If I Had Your Face

A first book about four young women navigating a world of unattainable beauty standards, hidden room salons serving affluent men, rigid social hierarchies, and K-pop fandom set in modern-day Seoul, Korea. "Even as a girl, I knew the only chance I had was to change my face... even before a fortune-teller told me so." Gorgeous Kyuri has worked hard to get a position at a 'room salon', an elite bar where she serves drinks to businessmen and keeps them entertained. Even while she takes great satisfaction in her objective, detached outlook on life, a careless error involving a customer might potentially jeopardise her means of support.

Despite being raised in an orphanage, Miho, her flatmate, is a gifted artist who was awarded a scholarship to study painting in New York. After graduating from college, she goes back to Korea and enters a risky relationship with the very rich heir of one of the largest firms in the country.

Ara, a hair stylist who works in their apartment block down the hall, is driven by two obsessions: her love for a boy band pop star and her closest friend, who is saving money for the typical extreme cosmetic surgery.

Wonna, a newlywed, is attempting to conceive a child on the floor below her, but neither she nor her spouse know how they will be able to support and educate the kid in this fiercely competitive market.

When taken as a whole, their experiences provide a picture of a world that is both ostensibly foreign yet distinctly human in that their hesitant connections could have to be their lifeline.