Review: If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

Release Date: April 21st, 2020

Genre(s): Contemporary, Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Pages: 288

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

Content Warnings:

Alcoholism/addiction, body shaming, cheating, domestic abuse, miscarriage, violence

Synopsis

If I Had Your Face follows four young women living together in South Korea, and how society’s high expectations and standards of beauty weigh upon them, despite their varied paths.

Review

After reading so many great reviews for If I Had Your Face, I finally picked up a copy for myself, and I’m glad I did. This literary fiction novel so excellently portrays the lives of its main characters and the way that their own society weighs down on and suppresses them.

Especially lately, I feel like I haven’t been able to read as many pages in one go, but this was not the case for this book. In fact, I made myself put the book down so I wouldn’t read too much at once. There was just something about these characters where I was equally invested in their lives and wanted to know more about them. But at the same time, I didn’t want to experience this book too quickly – there was so much to read between the lines, and I wanted to catch all of this book’s messages.

The amount of societal commentary in If I Had Your Face was so well-done. This is one of those books where I wish I’d read it with a book club so I could discuss every little detail of it more. There are so many examples throughout this book of the blatant misogyny and oppression of women, as well as the importance of beauty in terms of a woman’s success. This makes the struggle of the characters so evident and illustrates what is a neverending cycle for them.

The one thing I would have liked more from If I Had Your Face are character backstories. We did get to see this with one of the character’s childhoods early on, and after reading this chapter I anticipated this would have continued. I think including this, in addition to their day-to-day and recent conflicts, would have really helped the characters mesh together better.

Regardless, If I Had Your Face is a novel I’d highly recommend. It’s obviously a very character-centric story, but also a very reflective one that I recommend plot and story-driven readers give a try as well.

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