and early 20s. Jealousy and obsession as a form of love. Anyway! All that to say, I love how fantastical yet realistic this book was. If you liked Natural Beauty, I would really recommend this one as well.

Thank you to Netgalley for this arc. This book was shocking and twisted. It's a story of a friendship between Enka and Mathilde. They meet and become friends in art school, but Mathilde becomes famous from her art and it starts a distance from their friendship. Enka finds a way to control it and it's just twisted.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion!

Five star read. Immaculate, amazing, breathtaking. The toxic relationships were so well depicted, the was not one healthy one in this entire book. The depiction of art slowly devolving as AI starts to mimic and infringe upon the rights of artists...chilling and all too real in this day and age. This book will be one of my top reads of 2025, guaranteed. Every part of this book was original, and truly just stunning. It will provoke some truly visceral reactions out of you when you least expect it. I will definitely be reading more by this author, Ling Ling Huang please create more like this!

just finished this ARC and this was a solid sci fi/dystopian/horror story that was super chilling at times. focuses in on obsession and jealousy, and somehow deeply emotional all at once! it felt very futuristic, clones and sharing consciousness? insanely good

“The internet stopped being a place to connect to others or to exchange knowledge, and became a way to perform belonging in the world you had inherited.”

5 stars! Couldn’t put it down! I was expecting greatness and this exceeded my expectations. I can’t begin to summarize what this book is about but it explores technology, loss, friendship, trauma, art, and so much more. It’s honestly a book that, the less you know going in, the better the experience. It’s beautifully written and I found myself highlighting a quote every other page. Natural Beauties has been on my TBR for the longest time and I am even more excited to read it this year.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC and thank you Ling Ling Huang for this excellent novel!