An impactful horror about the insane impacts of the beauty industry and unchecked capitalism. Beautifully written, unsettling and poignant this is not to be missed.

Natural Beauty is a vivid and unsettling read that explores the toxicity of ‘health and beauty’ culture, capitalism, social pressures, and cultural identity.

I really enjoyed the connections made between music and beauty - how both industries are fuelled by perfection, exclusivity, and the pressure to conform. This gave great insight into the narrator, a pianist, and I particularly liked the exploration of her relationship with her parents and her backstory. However, as the story progresses, the narrator becomes a bit passive - she seems to easily move on from the very intense, surreal experiences happening to her without much reflection, which was frustrating at times. The side characters were described nicely, but they didn’t feel fully developed beyond their appearances and their connections to Holistik. I get that this might have been intentional, reflecting how people disconnect in their pursuit of beauty, but I still think it would’ve been nice to explore their backstories more.

The plot itself is a really interesting concept with some great dystopian elements, though as the story goes on, some of the deeper themes take a backseat to the horror aspects. The pacing also felt a little uneven, with moments where I wasn’t sure what was happening - it seemed like just as things were getting interesting, the narrator would pass out and wake up in a random place. After a while, this started to feel like a lazy plot device and made certain moments feel confusing and anticlimactic rather than suspenseful.

Despite my criticisms, Natural Beauty does a good job critiquing beauty standards and the pressure to be perfect. It looks at how capitalism drives beauty ideals, where money and power often come before ethics, and highlights the dangers of prioritising aesthetics over integrity. Overall, an enjoyable read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced reader's copy and the opportunity to this early. Review has been posted on Waterstones and Amazon.

Natural Beauty is a vivid and suspenseful horror taking the realm of luxury beauty to terrifying, and worryingly believeable, extremes.
Our protagonist begins the novel with a hopeful anticipation in the wake of scoring a dream job at Holistik, a vastly successful and elite beauty and self care corporation. Amidst the lotions and procedures and beautiful women, a sinister truth lurks tauntingly. The novel devolves into an utterly surreal, almost hallucinogenic experience and it truly satisfies the need for tension and action. A highly exciting novel from start to finish, natural beauty examines society under the microscope and unearths a deep and harrowing darkness that somehow mirrors so much of the reality that we see daily. I loved this book.

I adore literary horror that discusses the beauty industry and I had heard the MOST astounding things about this one... but unfortunately it didn't entirely land for me. I adored the concept and I found the premise so fascinating! Paired with the messiness of the protagonist and the secondary characters, it definitely made the read one that was not only fun in places but one that packed so much character analysis within it. What didn't work for me, was the pacing. This book felt so incredibly slow despite being fairly short and I found myself wanting chapters to end quicker than normal. It's such a shame because this was a big 5 star prediction for me!

My rating system:
Enjoyment: not my fave, but i never considered dnf'ing. there were aspects i loved such as the body horror, gore and the exploration of identity and obsession with beauty. loved the writing - 4
More?: i would read more from the author, synopsis dependant - 3
Criticisms: there were a few things that affected my reading experience, mostly the slow build up to a rushed ending. i wish there had been a little more fleshing out of the last quarter of the book, it felt like a lot of character development and story for a small impact. - 3
Rereadability: i can't see myself ever wanting to read this again, but i'm not fully opposed to it. - 2
Average rating: 3 stars

Natural Beauty is a cutting critique of beauty stands, consumerism, and wealth all wrapped up in an icky body horror package. Our unnamed protagonist was a pianist prodigy, but now she’s been hired at Holistik—an upmarket wellness shop and spa that has definite cult vibes. Although it takes a while for the horror elements to be introduced, I found the descent of our character into this messed up world to be incredibly gripping and the short chapters flew by. Plus, once the horror does start, the descriptions are visceral and gross without ever becoming too much.

Overall, the story felt like a fever dream and I think certain scenes towards the end are going to stay with me for a long time.

Natural Beauty written by Ling Ling Huang is a darkly funny, yet deeply unsettling exploration of consumerism, privilege, identity, self-worth and xenophobia.

Told through first-person narration, our protagonist (her name is unknown to us as readers) is a former child prodigy pianist, and an only child to Chinese immigrants, who escaped during the cultural revolution. She is living a simple life with her family in America, and her talent has allowed her a full ride at the NYC Conservatory. Following a debilitating accident where both her parents are injured, she is forced to abandon the piano and find work to support the family.

She is invited to start working at the Holistik spa, a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City, that is known for its remarkable procedures and products, and an unimaginable world of privilege.

I enjoyed this piercing, insightful and incredibly creative story that redefines wellness and beauty, and the lengths that humans will go to for the illusion of youth, or to participate in wellness culture.

With thanks to Canelo, Ling Ling Huang, and NetGalley for this e-ARC for review consideration with an honest review.

I am excited to read further writing from Ling Ling Huang!

Paperback release date: 6th March 2025

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rep : Chinese-American, Sapphic MC
CW : Sexual assault, racism

💄Discussion of beauty standards
💸Makes fun of what rich people will do for money
🩸Cult vibes
😱Slow-burn horror

"Songs that depicted the country people often told me to return to, but that I had never seen."

"Between the two of them, they appropriate an impressive number of cultures."

What I Loved

1) The writing style was really engaging and helped get me out of a reading slump

2) This feels like a more well developed Rouge by Mona Awad. The writing felt very similar in the like off the cuff comments that are included, but this book definitely worked better. If you are a fan of Mona Awad, you definitely need to pick this up I think you'll love it (also jellyfish are also mentioned in this book which really reminded me of Rouge)!

3) I love how the main character calls out everyone's bullshit in her head such as 'I realise I should thank her for supporting the vague "arts", which in this instance is me'.

4) This style of slow-burn horror worked really well as we kept getting hints of something sinister going on and after every reveal it kept me intrigued for more, even though technically nothing had happened yet.

5) The twist had me SHOCKED I love how everything comes together at the end.

Thank you to Netgalley, Canelo and Ling Ling Huang for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang is a haunting, poetic novel that blends literary horror with a sharp critique of the beauty industry. It follows a young woman drawn into an elite wellness company, where perfection comes at a chilling cost. Huang’s prose is vivid and unsettling, using body horror to explore themes of consumerism, identity, and the sacrifices women make in pursuit of unattainable beauty. The novel’s strongest moments lie in its eerie atmosphere and thought-provoking commentary.

The first half pulls the reader in with its eerie, immersive storytelling, but as the plot progresses, it becomes more abstract and detached. The protagonist’s transformation is fascinating and forces us to confront how history—and even personal identity—is often whitewashed.

Natural Beauty is a unique and unsettling read that lingers long after the final page. Fans of literary horror and feminist dystopia will appreciate its dark, thought provoking take on society’s obsession with youth and perfection. While not without flaws, it’s a novel that challenges, disturbs, and captivates in equal measure. It is definitely something that will stay with me, and 100% recommended.

I enjoyed this book - it reminded me of Youthjuice. The plot progresses quickly and there is just enough intrigue to keep me turning the pages

Natural Beauty is a novel about the luxury beauty industry, being an outsider, and what it means to make something beautiful. The protagonist was a promising piano player, studying at the Conservatory to the delight of her parents who fled China during the Cultural Revolution, until an accident left them in a medical facility and her unable to play. When she is offered a job at Holistik, a beauty company that offers cutting-edge treatments for a high price, it is an opportunity not only to pay her parents' medical bills, but to gain access to the world she couldn't join through piano playing. As she becomes entranced by a new friend and her body starts to change thanks to Holistik's products, she starts to realise that there's a price being paid for what Holistik and its sister companies are doing.

This book is a combination of body horror and literary fiction with dystopian thriller elements, using this to explore the wellness and beauty industry as a concept, ideas of perfection in beauty and art, and personal experiences of immigration and race. It's both satirical and not, as good body horror often is, and there's a lot of little details that aren't as explored as the main narrative, but are fascinating too (like the owner of the company also making money from a body modification business because alongside the 'culture' of beauty and wellness there's always a 'counter-culture').

The unnamed protagonist tumbles down the rabbit hole whilst the reader is faced with knowing it isn't going to go well, seeing the warning signs she misses. Her story highlights how the beauty industry often preys on people who need solutions to other problems in their lives, but also how when someone is desperate it is easy to not see things that don't seem quite right. The parts of the book in which she's thinking about music and the need for dissonance and harshness were some of my favourite parts, and beyond the obvious parallel with beauty, it also shines a light on ideas of who plays music and what they should look and seem like.

Natural Beauty is a gripping descent into a dystopian world of body horror. You can really picture it being adapted into a film that would sit well alongside a lot of recent films, not just in terms of the concept but in the fluid, hazy way it unfolds.

This is an unusual novel in that it is telling the story from and unknown narrater.
The Chinese/American lady was a piano prodigy and her parents were involved in a tragic accident.

Her adulthood was a lot different that her childhood path and she finds herslf a job in the wellness industry. What fascinated me was that although it called Natural Beauty it is anything but.

This is quite a horror sgory and one I really enjoyed. It is addicted, just like the characters insight into her work.

This is a slow burn read but I was intrigued and really cannot wait to see it adapted for the big screen

Wonderfully tense and creepy, I really enjoyed this and happy to have been able to get it on Netgalley for the paperback release, as it's been on my radar for a while.

I really liked it as a satire of the wellness industry, and thought it combines well with being an exploration of cultural identity, and the loss thereof in this age of immense pressure for everyone to conform to the same beauty standards and ideals. The writing flowed well for me, though it felt a bit too short for how much was in here, and I would have liked to see more in the shop where she worked, and a bit more development between some of the characters.

It lost me a little bit towards the end, for me it explained too much, and therefore lost that sense of "fever dream" or mystery, as it felt like it came crashing back down to real life.

It all felt very cinematic, so it was no surprise to see mentions in the acknowledgments that this has been picked up for the screen. I look forward to seeing that!

3.5/5

There is a lot to enjoy about this debut novel, which is finally getting a UK release after having dropped in the US in 2023. The writing is sumptuous, the story is interesting and the body horror is mushy, squishy, gloopy and excellent.

More than anything, it's the cultish health brand of Hollistik that drew me in. That sort of thing is the *perfect* setting for a horror story and this story delivers a really enticing one. The allure of the brand, the willingness of every customer and members of staff to blindly use their products, and all of the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes...they all work brilliantly here.

Obviously, reading this in a post-The Substance world also feels important. While not as eye-popping as that wild film, this book stops and makes you chew over Western ideals of beauty, of self-care, and of what is expected of women in terms of how they look, how they behave, and how they age. It also taps into our desires to improve ourselves, to have what many don't have, and just to be beautiful...whatever that means.

I also appreciated the somewhat slow-burn of the first half of this story - despite its quick pace and short chapters, Ling Ling Huang manages to build the world of this health brand and plant an ever-increasing amount of unease in dread in your mind, balanced with seeing our nameless narrator have what she thinks are good things happen to her. That serves up a delicious pay-off in the final third when this novel shakes free of any shackles and goes wild for a frantic and disgusting, sloppy, gory finale.

Lots of fun and lots to think about - thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a review copy.

Absolutely exceptional!

Magical prose, intertwined story of self and cultural identity, commentary on how the beauty industry is so white-centric.

My only criticism is that I wanted MORE, this could have been longer with a much more intense ending, but this is an AMAZING debut and I will read EVERYTHING Ling Ling Huang writes

‘The first thing they teach me at the store is how to be my best self. It requires constant self-surveillance to steadily improve. My coworkers relate it to pruning a bonsai. Painful but necessary for refinement. What starts as an enthusiasm for improvement becomes an all-consuming infatuation. Caution becomes paranoia and, eventually, fear. Is there anything more comforting in life than knowing what to fear? At Holistik, they teach me what I need to be afraid of to become beautiful.’

In Natural Beauty, we follow an unnamed Chinese American narrator as she learns firsthand about the privilege, toxicity, and horrors of the wellness industry from within its walls. As readers, we join her on a journey from her childhood as a piano prodigy, through the tragedy of her parents' accident, and into a seemingly unrelated job offer in adulthood. A job that initially seems too good to be true quickly leads her into the grip of the health and wellness industry in ways she could never have predicted.

This debut novel is an outstanding critique of the growing consumerism and cultural appropriation that pervades the ‘wellness’ industry. It delivers incredibly powerful and wide-ranging social commentary, tackling the toxicity of Western beauty standards rooted in white supremacy, surveillance capitalism, and so-called ‘health-motivated’ self-surveillance.

The decision to leave the narrator unnamed, only for her to later be forced to adopt a workplace name for easier assimilation, further underscores the novel’s powerful commentary on the erasure of the immigrant experience and the role capitalism plays in perpetuating it. Throughout the story, the so-called health and wellness ‘treatments’ push her closer to the Eurocentric ideal of beauty, deepening the critique of this toxic system.

I particularly appreciated how Ling Ling Huang also weaves in themes of queer longing and confusion, emotions that become increasingly entangled with the overarching chaos of the wellness industry and the demands of assimilation.
The narrative is filled with visceral body horror and references to the narrator’s lack of bodily autonomy within the context of toxic consumerism. Be sure to check content warnings before jumping in, as alongside many other triggers, the novel includes depictions of sexual abuse, both within and outside the workplace.

This is an incredibly impressive debut. I cannot wait to get my hands on Ling Ling Huang’s next novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and Canelo for the e-ARC. All opinions are my own.

Content/Trigger Warnings:
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Sexual assault, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body shaming, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Gore, Racism, Rape, Terminal illness, Blood, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Cultural appropriation, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Ableism, Child abuse, Infertility, Misogyny, and Cannibalism

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 stars
Paperback publication: 30th January 2025

Thank you to Canelo and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Our narrator produces a wondrous sound from the piano learned from her mother and father, who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store: Holistik.

This was such a solid debut. It had excellent social commentary on the wellness industry and westernised beauty standards, but I really appreciated the author touching on the immigrant experience and cultural erasure. Our main character remains unnamed in the book until she is “advised” to adopt a less ethnic, more westernised first name while at work, and goes by “Anna” from that point on; we never learn her real Chinese name.
The body horror in this was good; it was quite visceral and felt icky. There was an uncomfortable, fever dream aspect to the entire book. The writing did get a bit chaotic on occasions, with the final confrontation feeling particularly rushed and messy, only to be followed by a fairly lengthy tying-up of threads. This being said, I read this in two sittings and would love to read more from this author.

Some good food for thought about the beauty industry and how obsessing on a beauty standard erases cultural and personal identity. Really weird at times and filled with gross body horror. It's a shame the ending felt rushed and weaker compared to the rest of the novel tho

Rated 3.75 stars.

This was all kinds of f*cked up, from the insane storyline to the unreliable narration. I kept reading purely for shock value, I couldn’t believe what was happening or the horrors of it all. However, where the plot impressed me, the writing let me down. It felt basic and almost like a first draft in certain parts. The conversation scenes were difficult to read, partly due to the unrealistic nature of them and the lack of energy in the writing.

I did enjoy the criticism of society and humans self obsession with looking good, but even this felt empty in parts. For a horror story focused on human narcissism, I really wish the writing lived up to the hype.