Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Natural Beauty

I had a great time with this book up until about 3/4 of the way through it. The climax felt rushed and messy, with so many questions left unanswered (and not in a mysterious, intentional way). Overall, it was a decent read but a letdown towards the end.

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punk_flower_child's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

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

5.0

Oh my God, once I got about halfway through this book I just couldn't stop. This was such a profound commentary on beauty standards and so much else I couldn't even begin to express. One of my favorites so far this year

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mybestfriendisabook's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

4.0

pretty quick entertaining read. helped thru reading slump. mostly read in slightly sleep deprived delusion states. enjoyed the weirdness and body horror. plot is like Rogue by Mona Awad and this one came thru.

touches on beauty standards and the lengths we’ll go, chinese immigrant parents

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caroisreading's review

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

What a wild ride. And what a hell of a debut novel by Ling Ling Huang. I'm still processing the many layers that the author has sliced open, with all its grotesque detail, what it means to be a woman stripped of her own nature, power, choice, financial security, fertility, ethnicity, family and body. Essentially, the reality we live today, only digestible as a work of dystopian fiction.

Our narrator is a Chinese-American daughter of immigrants, two pianists who escaped the Cultural Revolution. She's absorbed their passion for the instrument and art, and rises as a talented young prodigy, enduring bullying for being praised, different, and poor. After tragedy, she has to give up piano for odd jobs to survive, and finds herself working in retail at Holistik, a beauty shop that feels surreal with its elite clientele, innovative services and beautiful staff of women. As she literally drinks the Kool-aid, she mentally and physically becomes the same brand of beauty, at a huge cost.

This is a disturbing story, a little too real in its descriptions of an unrelenting capitalist society, with beauty and youth reserved only for the 1%, and a dismissive eye toward the basic healthcare and wellness of the lower and middle class. It sarcastically mimics the marketing extremes of what it means to be "organic" and "zero waste" to the point of nauseating realism. It serves up, very simply, the erasure of ethnic beauty and backgrounds in favor of a homogenous Nordic-type everygirl. It shows us nature's brutality and retaliation when man tries to bend it to his will. It explores the relationship between art and pain, and the sacrifice of self for something to be considered beautiful.

This is a must-read, for a reality check on many of the rights we see ourselves being stripped of, and issues our society are grappling with today. Definitely check the content warnings.

Content Warnings