If I Had Your Face Cha Frances

A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania Powerful and provocative . . . The Washington PostNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time NPR Esquire Bustle BBC New York Post InStyle Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul room salon, an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. a novel about female strength, spirit, resilience and the solace that friendship can sometimes provide.

Kyuri s roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the heir to one of the country s biggest conglomerates.

Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life. And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise in Korea s brutal economy. Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.