Unlike Throwback Thursday, I’m using Fridays to look ahead to books publishing soon that I’m excited for! Today’s is If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha.
Expected Release: April 21, 2020
Why wait on this one?
- It’s set in Seoul. That alone is pretty much enough for me. After living in Korea and absolutely falling in love with it and now not being able to go back for probably a while with the whole pandemic thing, I NEED MORE OF IT SOMEHOW!!!
- For all that I love Korea, I also know it has flaws. Reading about the lives of women trying to navigate a society that can’t quite move past stereotypes and rigid gender expectations is alternatively heartbreaking and empowering.
- It sounds like this will weave several stories and perspectives together, which I adore. I’m anticipating women standing alone and realizing they can trust each other to lean on for strength.
Summary:
Kyuri is a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a “room salon,” an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood. Her roomate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea’s biggest companies. Down the hall in their apartment building lives Ara, a hair stylist for whom two preoccupations sustain her: obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that is commonplace. And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to get pregnant with a child that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise and educate in the cutthroat economy. Together, their stories tell a gripping tale that’s seemingly unfamiliar, yet unmistakably universal in the way that their tentative friendships may have to be their saving grace.
My Book Joy 