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New Skin
A scalding, darkly humorous debut following an enmeshed mother-daughter duo, both best friends and enemies, and the plastic surgery addiction that warps their lives into a perilous spiral
At twenty-six, Linli Feng is still trying to escape her mother Fanny’s orbit. But after three years of estrangement, just when Linli has been accepted into a prestigious graduate program, she is dragged back by Fanny’s latest medical catastrophe and forced to return home.
For decades, Fanny has been addicted to plastic surgery, getting bargain procedures in the basements of LA’s bootleg beauty industry. Now Fanny’s disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black-market injectables.
But even as Linli wades through the wreck of family finances and juggles her mother’s medical care, Fanny has another secret in store. Fanny has won a spot on America’s Beauty Extreme, a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in. When Linli attempts to rescue Fanny from the sinister subculture that has already claimed her mother’s face, she must at last confront the corrosive reality of American success that is at the fraught heart of their relationship.
At twenty-six, Linli Feng is still trying to escape her mother Fanny’s orbit. But after three years of estrangement, just when Linli has been accepted into a prestigious graduate program, she is dragged back by Fanny’s latest medical catastrophe and forced to return home.
For decades, Fanny has been addicted to plastic surgery, getting bargain procedures in the basements of LA’s bootleg beauty industry. Now Fanny’s disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black-market injectables.
But even as Linli wades through the wreck of family finances and juggles her mother’s medical care, Fanny has another secret in store. Fanny has won a spot on America’s Beauty Extreme, a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in. When Linli attempts to rescue Fanny from the sinister subculture that has already claimed her mother’s face, she must at last confront the corrosive reality of American success that is at the fraught heart of their relationship.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2026
About the author
Sarah Wang
4 books43 followersSarah Wang is the author of NEW SKIN, a novel. She teaches creative writing at Barnard College and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, NYFA, PEN America, and the Center for Fiction. She was a finalist for a Nelson Algren prize for fiction and the winner of a Barbara Deming Award. Her writing appears in The New Yorker; The Atlantic; London Review of Books; The Nation; The New Republic; Harper's Bazaar; n+1; McSweeney’s, and more.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews
June 28, 2026
3.5: "Perfection was always one procedure away." And emotional stability was always one chapter away.
Cosmetic surgery addiction, body horror, immigrant guilt, motherhood, shame, self-loathing, ambition, capitalism, generational trauma, reality TV. This book's got it all.
Oh, and the fundamentally cursed experience of having family members.
Fanny's one of the most spectacularly stressful characters I've ever encountered. She made my blood pressure skyrocket. She reminded me a bit too much of my own ma, which meant I spent a good chunk of this book alternating between cackling and wincing.
"It doesn't matter why she's disturbed. It only matters that you know she's disturbed."
This woman approaches life with complete confidence and absolutely no long-term planning. She makes decisions with the energy of someone repeatedly clicking "Yes" on increasingly alarming pop-up windows.
She's the worst.
And yet the author performs literary witchcraft and makes you understand her.
She makes you feel sorry for her.
I hate Fanny.
I hate her because she's so fucking well written.
I've rarely seen abuse depicted this accurately on the page. Not the screaming, melodramatic kind that makes for easy villains, but the exhausting, everyday kind. The I never said that, but if I did, you probably deserved it kind. The kind that makes you question your own memories. The kind that leaves you feeling guilty for wanting to escape it.
It's mundane and boring and cloying and claustrophobic. It's someone standing in your doorway for 30 years.
Exactly like real life.
I've seen some reviews saying the codependency between Fanny and Linli, and Linli's inability or refusal to leave, is unrealistic.
I don't agree.
If you've ever had a complicated relationship with a family member, you'll get it immediately.
The book understands that you can hate someone and love them at the same time. You can want them out of your life and still desperately want what's best for them. You can recognise every toxic pattern and still answer the phone.
That struggle is depicted so, so well.
You try.
You fail.
Maybe something terrible happens to the person you're trying to escape and you feel sorry for them.
Maybe you think this time will be different.
Maybe you wonder if you imagined most of it.
And then suddenly you're right back where you started.
"I didn't know who I hated more, her or myself. I had known how much it would hurt her when I left without a word. That's why I'd done it."
Sometimes that's your only option. Sometimes distance is the only boundary left. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is become an urban legend.
And then there's this awful undercurrent of racial self-loathing running through the book. Maybe not overt racism, but disdain for your own features. The passage about Fanny forcing Linli to wear adhesive eye tape because, "like her, I was born with monolids," hurt me. Then she mocks her daughter for the very feature she herself passed down.
It's one thing to dislike your own reflection.
It's another thing entirely to package that insecurity up and hand it to your child like a family heirloom.
But also... isn't that horrifyingly normal?
Who hasn't watched a family member complain about their weight or their nose and then suddenly realised oh... I have those too.
Congratulations on inheriting the family trauma and the family face.
Is Sarah Wang a genius or has she gained unauthorised access to the collective unconscious of every daughter with a difficult mother?
Both?
The body horror is amazing. But I also wanted more? I wanted it to go further and get weirder as it devolved into full blown Ryu Murakami levels of physical revulsion.
But what it lacks in body horror it makes up for with emotional horror.
I was reading scenes about botched procedures thinking, wow, that's gross, only for the next chapter to remind me that the real horror was the generational trauma we gained along the way.
Also, every now and again I'm like, "I should try out Botox."
This book has probably put me off doing anything more invasive than getting highlights for life. Not because it's anti-cosmetic procedures, but because it understands how easily the pursuit of perfection becomes its own kind of addiction.
One procedure becomes two. Then three. Then suddenly your entire sense of self is hanging off the next appointment.
The reality show subplot is ridiculous. Until you realise it isn't. Until you realise we're all basically three bad decisions away from turning our private suffering into content.
Occasionally it's juggling a little too much and it gets a bit messy. But this book had me in a chokehold.
I loved its mess.
I loved its grotesqueness.
I loved how funny it was.
I loved how it kept veering between absurdity and devastation.
I loved how every chapter made me think, surely it can't get worse than this, immediately followed by it getting worse than this.
Until the ending.
And then it just... lost me.
I don't even think the ending is bad. It just didn't hit with the same force as everything that came before it. After spending hundreds of pages in this fever dream, I wanted something sharper and more devastating. Instead, I came away feeling oddly underwhelmed.
Which is a shame because for about 85% of this book I was convinced I was reading a new favourite.
Cosmetic surgery addiction, body horror, immigrant guilt, motherhood, shame, self-loathing, ambition, capitalism, generational trauma, reality TV. This book's got it all.
Oh, and the fundamentally cursed experience of having family members.
Fanny's one of the most spectacularly stressful characters I've ever encountered. She made my blood pressure skyrocket. She reminded me a bit too much of my own ma, which meant I spent a good chunk of this book alternating between cackling and wincing.
"It doesn't matter why she's disturbed. It only matters that you know she's disturbed."
This woman approaches life with complete confidence and absolutely no long-term planning. She makes decisions with the energy of someone repeatedly clicking "Yes" on increasingly alarming pop-up windows.
She's the worst.
And yet the author performs literary witchcraft and makes you understand her.
She makes you feel sorry for her.
I hate Fanny.
I hate her because she's so fucking well written.
I've rarely seen abuse depicted this accurately on the page. Not the screaming, melodramatic kind that makes for easy villains, but the exhausting, everyday kind. The I never said that, but if I did, you probably deserved it kind. The kind that makes you question your own memories. The kind that leaves you feeling guilty for wanting to escape it.
It's mundane and boring and cloying and claustrophobic. It's someone standing in your doorway for 30 years.
Exactly like real life.
I've seen some reviews saying the codependency between Fanny and Linli, and Linli's inability or refusal to leave, is unrealistic.
I don't agree.
If you've ever had a complicated relationship with a family member, you'll get it immediately.
The book understands that you can hate someone and love them at the same time. You can want them out of your life and still desperately want what's best for them. You can recognise every toxic pattern and still answer the phone.
That struggle is depicted so, so well.
You try.
You fail.
Maybe something terrible happens to the person you're trying to escape and you feel sorry for them.
Maybe you think this time will be different.
Maybe you wonder if you imagined most of it.
And then suddenly you're right back where you started.
"I didn't know who I hated more, her or myself. I had known how much it would hurt her when I left without a word. That's why I'd done it."
Sometimes that's your only option. Sometimes distance is the only boundary left. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is become an urban legend.
And then there's this awful undercurrent of racial self-loathing running through the book. Maybe not overt racism, but disdain for your own features. The passage about Fanny forcing Linli to wear adhesive eye tape because, "like her, I was born with monolids," hurt me. Then she mocks her daughter for the very feature she herself passed down.
It's one thing to dislike your own reflection.
It's another thing entirely to package that insecurity up and hand it to your child like a family heirloom.
But also... isn't that horrifyingly normal?
Who hasn't watched a family member complain about their weight or their nose and then suddenly realised oh... I have those too.
Congratulations on inheriting the family trauma and the family face.
Is Sarah Wang a genius or has she gained unauthorised access to the collective unconscious of every daughter with a difficult mother?
Both?
The body horror is amazing. But I also wanted more? I wanted it to go further and get weirder as it devolved into full blown Ryu Murakami levels of physical revulsion.
But what it lacks in body horror it makes up for with emotional horror.
I was reading scenes about botched procedures thinking, wow, that's gross, only for the next chapter to remind me that the real horror was the generational trauma we gained along the way.
Also, every now and again I'm like, "I should try out Botox."
This book has probably put me off doing anything more invasive than getting highlights for life. Not because it's anti-cosmetic procedures, but because it understands how easily the pursuit of perfection becomes its own kind of addiction.
One procedure becomes two. Then three. Then suddenly your entire sense of self is hanging off the next appointment.
The reality show subplot is ridiculous. Until you realise it isn't. Until you realise we're all basically three bad decisions away from turning our private suffering into content.
Occasionally it's juggling a little too much and it gets a bit messy. But this book had me in a chokehold.
I loved its mess.
I loved its grotesqueness.
I loved how funny it was.
I loved how it kept veering between absurdity and devastation.
I loved how every chapter made me think, surely it can't get worse than this, immediately followed by it getting worse than this.
Until the ending.
And then it just... lost me.
I don't even think the ending is bad. It just didn't hit with the same force as everything that came before it. After spending hundreds of pages in this fever dream, I wanted something sharper and more devastating. Instead, I came away feeling oddly underwhelmed.
Which is a shame because for about 85% of this book I was convinced I was reading a new favourite.
May 25, 2026
This was a really interesting take on a toxic mother/daughter relationship. It’s one that is irredeemable, toxic, and unhealthy… or is it as simple as a generational communication gap?
New Skin breaks into a slurry of topics from abusive relationships with others and especially with yourself. Whether it’s what you deem wrong in the mirror or what you think you frankly just don’t deserve.
This was cultural, literary, with unexpected reality tv and plastic notes strewn throughout. I enjoyed a lot of the reading of this while I was a bit less interested in just starting it picked up quickly enough that had me hooked easily. I didn’t love the ending as much as I hoped but it was less the wrap up I didn’t like, but the very last sentence. Is that enough to ruin it? Not even slightly so don’t let it deter you. Overall, it was an enjoyable read.
New Skin breaks into a slurry of topics from abusive relationships with others and especially with yourself. Whether it’s what you deem wrong in the mirror or what you think you frankly just don’t deserve.
This was cultural, literary, with unexpected reality tv and plastic notes strewn throughout. I enjoyed a lot of the reading of this while I was a bit less interested in just starting it picked up quickly enough that had me hooked easily. I didn’t love the ending as much as I hoped but it was less the wrap up I didn’t like, but the very last sentence. Is that enough to ruin it? Not even slightly so don’t let it deter you. Overall, it was an enjoyable read.
Did Not Finish
May 28, 2026Maybe another time this could've been — or could someday be — an enjoyable read for me, but right now I am a little over these toxic, over-the-top mother/daughter dramas. I know this is an endless, literally infinite topic to dig into, but I have had my literary fill of it by now.
June 16, 2026
Twenty six year old Linli Feng has spent years trying to escape her complicated relationship with her mother Fanny. Just as she's about to begin a new chapter of her life, a crisis pulls her back to LA. Fanny's decades long obsession with plastic surgery has left her physically disfigured and financially devastated. When Linli returns home, she finds herself once again trapped in her mother's world, navigating medical emergencies, family secrets and the fallout of a beauty addiction that has spiraled out of control. Things become even more chaotic when Fanny lands a spot on a reality TV competition where contestants with botched cosmetic procedures compete for reconstructive surgery. As Linli tries to save her mother from the dangerous underground beauty industry that has consumed her life, she is forced to ask herself questions about identity, assimilation, beauty and the complicated ties that bind mothers and daughters together.
New Skin is one of those books that feels equal parts dark satire, family drama and body horror all wrapped up in a story that is as uncomfortable as it is compelling. At its heart, this is a mother-daughter story and that's where the book shines. Linli and Fanny's relationship is messy, frustrating, heartbreaking and painfully real. I found myself torn between feeling sympathy for Fanny and wanting to shake some sense into her! The obsession with youth, beauty and reinvention creates a fascinating background but the emotional weight comes from the complicated love between these two. The reality TV elements add a bizarre and almost surreal layer to the story while the commentary on beauty standards and assimilation feels sharp and relevant. If you enjoy character driven stories with flawed women, dark humor, family dysfunction and a touch of body horror, New Skin is definitely worth picking up!
Thank you to NetGalley, Sarah Wang, and Little, Brown and Company for this eARC!
New Skin is one of those books that feels equal parts dark satire, family drama and body horror all wrapped up in a story that is as uncomfortable as it is compelling. At its heart, this is a mother-daughter story and that's where the book shines. Linli and Fanny's relationship is messy, frustrating, heartbreaking and painfully real. I found myself torn between feeling sympathy for Fanny and wanting to shake some sense into her! The obsession with youth, beauty and reinvention creates a fascinating background but the emotional weight comes from the complicated love between these two. The reality TV elements add a bizarre and almost surreal layer to the story while the commentary on beauty standards and assimilation feels sharp and relevant. If you enjoy character driven stories with flawed women, dark humor, family dysfunction and a touch of body horror, New Skin is definitely worth picking up!
Thank you to NetGalley, Sarah Wang, and Little, Brown and Company for this eARC!
Want to Read
March 25, 2026Very intrigued by this one! Thank you to the author for sending an ARC my way <3
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June 14, 2026
3.5/5
fascinating mother-daughter dynamic with piercingly modern themes. unfortunately
fascinating mother-daughter dynamic with piercingly modern themes. unfortunately
May 20, 2026
i mostly really enjoyed it up until the ending
May 15, 2026
This was a very interesting book and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was interesting to see how far people will go with thier beauty with facelifts and botox. I loved the storyline and the characters. I would definitely recommend this book.
January 12, 2026
i’m a SUCKER for a critique of the beauty industry so this had me hooked from the beginning. and then we follow a woman’s downward spiral prompted by her turbulent relationship with her mother???? what more could a girl ask for
thank u netgalley & publishers for the ARC 🙏
thank u netgalley & publishers for the ARC 🙏
January 15, 2026
DANG! Talk about mama drama.
I am so thankful to Sarah Wang, NetGalley, and Little Brown and Company for granting me advanced access to this generational trauma pot of madness before it hits shelves on May 12, 2026.
Linli and Fanny Feng have a tough mother/daughter relationship. Fanny (mom) is obsessed with cosmetic procedures, butchering her face to no end, and longing to be beautiful. Linli (daughter) has just dropped out of her Master's Program in NYC to take care of her 'dying' mother, and by 'dying' I'm saying Fanny is doing this of her own choosing, as she's receiving fillers that aren't sanctioned, and are taking place in someone's shady basement through this weird MLM/Pyramid Schemey type community.
And she's killing herself in this pursuit.
And Linli is just trying to keep her mother fed, healthy, and happy. But Fanny always has an angle, and auditions for a reality TV show that showcases botched skincare procedures and keeps contestants in a Big Brother-like room to watch emotions spill over. The winner of this competition will receive a facial makeover to clear all their impurities, but there seems to be a darker intent on the producers' part.
NOW, all the while, when Linli is home alone, she's committed to learning the truth behind the dirty procedures to help protect her mother's involvement in a black-market/illegal cosmetics ring she's found herself in, and what she uncovers is worse than she ever thought.
New Skin is like a car crash you just can't look away from, and with each passing day, this duo spirals down deeper and deeper.
I am so thankful to Sarah Wang, NetGalley, and Little Brown and Company for granting me advanced access to this generational trauma pot of madness before it hits shelves on May 12, 2026.
Linli and Fanny Feng have a tough mother/daughter relationship. Fanny (mom) is obsessed with cosmetic procedures, butchering her face to no end, and longing to be beautiful. Linli (daughter) has just dropped out of her Master's Program in NYC to take care of her 'dying' mother, and by 'dying' I'm saying Fanny is doing this of her own choosing, as she's receiving fillers that aren't sanctioned, and are taking place in someone's shady basement through this weird MLM/Pyramid Schemey type community.
And she's killing herself in this pursuit.
And Linli is just trying to keep her mother fed, healthy, and happy. But Fanny always has an angle, and auditions for a reality TV show that showcases botched skincare procedures and keeps contestants in a Big Brother-like room to watch emotions spill over. The winner of this competition will receive a facial makeover to clear all their impurities, but there seems to be a darker intent on the producers' part.
NOW, all the while, when Linli is home alone, she's committed to learning the truth behind the dirty procedures to help protect her mother's involvement in a black-market/illegal cosmetics ring she's found herself in, and what she uncovers is worse than she ever thought.
New Skin is like a car crash you just can't look away from, and with each passing day, this duo spirals down deeper and deeper.
May 27, 2026
I thought this overall was fascinating but lacked a lot of nuance. Especially given the immigration plot. I loved this quote though, if you know you know.
“Across the parking lot, there was a store that had shanzhai clothes with unintended mistranslations and funny bootleg gear from China. Luiot Vituton. Samsinxg. Nnkie. I bought a shirt that read on the back: I was ashame4 mysil whe;n i realz live as cos.tum par7t, && I attend with my real FAC-3 tomarro1 another day nowere to COSSC Xuan. The words were something between a poem and dream logic cranked through ESL machinery. I loved flipping through the racks, reading language on the edge of sense written by someone in another part of the same world whose mother tongue churned these extra-lingual compositions.”
“Across the parking lot, there was a store that had shanzhai clothes with unintended mistranslations and funny bootleg gear from China. Luiot Vituton. Samsinxg. Nnkie. I bought a shirt that read on the back: I was ashame4 mysil whe;n i realz live as cos.tum par7t, && I attend with my real FAC-3 tomarro1 another day nowere to COSSC Xuan. The words were something between a poem and dream logic cranked through ESL machinery. I loved flipping through the racks, reading language on the edge of sense written by someone in another part of the same world whose mother tongue churned these extra-lingual compositions.”
March 9, 2026
Ugh 4.5 wow needed that
April 8, 2026
I did not expect this to be an intelligent commentary on informal labor markets and undocumented workers, but it delivered that and so much more!
This is a strange and wholly original story involving the FBI, reality TV, motherly sacrifice, grad school deference, psychedelics, cycles of trauma, and lucky earlobes.
There wasn’t as much commentary on beauty standards as I expected, but this wasn’t a bad thing; it’s been done before and done well. I truly never knew what was going to happen next.
This is a strange and wholly original story involving the FBI, reality TV, motherly sacrifice, grad school deference, psychedelics, cycles of trauma, and lucky earlobes.
There wasn’t as much commentary on beauty standards as I expected, but this wasn’t a bad thing; it’s been done before and done well. I truly never knew what was going to happen next.
May 22, 2026
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
4.25 stars.
A fantastic debut novel about the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, and her plastic surgery obsessed mother, this was both a look at the difficult experiences of immigrants in the US, and a deep dive into mummy issues.
Linli returns back to her mother, Fanny, after an extended absence to discover her hugely changed due to cosmetic procedures. When she takes a step too far, Linli is left to pick up the pieces, until Fanny has the idea to take part in a reality TV show for botched plastic surgery recipients. As she is whisked away for the series, Linli takes a deeper dive behind the scenes of illicit beauty procedures among the Chinese-American community, and what she discovers is both shocking and sad.
This was a very compelling read, with a mother-daughter relationship at the core that was painful and funny, yet also felt real.
4.25 stars.
A fantastic debut novel about the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, and her plastic surgery obsessed mother, this was both a look at the difficult experiences of immigrants in the US, and a deep dive into mummy issues.
Linli returns back to her mother, Fanny, after an extended absence to discover her hugely changed due to cosmetic procedures. When she takes a step too far, Linli is left to pick up the pieces, until Fanny has the idea to take part in a reality TV show for botched plastic surgery recipients. As she is whisked away for the series, Linli takes a deeper dive behind the scenes of illicit beauty procedures among the Chinese-American community, and what she discovers is both shocking and sad.
This was a very compelling read, with a mother-daughter relationship at the core that was painful and funny, yet also felt real.
June 26, 2026
love the premise but i feel like some parts fell flat?
pros:
- fanny’s arc in part iii
- reality tv setting
- push-pull of a toxic relationship
- backstory reveals of fanny + the other women
cons:
- beginning dragged (we get it, they’re toxic)
- could not get invested into linli as a character
- linli’s work arc felt more like a conduit to deliver life lessons than something worth the amount of pages it got
- what was the point of db and beatriz??
- there was potential for a more plot-driven, thriller-like storyline given the lack of character depth + premise of an underground beauty mafia but it underdelivered on both plot and character imo
- ending was frustrating (but maybe that’s the point?)
pros:
- fanny’s arc in part iii
- reality tv setting
- push-pull of a toxic relationship
- backstory reveals of fanny + the other women
cons:
- beginning dragged (we get it, they’re toxic)
- could not get invested into linli as a character
- linli’s work arc felt more like a conduit to deliver life lessons than something worth the amount of pages it got
- what was the point of db and beatriz??
- there was potential for a more plot-driven, thriller-like storyline given the lack of character depth + premise of an underground beauty mafia but it underdelivered on both plot and character imo
- ending was frustrating (but maybe that’s the point?)
May 18, 2026
A funny and interesting story about a mom and daughter in this new age of plastic surgery. It also questions whether we really know our parents and their stories as well as we thought we did. I really couldn’t predict where the book would take me and every page brought a new story that was more interesting than the other. Also a beautiful ending !
tbr-arc
January 15, 2026and it's true that plastic surgery can be addictive, the premise feels scarily close to my life
*thank you to Little, Brown and Company for the ARC*
*thank you to Little, Brown and Company for the ARC*
June 7, 2026
I was initially very compelled by New Skin – I love literary fiction that explores beauty standards or mother-daughter relationships or the realities of being an immigrant and this had a really nuanced portrayal of all three! Thank you very much to Picador Books for the NetGalley widget.
Lin-li, an aspiring psychologist, has a very fraught relationship with her plastic-surgery-addicted mother, Fanny. When the novel starts, Lin-li is accompanying Fanny to treatment for a botched procedure, and it's clear that there is a lot of unresolved tension between the two. Fanny raised Lin-li on her own and their interactions are often hard to read about – there's a lot of guilting, some flashbacks to emotional abuse and neglect in Lin-li's childhood and Fanny even self-sabotages her life to keep LinLi close. It's genuinely painful and yet there's still love left between them: Linli puts her dreams on hold for Fanny time and again and tries her best to take care of her to the point that I wanted to forcibly yank her away from the San Gabriel Valley and her mother's clutches. The plot about illicit, unlicensed plastic surgery rings and the way they prey on vulnerable women was so propulsive, and it kept me turning the pages to see how the investigation that Fanny ends up being involved in would pan out.
It was the second half of the novel, when Linli's behaviour starts becoming more self-destructive, that lost me a bit. The writing remained acutely accomplished and I was still emotionally hooked, but it felt like Linli's reasoning could have been more explored to keep it from feeling quite so bleak. The ending felt a tad rushed and ultimately left me a bit underwhelmed.
Nevertheless, I'll be keeping an eye out for Sarah Wang's future writing – I think she shows a lot of promise as an author here!
Lin-li, an aspiring psychologist, has a very fraught relationship with her plastic-surgery-addicted mother, Fanny. When the novel starts, Lin-li is accompanying Fanny to treatment for a botched procedure, and it's clear that there is a lot of unresolved tension between the two. Fanny raised Lin-li on her own and their interactions are often hard to read about – there's a lot of guilting, some flashbacks to emotional abuse and neglect in Lin-li's childhood and Fanny even self-sabotages her life to keep LinLi close. It's genuinely painful and yet there's still love left between them: Linli puts her dreams on hold for Fanny time and again and tries her best to take care of her to the point that I wanted to forcibly yank her away from the San Gabriel Valley and her mother's clutches. The plot about illicit, unlicensed plastic surgery rings and the way they prey on vulnerable women was so propulsive, and it kept me turning the pages to see how the investigation that Fanny ends up being involved in would pan out.
It was the second half of the novel, when Linli's behaviour starts becoming more self-destructive, that lost me a bit. The writing remained acutely accomplished and I was still emotionally hooked, but it felt like Linli's reasoning could have been more explored to keep it from feeling quite so bleak. The ending felt a tad rushed and ultimately left me a bit underwhelmed.
Nevertheless, I'll be keeping an eye out for Sarah Wang's future writing – I think she shows a lot of promise as an author here!
May 25, 2026
A debut novel about the beauty/plastic industry, strained mother-daughter dynamics, family’s sacrifices, xenophobia, and reality tv. There is a lot in here.
I liked the grotesque descriptions and that the author doesn’t shy away from the physical and mental ugliness of the scenario.
A large part of the book being a play-by-play of the fictional reality tv show threw me off. There were also some odd moments (like the narrator’s weird sex dream that was mentioned two separate times, and her ditching school in one sentence) that needed more explanation.
I liked the grotesque descriptions and that the author doesn’t shy away from the physical and mental ugliness of the scenario.
A large part of the book being a play-by-play of the fictional reality tv show threw me off. There were also some odd moments (like the narrator’s weird sex dream that was mentioned two separate times, and her ditching school in one sentence) that needed more explanation.
Did Not Finish
June 15, 2026Beautiful cover, cool concept. Pissed to be dnfing at 1/3 in. Nothing happens for that whole first third, and I just lost interest. It reads as scattered and kind of skeletal as a story. I’m stopping probably right where it kicks off, but the writing has been frustrating outside of the fact that nothing is happening, so I’m quitting 😭
June 21, 2026
wow I would have never guessed that my immigrant mother was deeply traumatized by things that happened before I was born that she refuses to speak of, crazy
this book has the subtlety of a hammer which is disappointing bc I love body horror and exploration of the mother wound ™
this book has the subtlety of a hammer which is disappointing bc I love body horror and exploration of the mother wound ™
May 11, 2026
4.5 stars. Re: botched plastic surgery, reality tv, a tumultuous relationship with your mom, dr*g trips and doing whatever it takes to protect the ones you love even if they are undeserving.
June 1, 2026
What a crazy read. This was both intriguing and unsettling, I wanted to look away and keep reading all at the same time.
June 5, 2026
oh how she befell the same fate while attempting to “save” her mother.
I liked it but it was very wild
I liked it but it was very wild
June 12, 2026
I have many many thoughts but in short: hilarious poignant icky AMAZING fuck yeah!!! (Not quite shanzhai accidental poetry but yes this book is all of these things and more).
June 20, 2026
its actually a 3.5 if i had to give one; probably the closest a book has ever gotten to capturing my relationship with my mother, however the way the author smacks you over the head with what she wants you to take away from the literature and certain moments is actually ridiculous lol
May 2, 2026
A big thanks, first of all, to NetGalley and Little, Brown & Co for the arc.
I was stoked about:
✅body horror
✅ complicated mother daughter relationship
✅ critique of the beauty industry
And on those, New Skin delivered! I was cringing (in a good way) during a lot of the body modification scenes. The mother/daughter toxic/codependent situation was an equal car-crash fixation. And the beauty industry critique had a bonus of capitalism critique. 😘
I found difficulties with the pacing—pages spent ruminating, then a major event takes place and is over in a single paragraph, sometimes a sentence. This happened a few times in the book and it got a little irritating. Events also went beyond implausible and into the preposterous, so there was a lot of suspension of disbelief but things didn’t go far enough to feel camp or intentionally absurdist.
There was a lot I liked about this book, but it was a little all over the place for me to really settle with it.
June 5, 2026
3.5-3.75/5 ⭐️
kar zanimivo branje, vedno eatam up knjigo o mother-daughter toksičnem odnosu+ o lepotnih standardih, ampak konec mi je malo uničil vse
kar zanimivo branje, vedno eatam up knjigo o mother-daughter toksičnem odnosu+ o lepotnih standardih, ampak konec mi je malo uničil vse
May 9, 2026
An audacious, tenacious and absurdly hilarious look at the toxicity of tenuous relationships, obsessions and transformations.
Psychological warfare between a narcissistic mother who gaslights her only child; Linli-the 26 year old daughter who’s been trying to escape the emotional blackmail clutches from her mother, for years.
This story covers transformations and cultural differences between Asian upbringing and American behaviors and the quest for true “American Beauty”. Transformations, require dedication which sometimes leads to obsessions and building addictions. The body horror described within is 100% retch worthy(in the best possible way!)
This one checks several boxes: it’s 100% horror but it also deals with cultural differences/influences that are ever present and in its telling it’s hysterical, snarky whit and humor but also shows the lengths people go to present their best selves, and the horrifying cost they suffer.
Thanks to Little, Brown & Company-truly gutted!
Psychological warfare between a narcissistic mother who gaslights her only child; Linli-the 26 year old daughter who’s been trying to escape the emotional blackmail clutches from her mother, for years.
This story covers transformations and cultural differences between Asian upbringing and American behaviors and the quest for true “American Beauty”. Transformations, require dedication which sometimes leads to obsessions and building addictions. The body horror described within is 100% retch worthy(in the best possible way!)
This one checks several boxes: it’s 100% horror but it also deals with cultural differences/influences that are ever present and in its telling it’s hysterical, snarky whit and humor but also shows the lengths people go to present their best selves, and the horrifying cost they suffer.
Thanks to Little, Brown & Company-truly gutted!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
4.5⭐️
In New Skin, we follow 26-year-old Linli Feng as she comes back home to her mother Fanny, three years after she disappeared without a warning. Mother and daughter have a tumultuous relationship, and Fanny’s plastic surgery addiction has driven them further apart every time she succumbed to it.
But Linli’s back in town only for a short time to help her mother recover, only one week, and then she’ll start grad school on the other side of the country. But life, and her mother, have other plans for her. After a black market aesthetic procedure gone wrong, Fanny almost dies and both she and Linli become entangled in something much bigger than them, derailing the lives they had envisioned.
I really enjoyed this book, although not for the reasons I thought I would. To start off, I’d like to mention that I find the summary fairly misleading, as I was expecting the Reality TV part of the story to take a lot more space. I was pleasantly surprised that this was, indeed, not the case.
Instead, the book focuses on the relationship between immigrants and their foreign-born peers, as well as the lives of undocumented people and how others, even from their own communities, prey upon them.
In Fanny, I saw a lot of my own grandmother, a Vietnamese immigrant who came from very little and fought for everything she got, one whose birth name has been lost to time and westernisation. One scene in particular (the one on the highway) was eerily reminiscent of something she actually did to my aunt years ago.
And in Linli, I saw the rest of that side of my family, the one cut off from our heritage by a never shared past and blurry grand parents we don’t know the first thing about, the one connected to our culture through food and beliefs and rites and violence forced upon us by standards that existed in our ancestors’ country decades ago.
New Skin was a very powerful book in its exploration of the relationship between Linli and her mother, Linli and herself, and Linli and her family’s past. Sarah Wang’s writing style also worked very well for me, and I devoured this book in a couple of days.
I am however still a bit torn on the ending, hence the 4-star rating. I think the book could have benefited from another 50 pages, but at the same time, the ending made sense for the journey the book leads us through. I will say that if you like endings to wrap up everything in a definite way, this book is not for you at all.
Overall, I think New Skin is maybe marketed in a way that might not be ideal, with the misleading reality TV aspect presented in the summary. The book, regardless, is beautiful and well worth a read, as it explores themes I have rarely seen in mainstream fiction but which should, in my opinion, be talked about more.
Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
In New Skin, we follow 26-year-old Linli Feng as she comes back home to her mother Fanny, three years after she disappeared without a warning. Mother and daughter have a tumultuous relationship, and Fanny’s plastic surgery addiction has driven them further apart every time she succumbed to it.
But Linli’s back in town only for a short time to help her mother recover, only one week, and then she’ll start grad school on the other side of the country. But life, and her mother, have other plans for her. After a black market aesthetic procedure gone wrong, Fanny almost dies and both she and Linli become entangled in something much bigger than them, derailing the lives they had envisioned.
I really enjoyed this book, although not for the reasons I thought I would. To start off, I’d like to mention that I find the summary fairly misleading, as I was expecting the Reality TV part of the story to take a lot more space. I was pleasantly surprised that this was, indeed, not the case.
Instead, the book focuses on the relationship between immigrants and their foreign-born peers, as well as the lives of undocumented people and how others, even from their own communities, prey upon them.
In Fanny, I saw a lot of my own grandmother, a Vietnamese immigrant who came from very little and fought for everything she got, one whose birth name has been lost to time and westernisation. One scene in particular (the one on the highway) was eerily reminiscent of something she actually did to my aunt years ago.
And in Linli, I saw the rest of that side of my family, the one cut off from our heritage by a never shared past and blurry grand parents we don’t know the first thing about, the one connected to our culture through food and beliefs and rites and violence forced upon us by standards that existed in our ancestors’ country decades ago.
New Skin was a very powerful book in its exploration of the relationship between Linli and her mother, Linli and herself, and Linli and her family’s past. Sarah Wang’s writing style also worked very well for me, and I devoured this book in a couple of days.
I am however still a bit torn on the ending, hence the 4-star rating. I think the book could have benefited from another 50 pages, but at the same time, the ending made sense for the journey the book leads us through. I will say that if you like endings to wrap up everything in a definite way, this book is not for you at all.
Overall, I think New Skin is maybe marketed in a way that might not be ideal, with the misleading reality TV aspect presented in the summary. The book, regardless, is beautiful and well worth a read, as it explores themes I have rarely seen in mainstream fiction but which should, in my opinion, be talked about more.
Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
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