Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - If I Had Your Face

Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

47 reviews

kutreen's review against another edition

dark informative inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Usually I don't like books that switch between various perspectives but I loved that all of the characters were friends or knew each other in various capacities and that their lives intersected often. I liked learning about pressures related to beauty, marriage, and women's careers in Korea, as well as about class differences, from women whose difficult childhoods have left them to learn to fend for themselves and make unlikely connections to survive.

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beeanka_reads's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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michelle_bernice92's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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slaywithsteph's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful relaxing sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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

Following the lives of four Korean women, this book is a slice-of-life without much plot. There’s little character growth but ample character exploration.

As a non-Korean, I cannot say if the author successfully details the obsessive — and sometimes surgery-heavy — world of Korean beauty standards, but it feels realistic to me.

However, what really brought it down for me was the book felt unbalanced in that I’m not sure why Wonna’s story existed in this. It’s not that she wasn’t interesting; it’s that she felt out of place with the other characters. Though, I do love the concept of a girl down the hall being included, it just felt like her entire storyline was so jarringly different, it felt like she was piece-mealed into the book. Maybe a fourth POV could have tied her in better? But I digress.

I went in with zero expectations, and so I was startled by several moments throughout the book. It took me until the final chapters to even realize this was likely a slice-of-life book, so I spent a lot of time wondering where the plot was going to come in.

Overall, I think Cha succeeded in what she wanted to do with the three main characters, and I very much appreciated how relaxing this was to read.

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prism_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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rileydobereading's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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aubigney's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I found this book extremely depressing to the point that I couldn’t finish it. I got to the sex worker’s affair and simply stopped reading. It was like everything good in life had been taken away from me. She was also extremely drunk and blacking out when the affair started, which makes me think the author is normalising sexual assault and passing it off as simply an affair instead of someone taking advantage of a sex worker who is much younger. I don’t know why someone would write a book like this except that they themselves were extremely miserable and going through it. The prose was not good so it wasn’t worth finishing.

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