Beauty Hurts; So Do Passive Protagonists

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

Pages: 272 Genre: horror

Rating: 3 Star

Kindle Highlights

Our narrator's entire life growing up was piano. She learned from her parents, who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, and eventually she got accepted into the Conservatory to refine her skills. When her parents face a horrible accident, though, she gives up the piano, instead entering a life of poverty and depth. So when she's approached by one of the owners of Holistik, a wellness and beauty brand, she accepts the job. In this new world of wealth and privilege, she is given heaps of products that (she is told) will turn her into the best version of herself. She also meets Helen, the niece of Holistik's other owner, who helps shepherd her into this new world. But as things keep changing, our narrator has to decide how far she's willing to see it through.

There are some books that are good as you're reading them, and then as you finish them you are suddenly flooded with the flaws. This was one of those books for me. Huang's writing is really beautiful, especially in the moments when she was exploring the narrator's cultural background and love of music. Unfortunately, despite her competency with prose, the overall plot really struggled.

The main character was not enough of a person. I liked some aspects about her, but most of those moments were just avenues for social commentary. Good, but not necessarily the strongest characterization. Some of the vagueness surrounding her was intentional (her name being held back from the reader, for example), but most of it was just nothingness. And she was way too passive for a horror protagonist. She doesn't do much, she's not nearly curious enough about what's happening regarding Holistik, and she gets fully knocked out too much. She accepts everything she is told at face value, even when seriously crazy stuff starts to happen. All her development — which was minor to begin with — felt unearned. The book would've been better had the main character decided to care at almost any point before the 80% mark. As it was, whenever she had the option, she intentionally picked the path of least resistance.

I also really struggled to follow what was happening at some points. I don't know if this was my fault for being a distracted reader (which is very possible) or if it was because of weak writing (unfortunately also possible). There were many moments that felt beautiful and cinematic but I could barely follow what was happening. This was made worse by the nearly nonexistent plot. I understand the overall plot arc that we were following, but most of it was conversations with different characters, which is not the most engaging. The main character, as I mentioned earlier, also gets knocked out a lot, so we (the reader) miss a lot of the action. The most egregious example of this is the climax, where it's a few pages of confusing action that gets abruptly cut off when the main character is unceremoniously knocked out. And then the book just wraps up.

In many ways, it seems more like Huang had a concept to explore than a plot she was interested in writing. I wish this book had been workshopped into being a literary fiction (or maybe just workshopped in general) so that all of her ideas could be properly expanded upon. I liked the commentary on race, beauty standards for women who are not white, capitalism, and the struggle to maintain cultural identity as a child of immigrants. The best parts of the books were those moments. And then we would get into a moment of horror that would just bring the whole thing down.

This is Huang's debut work, and I might be interested in checking out what she does in the future. Her writing has promise, this book unfortunately just fell short in a lot of ways.

The one thing that I genuinely disliked about this book was the way sexual aggression and (for lack of a better word) misconduct was written. At some points it felt like sex, and often sexual assault, was used more for shock value than with intention. I don't mind an author including references to things like rape or sexual assault, but these moments were totally brushed past and never addressed again. And when you start bringing pedophilia and arguably beastiality into your work, I personally feel as though you should have a good reason other than "it's horrific." That's not an incorrect interpretation, but build it into your plot, don't just throw these things around for shock value.

I didn't hate the experience of reading this book, but once you think about it literally at all, it proves itself to be very weak and unsure of itself. There's a lot of room for improvement, but as it was, this book just missed the mark for me.