This is a great follow on from Natural Beauty... just as weird and not too far distant from reality. I enjoyed this very much and will recommend to others...

Ling Ling Huang's Immaculate Conception is a much more ambitious novel than her debut Natural Beauty. Set in the near-future, it's narrated by Enka, who's grown up in a world where 'buffers' - physical barriers between neighbourhoods - wall off access to art for most of the population. When she manages to get into art college despite this, she becomes deeply obsessed with fellow student Mathilde. Mathilde is brilliantly creative, and, like Giselle in Lisa Ko's Memory Piece, is building a reputation for transient pieces of performance art rooted in her own body. This serves her well when an AI archive starts copyrighting art that has not yet been created, destroying the careers of most of their classmates. Enka, desperate to find her own niche, focuses on the intersection between art and technology, especially a developing treatment that might allow others to inhabit the mind of somebody dealing with trauma in order to help them heal. When Mathilde experiences a devastating loss, Enka is eager to gain access to her brain, purportedly to help her, but more to experience what it might be like to be so effortlessly talented.

As this summary suggests, there is far, far too much going on in Immaculate Conception, and I'd suggest that at least two of the conceits - buffers and the AI threat - could have been dropped to allow Huang to focus more squarely upon the Enka-Mathilde relationship. Although their empathetic link is flagged in the novel's blurb, it doesn't actually come to pass until almost three-quarters of the way through, which doesn't leave Huang enough time to explore this fascinating, incredibly generative concept. She tries to cover so much ground that many key incidents feel skimmed over or skimpy. Meanwhile, although they are very different novels, I had some of the same problems with Enka as a protagonist than I did with June in Yellowface. I felt the story would have been better served if Huang had either decided to revel in her being an out-and-out villain, or make her much more morally grey. As it is, her actions are terrible but we still get a bit of pasted-together redemption, and I ultimately didn't find her that consistently written. Having said all this, though... I always prefer an exuberant mess of a book to neat boredom, and I loved Huang's ideas, especially her portrayal of Mathilde's art. Natural Beauty is the more coherent novel, but Immaculate Conception is just so much more exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing what she writes next.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

Immaculate Conception is strange, smart, and quietly unsettling in the best way. Ling Ling Huang drops us into the art world and explores the twisted threads of ambition, originality, identity, and intimacy through a story that feels part fever dream, part tech-laced psychological horror.

The relationship at the center—between Enka a struggling artist and the magnetic, wildly successful Mathilde, a woman she can’t let go—felt so intense and beautifully wrong. The tech twist (no spoilers!) is pure Black Mirror, it is intimate, eerie, and used in ways that are both deeply emotional and totally chilling. Throughout this story we are forced to explore the ethical side of technology, by showing parallels to what we are now experiencing right now in the current technological space.

Some moments got a little abstract, but overall this book is bold and thought provoking. It’s about art and obsession, but also about the yearning to be seen, understood, to heal and maybe even to become someone else. I’ll be thinking about it for a while.


(I’ll be posting my review over on my instagram page soon, @thereadingvalkyrie)

Immaculate Conception is a beautifully disquieting novel that lingers like a half-remembered dream—or a nightmare. Ling Ling Huang has a rare talent for making the world feel almost normal, just close enough to reality that the uncanny slips in unnoticed until it’s far too late. This story of friendship, obsession, and artistic hunger is unsettling in the most intimate way. Enka’s longing to stay connected to Mathilde curdles slowly, becoming something possessive, invasive, almost parasitic. The introduction of SCAFFOLD—technology that lets you crawl inside someone else’s mind—feels less like science fiction and more like an elegant horror story disguised as a love letter. It’s smart, sinister, and sharply written, exploring the fine line between empathy and erasure. This book didn’t just get under my skin—it made a home there.

Unusual and captivating novel set in a dystopian future where AI is rampant. Two artists are more and more connected through trauma and heartbreak. 4.5

Enka meets Mathilde at Art school and the two become friends. However, when Mathilde's career begins to sky rocket jealousy will become between the two with tragic consequences.

I loved Natural Beauty so I had really high expectations of this new novel and I I love it more. The friendship and the jealousy that Enka has for Mathilde but grappling with the love she has for her is beautifully written. The elements of technology and horror used is thrilling and so gripping that I couldn't put the book down. 5 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

I devoured Immaculate Conception as quickly as I devoured Natural Beauty. As a reader I found the toxic side of the art world was far more alienating and pretentious than the toxic beauty sphere which made for slow start and somewhat painful start but I suddenly found myself voraciously reading page after page unable to look away. So much so that I couldn’t put it down and finished it in one sitting, despite my earlier reservations. Immaculate Conception is going to be a story I think about often, as I do still with Natural Beauty. An incredible sophomore novel from Ling Ling Huang and I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Thank you so much to Canelo, Ling Ling Huang + NetGalley for the opportunity to read Immaculate Conception before it’s released on 5th June 2025!

4.5 ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Canelo for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This work predominantly sits in the weird lit fic genre, but being set in a vaguely dystopian (and when I say that, I mean not too far removed from the current day) setting at some point in the near future. Art and technology are heavily featured, and I loved how they intertwine both through the narrative and in the art that is created by the characters.

As someone who has always been drawn to artists, I could see my own friendships over the years reflected a little in the relationship between the two main characters, Enka and Mathilde. I related to Enka's struggle to support her friend, while also being jealous of her superior talent. The examination of how even with a life that leads into a certain amount of comfort, wealth and privilege, a person can feel unfulfilled of they still have not attained their original dreams and ambitions, was incredibly effective.

The writing was fluid and engaging. I was overjoyed by the array of artists that were referenced (some I had to look up, and a few were fictional). The artworks created by the characters were so imaginative, but also bonkers - it was like the author came up with ideas for conceptual installation pieces, then ramped them up so much to make them completely over the top. The ingenuity of this was astonishing, and I wonder if it was also commentary on how much of art these days seems incomprehensible to so many people.

I would personally have liked some more explanation of when this is set (as I said earlier, I guess it's in the near future) and what has happened to the world. It seems that society has had to change for some reason, and I wanted more exploration of that. The book had so much to give in a reasonably short amount of time, but I think this would have given a brilliant piece of extra context to how things got so bizarre. The delusions of some of the peripheral characters is off the charts.

I look forward to reading more from this author as I think, judging from this, they have a lot to say and offer. I found it to be visionary, strange and endlessly fascinating.

Ling Ling Huang’s Immaculate Conception is a haunting, surreal exploration of embodiment, grief, and feminine agency. With prose that shimmers between the lyrical and the unsettling, Huang crafts a tale where the corporeal and the metaphysical intertwine—pregnancy becomes myth, music becomes voice, and trauma lingers like a ghost. It's bold, genre-defying fiction that slips between reality and dream logic with confidence. Strange, intimate, and quietly furious, Immaculate Conception is a singular meditation on the power—and burden—of creation.

"I walked by a motivational poster one day that read “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Whoever said that had clearly never been lost at sea, left alone and gasping for air among unrelenting waves."

Ling Ling Huang has followed up her debut novel Natural Beauty with Immaculate Conception, a story of obsessive friendship set within the art world. Very much a science fiction story set within an all-too-near-feeling future, there are moments of horror infused throughout—and as the story progresses, it started to hit me with a real existential dread.

I found myself immediately immersed within the art school world. Although this isn't a community I'm particularly knowledgeable about, it feels vivid, and I would guess very well researched. I know a lot of musicians who operate in different genres and styles, and I see a lot of what I know about them, their obsessiveness and competitiveness, and these feel very real in the artists the book focuses on. As a parasocial and unhealthy friendship develops between the main characters, you can sense just how their drive, jealousy and fixation on creation shape and ultimately start to cause cracks within their bond.

This is a heavy read, with some dark themes (I would recommend those that may need trigger warnings to check those out before diving in). The book really dives into the sense of identity and how feelings of respect and jealousy can combine into infatuation—asking where the line between looking up to someone and wanting to be them gets crossed and exploring how this can lead to toxic relationships, both personally and creatively. Feeling inferior to someone whose talent is so impressive is a gut reaction I'm sure most people are familiar with, and Immaculate Conception doesn't shy away from the idea that these inadequacies can cause someone to lash out or to take advantage of the person you so admire.

Despite feeling very current with some interesting ideas about AI and how it will affect artists, perhaps much sooner than we're prepared for, the story feels at its most vital when it deals with more classic themes—namely trauma, and how artists can harness it and how it can overwhelm and dictate their creative process. If you could get rid of the stain on your soul left by others, knowing it may leave you unable to tap into that artistic source within you, would you do it? Complex characters and difficult questions kept me engrossed throughout Immaculate Conception and made it one of my favourite new reads so far in 2025.

Envy, one of the 7 deadly sins, has never been so addictive.

Have you ever been so amazed by someone that you ultimately feel inferior? This is at the beating heart of this book. Yes, the science fiction and horror intertwines this novel but this book is much more than that. It's friendships, relationships and what truly makes us. Do we have a soul? Is it our brain? Can you truly be altruistic, or is there always a dark intent somewhere?

This book became one of those special books where you no longer feel you're reading.

I will be thinking about this book for a long while.

Thank you to Ling Ling Huang, Canelo, and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Immaculate Conception is literary fiction based on the intersection of art, technology, and obsessive female friendships. Although the premise was interesting, this failed to grip me at all. I would recommend this to people who love art as it can be quite art-heavy and can come across as a little pretentious and alienating at the beginning.

In a dystopian world divided by a system of enclaves, designed to divide social classes, regulating access to culture, spaces, technology, and education through complex algorithms tightly controlled by artificial intelligence, Ling Ling Huang’s Immaculate Conception is a thought-provoking, fast-paced novel exploring the meaning of art, authorship, technology, and ethical dilemmas in a society gone mad.

The novel opens with an intense internal monologue steeped in jealousy, introducing Enka, a working-class art student and fellow from the Dahl
Corporation, a powerful tech company. Enka is immersed in art and technology, but her journey quickly spirals into obsession when she meets Mathilde, a celebrated artist from the elite Berkshire College of Art and Design who draws inspiration from her depressive memories and traumatic experiences to create original art. Initially bonded by their passion for art, Enka and Mathilde soon become close friends, deepening Enka’s obsession and their emotional co-dependency.

Technology has influenced how art is made and perceived, making it almost impossible to innovate and create original work, and plagiarism becomes a central theme in Immaculate Conception. This becomes the driving force behind the narrative, where Enka is in eternal pursuit of becoming a better artist than Mathilde. Eventually, under the guise of a collaborative work, Enka’s jealousy transforms her into a carbon copy of the very person she both loves and resents, with the narrative taking a dark turn that could produce great horror, but Huang decides to stick to sci-fi.
Midway through, Enka receives an invitation from her sponsor, Richard Dahl, to participate in a revolutionary new project. During her visit, they quickly fall in love and later get married—a plotline oddly mentioned in the blurb, despite occurring relatively late. Dahl’s company, once responsible for developing climate prediction algorithms to guide population distribution, now plays a pivotal role in shaping human creativity and behavior. These critiques are compelling, if only superficially explored, and would have benefited from greater depth and nuance.

The novel also features a series of surreal and absurd art performances—playful at first, but eventually repetitive. By this point in the book, the significance of the title becomes clear, and while it reflects the novel’s central idea, it fails to encompass all the ideas and themes Huang wants to convey. The most compelling part of Immaculate Conception is the development of a device that allows the user to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and access her creative brain—also oddly revealed in the blurb. The concept for this technology is explored in an interesting way, although the blurb gives a different idea of what it really is.

Ultimately, Immaculate Conception is an enjoyable read with interesting ideas and concepts that somehow feels superficial and incomplete. Perhaps the novel would benefit from a narrower scope of themes or a longer book. Yet, It's a fun and light read that will appeal to readers, specially those not keen on dystopian sci-fi but enjoys a more general adult narrative.

Rating: 2,5/5

I loved Huang’s first book and this is no exception. She has been able to cultivate a writing tone and style that is mesmerizing for the readers who is reading about difficult topics. One to look out for.

It took me a while to get into the story but once I was in it was a wild ride. The ideas and concepts discussed are super interesting. I found the pacing a bit odd and was annoyed with the main character a lot. Nevertheless a nice read.

The writing in Immaculate Conception is so immersive. I love the way Huang builds emotionally complex characters and relationships - she captures how morally ambiguous people can be, and how love, jealousy, empathy, and control can coexist and collide, all while handling darker themes and trauma with care.

The mix of art, science and technology, and social commentary is really creative and well-realised, with loads of clever references (both real and fictional) - you can tell Huang had fun with the ideas. There are definite echoes of her previous novel Natural Beauty, especially in its exploration of aesthetics and the pressure of artistic performance, but I thought Immaculate Conception explored those ideas with even more nuance. A really inventive, emotionally intelligent read.

Whilst I did enjoy reading Immaculate Conception, and got through it pretty quick, there were some elements I found lacking. It could do with being just slightly longer - seeing as the entire narrative and substance of the story hinges on the bond between Enka and Mathilde, it would’ve been great to read more about them becoming friends and how their relationship developed rather than skimming over that very crucial part to get to the rest of the plot. Early on there are some really gripping, high stakes moments that this fizzles out really fast, and after that my engagement did dwindle a bit.

A lot of the components of the novel didn’t seem to gel well together. There is a huge focus on art and the surrounding Art World (which I really enjoyed!) whilst simultaneously a sci-fi subplot is added into the chapter almost like an afterthought, like, ‘oh yeah, THAT’S what’s happening here!’ I thought the horror of the novel could’ve been delved much, much further. There are some deeply disturbing scenes in this book, one in particular, but the book never commits completely to how frightening the situations are, and that’s definitely to its detriment.

Huang is fantastic at writing female friendships (especially fucked up, co-dependent ones), and their bond is clearly the beating heart of the novel (and the most fascinating element.) However, I struggled to feel connected to either character as a separate entity.

I did have a great time reading this book, though, and look forward to reading her future work. I would highly recommend this to anyone who finds themselves ruminating about Black Mirror episodes long after they’re finished.

Thank you to Canelo and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC. All opinions are my own.

This book is a dread-inducing, thought-provoking exploration of the dark and gritty side of female friendship; obsession, envy, jealousy, and grief. At times, I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t put it down. It poses a haunting question: what happens when you find yourself with the power to take what you’ve always wanted? While the speculative sci-fi elements act as the backdrop and catalyst for the story, the true horror lies in its raw, emotional exploration of human nature. One of the most poignant moments for me was when Enka sees herself through Mathilde’s eyes, and it prompts a moment to reflect on the fact that the entire book has been filtered through Enka’s own skewed perception.

Immaculate Conception is a novel about envy, connection, and art, as two friends end up with a new way to share traumatic experiences. Enka is an art student looking for original ideas, and Mathilde is the bright star in the class, already with art world buzz around her. They become close friends, but as Mathilde gets more famous and Enka falls behind thanks to an AI tool disrupting their art school's work, their friendship feels different to Enka, more desperate. And then, as she marries and has access to her billionaire husband's company and their futuristic technology, there's a way for Enka to inhabit Mathilde's mind, absorbing her trauma but also creating work as her.

The follow-up to Natural Beauty, Immaculate Conception is a novel similarly weaving together horror with dystopian technological elements and ideas about humanity and self, but this time, Huang focuses on the art world and what authorship and originality mean. The novel is told in different sections, with the first section moving between the past and present, and it actually spans longer than I expected, not telling the reader everything (especially as it is from Enka's perspective).

There's a lot of technological ideas in there, not only the mind-sharing technology that forms some of the main plot and also ideas about cloning, but also the AI art generator that is the catalyst for a lot of Enka's feelings and desperation. I like how Huang takes ideas about AI art and uses these to think about the human side, particularly in terms of artists looking to find work that still has value and the messy feelings of jealousy when someone else has that. Generally, this focus on the impact on individual characters of the technology in the novel makes it feel more than a story about dystopian technological change, and that makes it more engaging in my opinion.

Though the book has been described as horror, it much less horror-like than Huang's previous novel Natural Beauty, and is more of a sci-fi-tinged exploration of art and envy that doesn't go as dark as Natural Beauty. I like how it addresses AI generation and human-technology integration whilst also telling a story about a woman making questionable choices due to her own insecurities and fears.

Immaculate Conception is a sharp, unsettling exploration of art, obsession, and the terrifying blur between intimacy and possession. Told entirely through the eyes of Enka, a struggling artist caught in the gravitational pull of a dazzling, self-destructive peer, this novel pulls you deep into the fractured psyche of someone chasing both connection and validation - often at the cost of clarity, and sometimes reality.

Ling Ling Huang crafts a narrative that is both grounded and speculative. While the plot leans into high-concept sci-fi (a tech innovation that lets you inhabit another person’s mind - yes, really), the novel never feels far-fetched. That’s largely because its emotional terrain is so relatable: envy between artists, the tangled web of creative identity, the quiet descent into toxic codependency. Enka’s internal monologue is at once familiar and disorienting - a puzzle of insecurity, ambition, and warped self-perception that makes her simultaneously sympathetic and frustrating. And if you enjoy unreliable narrators, this one’s a goldmine.

The pacing is solid - always engaging, even if the book’s major developments (as hinted at in the blurb) take their time to arrive. Once they do, though, everything unfolds in a way that feels earned. The novel doesn’t tie everything up neatly - instead, it gives you space to sit with its questions. What is empathy, really? Can you love someone and still want to consume them? And how far can tech reach before it starts unmaking the very things that make us human?

If anything, I found myself wanting a bit more world-building. The dystopian landscape that forms the backdrop of the story is introduced with intrigue, but not fully fleshed out. It ends up feeling more like a narrative device to support character backstory than a fully realized element of the novel’s thematic arc. A little more depth here might have made some of the emotional stakes land even harder.

That said, this is an incredibly thought-provoking and compelling novel - and one I flew through. Ling Ling Huang’s writing is confident, unsettling, and sometimes darkly funny. It’s easy to see why she’s emerging as a powerful voice in contemporary fiction.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.