There were elements of this book that reminded me of The Handmaids Tale, but with a much stronger capitalist leaning (perhaps capitalism was their religion?). The author sets up the concept nicely, with solid background stories of why most of the women at the farm would rent their wombs to wealthy individuals. However, she then adds intrigue to the story as we discover that the company and customers may not be who we think they are. It's a tough subject to write about, but in an age of technology with monitoring devices becoming more accessible and growing disparities between the wealthy and working class, it's plausible that some women could elect to become a surrogate under strange circumstances like these. If you like surrealist mysteries, this book would be an excellent choice.

Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this arc early.

As soon as I read this blurb, I wanted to start the book immediately. The storyline is thought-provoking, that’s for sure. Imagine carrying a child for 9 months at this amazing retreat, but being completely cutoff from the outside world for those entire 9 months. Could you do it?
Some areas in this book were really hard to follow. There was a point I had to struggle through, but it picked back up. Give it a shot.

The Farm was hard to get into at first with unfamiliar names like Ate, means Aunt maybe? Ate seems to be a mentor, an angel, a hard worker. But... is she all these things?

Jane and Reagan are among the women recruited to be surrogates at a luxurious campus where they are treated to the best of everything, but something isn't quite right here. Reagan still hasn't met her client- the future mom of the baby she is carrying, or has she?

Jane is torn. She is a surrogate because she needs the money for her own child, who is being cared for by Ate. Or is she?

The Farm has some tough rules, but the money is oh so good if you carry the child to birth according to the wishes of the "clients" as the future parents are called. Though confusing at first, I grew to like the story.

Thank you NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. 3.5 stars

I was expecting a handmaids tale. I was expecting this to me a men vs women book. I enjoyed the characters. There was a lot of jumping around - time wise. I felt like I was missing chunks of the story

I could not connect with the characters in this book. It's just not for me.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley. Thank you, Netgalley.
All opinions are my own.

I was immediately taken by the premise of this book. I love a book that rides the line between modern life and dystopia. I have no doubt that Golden Oaks, the farm in which the title refers to, will soon become a reality as we refuse to slow down as a society.

In some of the lesser starred reviews, I noticed complaints about what this book isn't (its not the Handmaids Tale 2.0) but what I loved about this book is what it is. Its an entertaining and well paced story that touches on race, class, immigration, and female relationships. The farm itself brings up questions of exploitation, reproductive control, and the commodification of gestation. The key phrase there is that it touches on these things, it makes you think, but it doesnt wholly dissect these huge topics, instead it includes them in the narrative.

I will be thinking about the farm, and Jane, for a long time.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Let's start off with some important clarifications: this isn't women's fiction (that weird category that just means books about women doing things women do that we expect women will read). If I were going to put it in a genre I would choose Horror. That may sound strange, but Horror is less about what happens in a book (or about genre at all, you may say) and more about the feelings a book creates. This is a book full of tension. I was stressed out most of the time I was reading it. Casual details would make me gasp in alarm. The premise of this book isn't just satire or cultural commentary (though it is both of those as well), it's body horror. The Farm is a place where being a surrogate isn't just loaning your womb to someone in need, it's a place where your entire body is now under corporate control. And if that isn't a terrifying topic worthy of a horror novel, I don't know what is.

What I think Ramos does here very nicely is present this story through three very different sets of eyes. There is Jane, a Filipina immigrant who has managed to find low-wage and domestic help work in the US through her cousin, but is struggling to keep jobs when she can't afford care for her infant daughter. There is Reagan, a well-off white girl who ends up as a surrogate because she doesn't know what she wants to do and it seems like a quick cash grab. And there is Mae, the striving Asian-American woman who has been entrusted with running the facility where Jane and Reagan end up. We get to see the full class spectrum through these characters and the clients they work for, and we get to see just how far Mae will go to achieve the positive outcomes she wants to deliver for her demanding, high-end clients. We also get to see how unprepared Jane is for this kind of situation, where her background and experience only make her more vulnerable.

It's a gutsy book and particularly good to dish about, so if you have a book club that enjoys a juicy discussion this would be an A+ pick.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I would describe The Farm as being somewhere between the movie Baby Mama and the book Handmaid’s Tale. A similar premise but not as light hearted as Baby Mama and not as dark as Handmaid’s. This is the story of a group of women chosen as hosts, living at the “farm.” They have been chosen by families with means to be surrogates.

While there were some parts I really enjoyed, I think this book struggled under the weight of too many POVs and to find a clear resolution. I enjoyed the stories of Jane, Reagan, and Lisa. And their time together at the farm. I found myself wanting to skim through the sections with Mae and Ate. I just wasn’t all that interested in their stories.

If you are looking for a unique look at economics and surrogacy, give this one a shot.

Two kinds of immigrant women can be found at Golden Oaks aka the farm. Ms. Wu, who runs the expensive concierge baby farm for really exclusive clients and the women who help her build her dynasty. Ate who is Phillipino born but has worked in the States as a baby nurse, nanny and now helps recruit young women like her cousin Jane, also Phillipino, to be surrogate mothers for Golden Oaks. Jane was trying to follow in her cousin's baby nursing footsteps but has a baby of her own. Morality and free enterprise play major roles in this scary look at what may become the future of childbirth. Many women are desperate to make money to take care of their families and they think they are helping parents have the children they desperately want but can't have on their own. When does the welfare of the surrogate mother become less important than the growing baby and pampered client? When do greed and success give you carte blanche to control people's lives? Reader beware, this book will make you angry. For lovers of HANDMAIDS TALE. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

I enjoyed this book, but it could have been better. The description makes the Farm seem very ominous, almost Handmaid's Tale style, but in reality its a place where immigrant women harvest/host babies for the rich white ladies that don't want to mess up their bodies or lives. I went into it thinking the Farm was this awful place, but as I read, it didn't seem awful as a place, but the concept was still unsettling, just not as much as I anticipated it to be. The characters are well developed, but at the end of the novel I found myself wanting to know what was next for Reagan and Lisa and Angel - not just Jane. They kind of drop off which was unsatisfying.
I enjoyed the redemption of Mae at the end, and find myself wondering if her relationship with Jane will continue. I also found that the separation anxiety that Reagan, Jane and Lisa felt at the Farm - the being cut off from the outside world - was the most agonizing part of this for them and I could understand that.
Overall, a decent read, and I did recieve an ARC in exchange for honest feedback.

A provocative and contemporary story about the ethical ramifications of surrogacy. Women are recruited to be "Hosts" for very wealthy people. They're taken to a place called Golden Oaks, a beautiful pastoral mansion, living in luxurious conditions. Every need is taken care of from their clothes (cashmere loungewear), healthy meals, the best healthcare, all to ensure the best conditions for the fetuses they carry. Obviously, this isn't science fiction or future fiction - it's possible to see this happening now.

The story is mainly told from the viewpoint of Jane, a Filipina immigrant and single mother. She sees being a Host as an opportunity to secure a future for her and her daughter. But being away from her baby while she's pregnant with another woman's child is more stressful than she'd imagined.

We also hear from Ama, the Filipina immigrant caring for Jane's daughter while she's at "The Farm", Reagan, an upper middle class recent college grad, looking for meaning and direction, and Mae, the Type-A executive who runs The Farm. The women's stories provide different views of what it means to be a mother, an immigrant, wealthy and poor in the United States.

Spoilers below:







I thought this would be a thriller and kept expecting to learn that something evil was happening behind the scenes at the Farm. This isn't that kind of book. There is some suspense surrounding the Hosts' efforts to discover who their clients are, and what the Farm is hiding from them, but it's not a result of something evil, just bad judgment. Initially, I thought this would be a simple story of corporate greed exploiting poor women, but it was more complex than that. The characters are more complex than they initially seem. I thought the ending was wrapped up a bit too neatly but this is still a good story with thoughtful ideas.

This book interested me for the basic concept. A place where women are brought to be surrogate carriers for mother's who cannot have children for many different reasons. It appeared that most of the mothers who opted for surrogates in this story were wealthy women who didn't want to go through the pregnancy themselves. Jane, the main character is a very likable woman. Poor, hardworking, minority with a child of her own, she takes on this "job" to help better her life for herself.
I was engaged with the book right until the end where I felt it wrapped up just a bit too "neatly" for my taste. I really wanted the author to push the boundaries here.
It wasn't an awful read and I would recommend. It does make you ponder on the whole idea and if this could/would/IS happening already.

I struggled to get into this book and finish. It just wasn't for me. It had an interesting premises and good story about what immigrants will try to do to make their life better. I may try to revisit at a later time.

The premise of this book was intriguing. Women (mostly immigrants) are paid big money to stay at the farm for a luxury retreat with everything paid for. The catch? They are paid to be a surrogate while there for 9 months and can not leave, are monitored, and cut off from their life during that time.

It's an interesting premise and touched softly on quite a bit of issues. I did enjoy the book and it gave me some different perspectives but I think I was hoping for a bit more growth on the characters. They didn't really seem to grow through out the book.

Thank you Netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review. #TheFarm #NetGalley

Just as the publishing industry became fatigued by the onslaught of dystopian fiction brought on by the success of the Hunger Games franchise, titles like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale eked their way back onto bestseller lists before sales exploded after the presidential election. The seemingly extremist views explored in these books were suddenly not as distant as white readers had previously perceived. But the circumstances that white readers have long considered as “dystopia” have often been realities for people of color. When faced with harmful political rhetoric that could affect white people personally, privileged readers (like myself) finally realized this was never a fictional phenomenon. The Farm by Joanne Ramos is firmly rooted in a contemporary setting, but the events that unfold could have easily been a primer for The Republic of Gilead.

The protagonist of The Farm, Jane, is not a heroine who reluctantly challenges a fascist regime, but a new mother who is struggling to support herself and her six-week old daughter Mali. She works for minimum wage and lives in dorm with her seventy-something-year-old cousin, Ate Evelyn, and half a dozen other Filipina immigrants like them. Since Jane can’t count on her cheating husband to contribute to childcare, Ate suggests a potentially lucrative opportunity at Golden Oaks as a surrogate. The financial bonuses granted to the surrogates—or “Hosts” as Golden Oaks calls them—for the successful completion of first trimester, second trimester, and delivery would be life-changing for Jane and Mali. And after Jane gets fired from two jobs within the span of a month, she doesn’t have many other choices for gainful employment.

The author alternates between the perspectives of Jane, Ate, Mae (the woman who runs Golden Oaks), and Reagan (a white Host). Ramos writes with equal authority over the voices of a desperate young mother, a no-nonsense nanny with a knack for securing loyalty from wealthy employers, a college-educated daughter of a Chinese businessman, and a white photographer wracked with guilt for living a privileged life. The story is made all the richer by having the motivations for each character laid out for the reader, instead of limiting the reader’s understanding of Golden Oaks to Jane, who just wants to fly under the radar and get paid. Ramos describes their individual worldviews with striking precision, addressing unconscious taboos about class with such frankness that it forces the reader to reconcile with these unwritten social rules.

For example, when Ate gives Jane advice about nannying, she says the parents, “will tell you to call them ‘Cate and Ted,’ very American, very equal— but it is always ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am.’ They will tell you to ‘make yourself at home’—but they do not want you to make yourself at home! Because it is their home, not yours, and they are not your friends. They are your Clients. Only that.” This distinction between the Client’s purview and Jane’s foreshadows how far systemic inequality will be carried out.
The rhetoric used in The Farm is not dissimilar from what you might find in a corporate licensing agreement. Mae tells Jane that Golden Oaks wants her to, “understand fully what you’re committing to. Because once you’re impregnated—once there’s another human living inside you—it’s no longer just about you. There’s no going back.” Not only does this philosophy echo the concerning rhetoric of “life begins at conception,” but it also paints a sinister illustration of the class divide between the uber-rich and the working class. It’s made abundantly clear that Golden Oaks bestows preferential treatment towards the fetus over the Host’s own health because the fetuses belong to billionaires and the Hosts would never be able to afford lawyers to protest less-than-ideal working conditions. As another Host puts it, Golden Oaks is “a factory, and you’re the commodity.” (Or in another world, this is the Commander’s household and you’re the Handmaid.) Even though the Hosts theoretically sign this employment contract willingly, they have as few rights as the Handmaids who are forced into sexual slavery.

Similar to how Handmaids suddenly receive luxury treatment when they finally conceive, a repeat Host advises Jane that she will receive more lenient treatment from Golden Oaks about their rigorous schedules and limited family visits if Jane gets her Clients invested in her individual wellbeing. The key is to portray herself as a virtuous vessel for their unborn baby, as opposed to just someone who deserves a comfortable living wage. But Jane doesn’t get the opportunity to woo her Client like this, so she gets sucked into a factory-like system that effectively removes her bodily autonomy. Hosts receive focused diet plans, specialized exercise classes, and frequent doctor’s appointments—where the doctor talks to the Client over the phone about the fetus instead of the woman who is actually receiving the examination. (This draws an unexpected parallel to The Handmaid’s Tale, when the wives try to simulate the conception and the birthing experience while the Handmaid does the real work.) If that isn’t disconcerting enough, when the doctor discover a lump on Reagan’s breast, she keeps Reagan in the dark about the potential risk. When the doctor is finally forced to acknowledge this health concern to Reagan, she tries to assure Reagan it’s nothing to worry about. Sensing something is amiss, Reagan tries to search for other symptoms of Hodgkin's lymphoma on one of the Golden Oaks computers, only to find that term is blocked by the network.

If Golden Oaks is a factory and the Hosts are the commodity, the commodification of the female body is facilitated by censorship and constant surveillance, much like 1984. Hosts are forced to live on the premises for tenth months—away from home and loved ones without any cell phone service or WiFi. Reagan brings her camera to take photos of the lush Hudson Valley surroundings, but that’s also confiscated upon arrival. Hosts can make video calls home during the scheduled technology room hours, so long as the slow connection doesn’t freeze, and Hosts don’t mind a group of other women at their own computers overhearing their conversations.

The Hosts don’t suspect foul play at first, but the reader sees through Mae’s eyes that every moment of the Host’s lives are monitored by a surveillance system appropriately called the Panopticon. If a Host has an emotional outburst or appears to get too chummy with known troublemakers, the Golden Oaks staff employ techniques to convince the Hosts to “behave optimally” of the own accord, whether that’s through schedule changes or subtle emotional blackmail. Mae dangles visits with Jane’s daughter as a reward for her ideal behavior and the visits are taken away just as quickly as a punishment for Jane, which makes a reader wonder if the visits were ever really going to happen. And Reagan can’t research for herself if she’s developing a life-threatening condition because treatment would be harmful to the fetus.

Later, this lack of consideration for the Host’s health is extended to grim extremes. When one of the fetuses shows signs of trisomy and therefore presents a risk of Down syndrome, the Client chooses to have the fetus aborted. Reagan is horrified about how swiftly Golden Oaks terminates an otherwise healthy pregnancy without consulting the affected Host, but other Hosts expected nothing less. “‘Do you understand: they forced Anya to abort... It’s a complete violation—’ ‘Not of the contract.’” Reagan comes from a family of privilege, so she never experienced catering to the will of a rich employer before. But by this point, the reader has practically received an instruction manual (via Ate’s voice) for how working class women—often women of color— have to appear non-threatening to mothers who don't want to admit caring for their own child is difficult. Women of color have long been nannies and wet nurses for white children for hundreds of years. Becoming the surrogate for upper class women who want to control everything—and up until that point, have succeed in controlling everything due to their wealth—is the next logical step. They don’t have a say in how a Client runs their household or their pregnancy, even if the pregnancy is being carried out by someone else.

Even though most of the Hosts are women of color, some Clients “are willing to pay a premium for, Hosts whom they find pretty, or ‘well-spoken,’ or ‘kind,’ or ‘wise,’ or even: educated,” which is code for: white. As Ramos puts it, “Most Clients cannot help but feel that the Host they choose is not only a repository for their soon-to-be-baby but an emblem of the lofty expectations they have for the being to be implanted inside,” even though the Hosts are not contributing their DNA to the fetus. As a college educated white woman, Reagan is considered a “premium” Host, but she does want to be hired for the sake of a Client’s vanity. She has aspirations to carry for a woman who had biological difficulties conceiving a child for herself. Because Reagan the commodity is more profitable than the Filipina and Caribbean hosts, Mae is willing to appease Reagan by hires a stand-in client to make Reagan think her position was more meaningful, and therefore behave more optimally.

The Farm ultimately centers around Jane’s fierce desire to protect and provide for her daughter, though it’s intriguing to contrast her experience with Reagan’s rude awakening to her performative altruism in a capitalist structure. (After all, Reagan still needs and accepts her salary as a host.) Jane astutely observes that “people are not as free as Reagan thinks they are,” which is especially obvious when we also compare Jane’s journey to that of Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale, who is assumed to be white. Jane doesn’t have her credit cards and bank accounts stripped from her name to remove her financial agency and independence, she barely had any savings to begin with. Mali isn’t kidnapped from Jane to remove her from her own family obligations, she is safely under the care of Ate while Jane is at Golden Oaks—but Jane’s burning questions about Mali’s health and safety provide just as strong emotional tension as Offred’s concerns about her own daughter. Jane isn’t raped in order to provide an heir to a powerful family, but she is still under lock and key and surveillance of an isolated household. The Farm isn’t a dystopia, it simply highlights the very real desperation of the working class versus the luxurious accommodations and “experiences” catered to the ultra-wealthy.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book is interesting. A large center (the “farm”) where women are surrogates for the wealthy and privileged. Seemed like it could be similar to handmaids tale or something.

Unfortunately I found the book disappointing. It didn’t seem to deliver much. The characters weren’t interesting. I had a hard time getting through the book. Some of the chapters seemed irrelevant to the story.

Just seems like it could have been developed much more than it was.

The book has a very unique premise, a take on surrogacy that few would ever imagine possible. I found it intriguing and enjoyable to read.
However, there seemed to be a bit of lag in the middle, times when I found myself waiting for what seemed like forever to get to the next part of the story. Some things felt repetitive but I assume that may have been intentional. The surrogacy world the characters lived in certainly could have felt that way.
Also I would have liked to have more background on Madame Deng, but again, perhaps that was the point.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It certainly was unique and unlike other titles which have been released recently.

Not a bad book but not my cup of tea.
Even if it's well written and full of promises it somehow fails to deliver. I was expecting something to happen but it seem anything was happening.
Many thanks to Random House and Netgalley for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all opinions are mine.

Welcome to the farm, where women, often under-privileged women, immigrant women, are paid to have babies for the ultra-rich. It’s a surrogacy program but there are undertones of something else. It’s an interesting concept and it was an interesting story. I’ll admit, I knew nothing about this book, it was the cover that caught my attention (isn’t it beautiful?!). I was loving everything about this until the very end. I felt it was a little rushed and it left too many unanswered questions for me. I think the epilogue was meant to wrap things up, and it did in some ways, but I wanted more. Despite that, I will recommend this as a great choice for others. 3.5 stars.

This book gives draws attention to social and economic issues immigrants may face and the resulting choices they may make. The story will last long after the book ends.