A surprising and fast-paced parable for the contemporary age. What a great review from Joanne Ramos. Highly recommended!

The book was definitely engrossing in that I wanted to know what happens next. It’s an original story and I did like the book. But I had a hard time feeling attached to any of the characters. I'm not sure I'd recommend it strongly.

I've tried three times to read this book, but it's just not happening.
It's too boring. Jane isn't fleshed out enough for me to care and I need a character to latch onto to carry me through the story.

A humorous page-turner, full of the ups and downs of pregnant women and the people who pay for them. Odd enough for the everyday reader. Recommended for those who appreciate fiction with a strange twist.

The farm is weird, anxiety-invoking, depressing, and uncomfortable. That being said, I still think it’s an excellent book. No one is pure good or evil - everyone is a mix. I found myself switching loyalties halfway through a paragraph, rooting for Jane one page and tearing her down the next. The scariest bit is that while this is a work of fiction, I can 100% see this scenario playing out in present day. It’s like a more realistic ‘Handmaids Tale.’ If this idea doesn’t make you crazy (and even if it does), read this book.

I really liked this slow-burner of a novel about a program for the wealthy who want surrogate parents. Ramos creates what I found to be a very believable scenario and raises a lot of really interesting issues regarding parenthood, wealth, immigration, race and class. A corporation creates a home for young women to bear the children of the wealthy. The program is run by Mae, a Chinese-American woman in her thirties. Golden Oaks is Mae’s brainchild, and it’s a thing of beauty. Up to thirty young women, carefully chosen as surrogate parents, live in a fine manor in upstate New York where they are given the best health care, nutrition, and environmental supports. Even their emotional states are well-cared for, because of course that benefits the baby.

Despite its finery, Golden Oaks is aptly called “The Farm” by some of its residents, because with all this care comes monitoring and very little freedom. These women are now bearing children for a Client, and the Client comes first. They sign a detailed contract giving up many of their rights in exchange for very large bonuses at each trimester and when the children are born.

The Farm is told from the perspective of Mae and two of the Farm’s residents, Jane and Reagan, as well as Jane’s cousin Ate. Jane is a young Filipina who has just had a baby and can’t make ends meet. Her cousin Ate is a baby/nursing specialist for a lot of wealthy clients. She tells Jane about the Farm and offers to care for Jane’s daughter Amalia while Jane is away (once you’re on the Farm, you can’t see anyone for nine months). Jane can make enough money in nine months to get back on her feet and give Amalia a better life when she gets back. It’s a tough choice, to give up the first year taking care of your child, but a reasonable one.

This book has been marketed as a Handmaid’s Tale type of dystopia, but readers expecting that will be disappointed. There’s nothing futuristic about this novel because everything in it could easily happen today. We already wear health trackers on our wrists and have listening devices in our homes.

The issues raised about the commodification of women and babies are complicated. Most of the surrogates are low-income women of color, for whom The Farm is an extremely tempting option. And the white surrogates are considered “premium hosts.” But surrogacy isn’t all bad, and this book spends time on the positives and the negatives. Sure, surrogacy involves a human being basically selling their body for nine months. But on the flip side, we already can sell eggs and blood, and many low-income people have far less attractive options. It’s true that surrogacy means the wealthy can basically buy someone to face the health risks and discomfort of pregnancy for them. But there are women who enjoy being pregnant and don’t have a problem with carrying a baby for someone else. And maybe that someone couldn’t have a child any other way. If it’s thoughtfully done, can it benefit both parties?

I liked the subtlety of the issues faced by the surrogates in this book. There’s a moment where Reagan is getting an ultrasound, where she realizes the doctors are talking about her body not to her, but to her Client, where I began to truly feel uneasy. Then Reagan’s body is poked, prodded, and bared to the medical team and the Client without anyone asking her, and she realizes she is truly a possession, not someone who is cherished and helping people, as she likes to see herself.

I always appreciate a book where there are no clear heroes and villains, and The Farm does that well. Mae can certainly be villainous but she isn’t all bad, and Jane, Reagan and Ate have positive and negative qualities that are understandable given their circumstances.

I thought this book was slow-moving at first; it spends too long on Ate’s baby-consulting practice before getting to Golden Oaks. Also I had mixed feelings about the ending, which felt too neat to me, and the writing has a “hit you over the head” quality that didn’t feel true to the complexity and heightened emotion conveyed in the rest of the book. But that said I still found this a thoughtful, entertaining, and at times chilling read.

Note: I received a complimentary advance copy of this book from NetGalley and Random House. This book was published May 7, 2019.

Reading the synopsis was very intriguing. Although I didn't care for the book as much as I was hoping, it could have way more potential to someone else. To me, as someone who reads a lot, and reads a lot of novels of this sort, The farm just fell a bit flat for me. Not that it didn't have good ideas or expressions, it was just lacking in development. I was hoping for a more dramatic ending, or feeling throughout the novel, and it just didn't give the readers that "umph" or push to make it that eye-opener type world it was trying to convey.

The Farm is an interesting narrative on surrogacy, the people who profit from it, and all of the tiny details surrounding it. In the story, women are chosen to be surrogate mothers and then are sent to live on a resort where they are monitored 24/7 from where they go, to the food they eat and the amount of exercise they get. While it certainly paints an picture of a confusing and morally grey landscape, it was not the book I expected. One of the genre's this book is filed under on goodreads is "dystopian" which I do not believe describes this book at all. Rather, it explores race and privilege, reproductive rights and the rights of immigrants. It is the kind of book that makes you really think and left me feeling contemplative.

In Joanne Ramos’ new novel, The Farm, dozens of beautiful, healthy, young women are surrogates for women who want to be mothers. The pregnant surrogates are well-paid, provided with meals, housing, and top-class medical care, but forbidden from leaving the Golden Oaks medical retreat (known as The Farm to residents). The surrogacy payments are life-changing for the girls, who are willing to sign over their most basic privacy rights for the cash. Meanwhile, the mothers have paid top dollar for their new babies, because they’re unable or unwilling to carry their own children. The story explores race, class, and the meaning of motherhood, without ever losing touch with the characters and storyline that make it readable fiction.

Really, really loved the first 80% - lost steam at the very end, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

The story is a copy of a few better-told books which were shocking when they first came to print like Atwood's the handmaid's tale, but unlike other pieces of speculative / satirical / horror fiction, this story has no depth or soul - you don't care for anyone.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC but it would be better if publishing houses encouraged fresh ideas instead of cashing in on the wave of the moment.

It would also be nice if authors stopped using New York as the base of all that is cool and weird and horrible and disgusting in the world, as if to give their stories a shine that wouldn't be there if the story were set in Montana or Alaska.

This was an interesting concept, and made you think about immigrants in our country and all that they deal with. I loved that it made you think hard about your circumstances, but parts of it just didn’t resonate with me. Overall, an enjoyable book that made me want to keep reading.

The Farm is a luxury retreat in New York's Hudson Valley where women are paid big money to stay. They have every amenity that you could possibly think of, so what's the catch? The women who stay are not allowed to leave the farm for nine months, they are constantly monitored, and are cut off from their former lives while they produce the perfect baby for someone else.

While the premise of the book was interesting, this one just did not do it for me. I think I went into this book with a different idea on what the synopsis was promising and it did not match up with what was presented. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

This book started very slow for me.

I started it while pregnant and finished when I had a newborn so it was really speaking to me.

I enjoyed the kind of utopian aspect of it while also appreciating how real it was.

I was really looking forward to this one, after reading The Handmaid's Tale. But this one fell short. I found it hard to keep interested in the book, when I put it down it wasn't one that I wanted to pick back up. I am not sure if it was the content, the writing style, or both that threw me off, but after making it about half way through I put it down for good, i just didn't want to force myself to continue to read it anymore. I loved the idea of it and may recommend it to others, but it wasn't for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy!

DNF. I tried my best to read this but I did not connect with the writing style. I'm hoping that I can try again in the future because it sounds like an interesting read.

Yeah this one was lackluster for me. I liked the premise a LOT and the middle was really strong. The beginning was a weak set up and the book seemed to abruptly end on a weird note. If you want pregnancy dystopia, go to FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD instead.

This novel is like a little bit of a reality of "The Handmaid's Tale" set in present times. It is not as violent and it is more about the culture and what women would do to secure a good life for themselves and their families. It's about American dream and how far fetched it is in reality. What is the line of the relationship between a woman that is a nanny or a segregate of somebody else's child. How far would you go to make your company successful and impress your boss. What would you hide from the ones you love to protect them. Would you carry out the promise you made to someone to carry their child even after things are not the way you thought they were? How do you see a women's body? As an instrument to bring life or as a miracle of life?
Joanne Ramos takes the readers on a ride to question all of the above thoughts. This novel has a lot to chew on and ponder and discuss. It would make a wonderful book discussion in women's book clubs.

For fans of the Handmaid's Tale, you will really enjoy this one! However, it hits a bit close to home with the thought that this could someday be reality

Imagine a world where humans are bred like cattle, but in a spa.
This is the premise for the story. Women are recruited to be surrogate mothers for rich people who select the 'host' based on health and ethnicity. They are kept at a health spa full of massages and healthy living. They are monitored regularly and wear bracelets that keep track of their activities, heart rate and so on.

What is in this for the surrogates is money. They sign contracts that may be very lucrative and so most of these young women are in dire need of cash: immigrants, single mothers, students.

This is an interesting idea and I'm not entirely sure places like this do not already exist, even if illegally. The characters in the book represent the different moral viewpoints of this type of baby farming, from those who think it is a good use of unwanted monthly eggs to those who believe they are being exploited through their poverty. The characters also stand for each type of surrogate: the rich girl, the student, the immigrant. All a little too contrived. The themes also cover racist aspects where the ideal baby is fair skinned and light-eyed, the attitudes and conditioned behaviours of the immigrant Filipino women.

The novel is easy to read with a thin plot over the concept of the 'farm'. Towards the end the pace increases as the plot kicks in. Until then the book describes the life and process the surrogate mothers and the auxiliary staff endure, without much of a story.

#NetGalley #TheFarm