Sujin’s roommate, Ara, is a mute hair stylist, obsessed with a handsome K-Pop star as she works to make her clients in the salon look beautiful. Anyone who’s ever had the transformative thrill of a new hairstyle will understand the attraction of becoming more beautiful, and there’s a compelling, believable slide from those K-beauty face packs, to diet pills or maybe a little Botox, to an entirely new, beautiful face, side effects or no. The extreme beauty of South Korea means not just the usual dieting and makeup, but painful cosmetic surgeries with lasting side effects. Fortunately for Sujin, these attributes are for sale at surgery clinics all over Seoul, as soon as she saves up enough money.

Her neighbor Sujin knows that if she only had Kyuri’s beautiful face, or at least her jawline and eyelids, she could change her life. The upscale club hires only the most beautiful women, but it’s less of a glamorous life for her, and more of a constant squeeze between the amount she earns and the amount she has to spend to keep up her appearance. Kyuri works as a drinks hostess in a “room salon,” basically a rental girlfriend. The mix of the familiar and foreign makes this an engrossing story. But this is a distinctly Korean story, too, with the importance of family connections to get a job, name-dropping of unfamiliar schools and neighborhoods, and the intense beauty industry.

There are so many stories about young people trying to make it in New York City and this novel hits some of those familiar notes, like cruel supervisors, dating woes, and the ache of being working-class right next to extreme privilege and luxury. (Apr.If I Had Your Face, by Frances Cha, reveals the stories of five young women working in Seoul. Cha navigates the obstacles of her characters’ lives with ease and heartbreaking realism, showing the lengths these women are willing to go to pursue their dreams in a country where they are told they “do not live for tomorrow.” This is an insightful, powerful story from a promising new voice. Wonna, who was physically abused by the grandmother who raised her, is desperate to keep her pregnancy despite her husband’s uncertain finances. Miho, Kyuri’s roommate, an up-and-coming artist, strives to balance devotion to her work with a relationship to her unfaithful, ultra-rich boyfriend. Kyuri, who undergoes plastic surgery to make her face resemble a member of a popular girl band, holds a coveted job in a “room salon” pouring drinks for men, and has become dangerously enamored of one of her wealthy clients. Ara, a hair stylist who lost the ability to speak after a violent attack, is obsessed with a pop star. In alternating chapters, each woman narrates her difficulties and offers insight on the others. Cha shines a light on the lives of four young women living in the same Seoul, South Korea, apartment building in her winning debut.

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