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A review by kentanapages
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Wow. That was unexpected.
Beautiful, absurd, horrific.
I was addicted one chapter in and I could not stop reading, and finished it the same day.
It was one of those books that had me captive from the first few pages, with beautiful writing and gripping characters and just a dusting of “something’s not right”, which grew and mingled with some dystopian futuristic beauty technologies into a throbbing horror story by the end.
Our main character is the child of musicians and Chinese immigrants who fled the Cultural Revolution, and she develops into a hauntingly talented piano player in her youth. We see parts of her adolescence at a Conservatory, but learn that in the current day she’s given up music and is scraping to get by. It seems like serendipity when she meets the public face of Holistik, a company famous for its cutting edge beauty procedures and technologies, and is offered a job (and mandatory use of many Holistik products, which start slowly changing her appearance and having odd side effects).
I loved so much about this book! I enjoyed the hint of sci-fi feel, the spotlight on consumerism, the thrumming sapphic energy between our MC and other women in the Holistik spiderweb, the role of music and art, the dark humor, the underlying commentary on society and identity and beauty standards rooted in whiteness and capitalism.
I’m actually not sure if this book is classified as horror; I find it hard to categorize.
If you enjoy a dystopian horror feel that starts off subtle but grows stronger and more absurd with every chapter and culminates in an ending I promise you did not see coming, this is for you. But if you don’t think you enjoy horror, this may still be for you! I don’t usually consider myself to be a huge fan of horror, but Natural Beauty had aspects, especially towards the end, that I certainly would call horrific, and I was certainly a fan.
Beautiful, absurd, horrific.
I was addicted one chapter in and I could not stop reading, and finished it the same day.
It was one of those books that had me captive from the first few pages, with beautiful writing and gripping characters and just a dusting of “something’s not right”, which grew and mingled with some dystopian futuristic beauty technologies into a throbbing horror story by the end.
Our main character is the child of musicians and Chinese immigrants who fled the Cultural Revolution, and she develops into a hauntingly talented piano player in her youth. We see parts of her adolescence at a Conservatory, but learn that in the current day she’s given up music and is scraping to get by. It seems like serendipity when she meets the public face of Holistik, a company famous for its cutting edge beauty procedures and technologies, and is offered a job (and mandatory use of many Holistik products, which start slowly changing her appearance and having odd side effects).
I loved so much about this book! I enjoyed the hint of sci-fi feel, the spotlight on consumerism, the thrumming sapphic energy between our MC and other women in the Holistik spiderweb, the role of music and art, the dark humor, the underlying commentary on society and identity and beauty standards rooted in whiteness and capitalism.
I’m actually not sure if this book is classified as horror; I find it hard to categorize.
If you enjoy a dystopian horror feel that starts off subtle but grows stronger and more absurd with every chapter and culminates in an ending I promise you did not see coming, this is for you. But if you don’t think you enjoy horror, this may still be for you! I don’t usually consider myself to be a huge fan of horror, but Natural Beauty had aspects, especially towards the end, that I certainly would call horrific, and I was certainly a fan.