This was definitely Out There, but a compelling read.
Thank you to Penguin, Dutton, and NetGalley for the ARC!

It took me awhile to get through this one. Overall I really enjoyed it. The pacing was a little bit off for me - primarily in that it got too messed up too quickly for my tastes and that kind of killed the tension. I really enjoyed the music world tie-ins and felt a lot for the main character and her parents.

This is an exceptionally well written book, if sometimes a bit overheated. It has some fine lines, a few well-conceived set pieces, a fair share of perceptive and insightful observations, and occasionally a lean and edgy narrative drive. Our heroine's backstory is particularly well done, and it could be argued is the highlight of the entire book. The premise is enticing, and I can see the book's appeal, regarding both style and content, for its target audience, especially admirers of body horror fiction. That said, try as I might I found neither the characters, nor their situations, nor the overall narrative and its execution engaging enough to hold my curiosity and attention. As a consequence, it doesn't seem fair to write much more of a review, apart from encouraging inquisitive readers to give the book a try.

NATURAL BEAUTY follows our narrator (later known as Anna, but her given/Chinese name remains unknown), a talented pianist. After a tragic event leaves her in desperate need of money, she is forced to work at Holistik, a luxurious beauty and wellness boutique whose clientele will go to any length to become more beautiful. As a Holistik employee, surrounded by beautiful women, our narrator also indulges in these wellness products and beauty procedures, finally getting a taste of a privileged life.

Books like NATURAL BEAUTY, a work of literary horror fiction, are not usually my cup of tea. Reading this book almost ended my friendship with @jjoongie and @readwithneleh (just kidding!) but wtf! This book was OFF THE RAILS WILD. Very disturbing!

⭐️WHAT I LIKED:
•The writing immediately draws you in. It's fast-paced, and the author does an incredible job building tension bit by bit, keeping you engaged throughout.

•This book provides a dark and unsettling commentary on the beauty and wellness industry. Despite being plot-heavy with lots of action, I never felt like the commentary on toxic beauty standards, capitalism, race, consumerism, class, and more was too heavy-handed.

•The parts about music and the relationship the narrator had with her musician parents (who fled China during the Cultural Revolution) added a more human and warm touch to an otherwise sinister book.

📝NOT SO MUCH:
•While the author skillfully unravels events gradually, once everything goes haywire, I feel like the book kind of stalls. It needed more development after the major turning point.

•I would have liked to see the relationships explored more in-depth, particularly the ones involving the narrator, Helen, and Lillith.

•For the weak-hearted like myself, many scenes were too disturbing. I don't know if I can ever look at papayas or deer the same way again, haha. The book is a grim commentary on beauty and self-care, highlighting how it manipulates women into thinking they're never good enough. But did it need to be so extreme to make that point?

I'm glad I read it and enjoyed discussing it with my friends. However, as I took my fish oil (for my heart health and whatnot) this AM, I gagged a little and wondered if this book has forever affected my "self-care" routine, consisting of collagen powder, fish oil, and fiber drinks.🤢

The book certainly pushes you to reflect on what we consume and how. But once again, I'm left questioning why it needed to be so extreme and gross.

i think i have read one too many books about the horrors of the beauty industry this year. I think i liked Rouge by Mona Awad slightly more, but I enjoyed how tight this was, and how big the payoff.

Let me begin by saying this is an ODD book. So weird. I need all my friends to read it so we can discuss how absolutely bizarre it is- and also RAVE about it together. What an absolute trip this novel was, incredibly insane from start to finish. It wasn’t one I couldn’t put down, as I wanted and needed to put it down often, but it was one I was always reaching for- like a guilty pleasure. But I’m not guilty- not at all. This was amazing. This will sit with me for so long (too long- it’s so weird. It’s in my bones now. How do I get it out?)

Shifting between a 4.5-4.75 but something isn’t allowing me to give it a full 5 stars. But it deserves it in this rating today.

A haunting, inventive, and gorgeous story! The horror elements are beautifully done, and this book is great for anyone fascinated by the sinister nature of the beauty industry, and its ties to whiteness as a standard. I really enjoyed this one.

WOW!!! i have never read a book like this before in my life -- such a surreal critique of the modern wellness industry and what a love letter to family and cultural heritage. need to reread this as a physical book so i can annotate and share with my friends!

Despite an ever crowded field of beauty as body horror books this book totally wrecked me to my core.

Eerie, weird, sometimes devastatingly funny and accurate in its satire, and deeply sad. A beautiful and entertaining story about the sacrifices we make for our art, our family, and the demands of the society in which we live.

An eye-opening novel that allows us to ask the question: what would you sacrifice to be beautiful?
The unnamed protagonist finds work in a Goop-style company that makes their female workers enhance their physical traits by taking pills and slapping on beauty creams, that they in turn sell for a huge markup to customers.
But the goal of the company is much more sinister and what lies at its center nothing short of horrific. Natural Beauty will keep you glued to the pages until the very end.

This was a solid book. I especially loved the whimsy/absurdity of the concept of Holistik (really strong satire) contrasted against the strangeness and the dread of the narrative. I wish it hadn't gone the route of "there's a grand conspiracy being orchestrated" because I've read enough of those lately that it no longer feels exciting. But I enjoyed this!

4/5

Brilliant writing on so many levels. I’m so glad that this title ended up being a book club pick because it’s one of those books that defies genre classification. Is it horror? Is it sci-fi? Satire? I think it’s a really good mash - up in the best possible way, not that it matters. Natural Beauty reminded me of Jeff VanderMeer’s queasy, slow building horror…Not too graphic; leaving you not fully certain exactly what has transpired. A piano prodigy sacrifices her great talent and career to take care of her parents who had sacrificed earlier for her. Now, she finds herself in the bizarre culture of cosmetics and holistic beauty where nothing is quite as it appears.

Unputdownable! Highly recommended.

This book was bizarre, in a good way. It is the literary horror story of a piano prodigy who falls on hard times and ends up working for Holistik, a high-end store for organic beauty products and treatments. There she discovers the dark underbelly of a corporation focused on a singular “objective” standard of beauty and pursuing it at all costs. The writing has beautiful moments of profundity balanced with the truly grotesque.

Natural Beauty has an interesting premise, but it lacked a bit in execution.

We are introduced to an unnamed narrator who is a former child prodigy pianist. A daughter of Chinese immigrants who fled the cultural revolution, she was taught from a young age to play the instrument with a different technique, allowing for a performance like no other.

Years after studying at the Conservatorium, the narrator is now retired from piano and working at a restaurant. When the opportunity rises, she ends up working at Holistik, a beauty store with remarkable unique products and procedures. All natural, and designed for maximum beauty. As an employee of the company, she is now gifted special creams and products designed just for her own personal use and a set of daily vitamins she must ingest. Combined with that, she is required to follow a specific diet, and only consume products originating from the farm that provides produce to the company (they are all under the same mega-corporation).

This is all very bizarre and weird, and although the atmosphere is somewhat good I found myself missing something more. I wish there was more detail to this aspect, to construct something more eerie and unsettling. The criticism of both consumerism and the beauty industry is very good, even if this book is less than three hundred pages, it gets its point across. However, I do feel like if this book were longer, it could have been better in exploring those points and giving the story a more natural progression.

Somewhat toward the end there is a shift in the story when the protagonist goes to work at a different brand of the company, and doing a very different type of job, or so she believes. However, what was supposed to be the plot twist in the story was rather abrupt and it left me feeling a bit.... Unsatisfied. It felt like it needed more construction for it to actually have an impact.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It is one on the higher side of a three-star rating, but there are some gaps and some things missing that left a feeling of incompletion to the story. I do feel like for my taste the horror was very subtle in this one, while I was expecting so much more body horror and gore. Maybe if the focus on that were bigger, it would have been better too.

It just feels like one of those books where the potential is all there, the author does have a thing to say and a way to get there, but the execution is lacking a lot. In this case I do feel like the short size of the story is a big influence here, it feels like the author doesn't even have the time to develop things before the book is over. A good story, but not the best one.

Including post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqN87VqM1lW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Thanks to Penguin Group Dutton and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. This was a really unique book that is categorized as horror/humor and satire/multicultural interest. I thought about it a long time after I finished it and I’ll definitely read more by this author in the future.

This book was good, but the ending was ultimately a little disappointing. I think I've decided the "body horror" genre might not be for me, so take this review with a grain of salt.

Our protagonist begins work at a super fancy beauty/skin store called Holistik. She used to be a world-renowned piano prodigy, but her parents were in an accident and now she has to support them. At first she's distant from the products but she slowly becomes wrapped up in the lifestyle with all the privileges and perks that come with it.

The ending got gross, but also it felt predictable. Although I did love the way it makes you think about the sinister nature behind so many things that society does to be beautiful.

This was a thought-provoking read, for sure.

A profound condemnation of Western beauty ideals and "wellness" culture, this book is perfect for people looking for an almost sci-fi take on this subcategory of social commentary. Throughout the story, the author points out the harmful effects of Western beauty standards on non-white people and the desperate mentality of the main character to do what it takes to be successful in the field of selling beauty and "wellness" products. The three-quarter mark took a strange turn into something especially horrifying and the ending doesn't quite meet the setup that the beginning alluded to, but this is still a wonderfully disturbing story from the perspective of someone doing what she thinks is necessary to take care of herself and her family.

This one is super weird and haunting. Lots of morals out the window in twisted screwed upness. It totally sucked me in, though, and at the end, the story stood up fairly well given how out it was. Overall, I enjoyed it, but I think many would not due to the content.