New Skin

by Sarah Wang

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. 

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Horror Thriller, Adult, Addiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 2026

About the author

Sarah 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.

Reviews

[Marcus (Lit_Laugh_Luv)]

Very intrigued by this one! Thank you to the author for sending an ARC my way <3

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[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 🙏

[Allie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ugh 4.5 wow needed that

[Lily ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sam Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Remi]

and 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*

[Alanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Anne H · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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!

[Bdubs605 · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We’ll never know everything about our parents. And what we think we know is a made-up story that bridges vast gaps and fills in blanks.”

That line captures what stayed with me most. This is a novel about trying to understand a parent when history is missing. The daughter is reckoning with her Taiwanese immigrant mother, a woman shaped by American beauty standards, plastic surgery, silence, and instability. Her mother is wounded, unreliable, desperate, and damaging, but she is also a woman trying to survive inside a country that teaches her to see herself as ugly.

I especially enjoyed the way the novel discusses cultural imitation, mistranslation, and second-generation inheritance. My favorite line was the description of Thai Elvis as a “rhizomatic expression of the global Elvis impersonation diaspora,” which captures the novel’s sharpest mode: funny and theoretical. I appreciated the revealing insights into being second-gen in the way it reads imitation, diaspora, and cultural distortion as part of the same inheritance.

The novel is interested in what happens when people, language, and bodies are pressured to approximate dominant cultural forms: English, American beauty, whiteness, celebrity, femininity, belonging. The mistranslated T-shirt, Thai Elvis, and the mother’s plastic surgery all become versions of the same question: what happens when copying fails, and the failure reveals something truer than the original?

The mother’s plastic surgery is not treated as simple vanity. It becomes a way to think about assimilation, gender, racism, beauty, and control. If the world gives someone very little agency, the body can become the one place where transformation still feels possible. But the daughter experiences that transformation as a kind of loss, as if her real mother has disappeared and someone else has taken her place.

My main criticism is the organization. The novel moves between threads in a way that sometimes felt disjointed, and there were sections where I had to stop and reorient myself. The fragmentation fits the subject matter, but it did make the reading experience harder to follow at times. It reminded me of Chlorine in that way: thematically rich and formally unstable, sometimes to its benefit and sometimes to its detriment.

Still, this is a strange, smart, unsettling, and memorable novel about mothers and daughters, but also about language, bodies, beauty, diaspora, and the stories we create to survive the gaps in what we know.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

[Stacy (Gotham City Librarian) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The two major draws of "New Skin" for me were the body horror aspect of cosmetic surgery addiction and the potentially dark comedic subplot of a reality television program involving the same thing. I think this novel overall is more of a character study and portrait of the chokehold that this mother and daughter have on each other, (though it's mostly the mother, Fanny, keeping her claws firmly hooked into the daughter.) Fanny is one of the most frustrating literary characters I’ve ever encountered. But she became more intriguing the further I ventured into the story. There was more to her than the vicious, manipulative personality and the mangled face, but she held those cards very close to the chest.

The core of the plot is her extremely toxic relationship with her daughter Linli, who is also the book's narrator. Linli is frustrating in her own ways. I found a lot of her behavior puzzling and questionable. I personally don’t understand what it’s like to navigate the dynamics of a situation like this, so maybe that’s part of the reason for my confusion. But some things bordered on outrageous and made the book feel like it was taking a turn into “weird fiction.” (Which I do love.) Maybe the issue was that Linli eventually waffled between devoted daughter and self-destructive lost cause so dramatically that I couldn't keep up. And there were a few times that I was asking myself, "Why does she care about this thing but not this other thing?"

The reality competition show plot line wasn’t as central to the story as I expected. The parts that focused on this were sufficiently strange, and sadly not that outside the realm of possibility. It does take a minute for the book to get there.

I think the author did a great job with the complexities of Fanny and how this toxic relationship functioned, but I had a hard time staying on the journey with Linli as a main character. Typically, I do go for the apathetic narrator who is a bad friend and a questionable protagonist. Linli did have her moments, but I could never fully understand her motivations. The ending did not pack much of a punch for me, either.

3.5 stars. It was good, just a little disjointed.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the Publisher for this early copy in exchange for a review! All opinions are my own.

Biggest TW: Domestic Abuse/Gaslighting, Slurs, Substance/Medication abuse, Abortion, Incest

[Quill (thecriticalreader) · Rating 1 out of 5]

0.5 stars

New Skin by Sarah Wang attempts to address a myriad of themes but lacks narrative coherence and emotional resonance.

For three years, Linli Feng worked for a nonprofit helping incarcerated women tell their stories while going no-contact with her manipulative, impulsive mother. Her plans to attend graduate school are interrupted when her mother reaches out, once again a crisis—her face is disfigured and rotting from another failed plastic surgery. When Linli returns to help her mother, their enmeshment deepens as her mother seems to dig herself further and further into a hole. Not only does she nearly kill herself getting black market Botox filler, she finds herself facing a felony charge for her role in these illegal operations. When her mother flies off to participate in a reality TV show promising reconstructive surgery for botched plastic surgery addicts, Linli resorts to increasingly desperate measures to save her mother from prison time.

Linli’s mother makes Jennette McCurdy’s mother look like a saint, and she has her hooks in her daughter so deep that the two are completely enmeshed. That enmeshment only grows as Linli tries to fulfill her “one duty in life—to protect her [mother] from herself.” Linli has the awareness to acknowledge that her mother never faces the consequences of her actions, but not the self-awareness to accept that she’s the central enabler in her mother’s life.

The problem is that Linli’s actions are so self-destructive—almost comically so—that it’s hard to connect with her. People who have been in similar abusive situations might automatically understand where she’s coming from, but Wang resorts to heavy-handed plot beats to showcase Linli’s enmeshment with her mother rather than creating a believable psychological portrait. For example, Linli mentions that she had a dream where she has sex with her mother with her penis. At another point, she steals someone’s drugs at a party and takes them without having any idea of what they are. The book flounders with a main character who is difficult to empathize with or even understand.

New Skin tries to address a number of important issues such as immigration, generational trauma, cycles of abuse, American’s obsession with reality TV, and the flaws of the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, it brings these themes in sporadically, and the plot is so unbelievable and chaotic that the effect is alienating. Wang clearly has intelligent things to say, but neither the book’s characters nor narrative serve her thematic contributions.

After a frustrating and bizarre buildup to its conclusion, the book ends with a hasty whimper that is as unsatisfying as what came before it. People who have experiences with narcissistic abuse might find New Skin more accessible, but it fails to provoke empathy and thought through storytelling.


Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[BansheeBibliophile · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am extremely grateful to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the privilege of reviewing an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

New Skin is a tragicomic debut that picks at so many scabs that it was hard for me to keep up.

Linli Feng is a 26-year-old who is just about to launch her independent life by moving across the country from her mother to attend graduate school. Linli’s best-laid plans don’t stand a chance against her immigrant mother, Fanny, who is addicted to back-alley, bargain-basement plastic surgery in her obsessive pursuit of beauty. Fanny and Linli are deeply enmeshed in a toxic, codependent relationship where it is often hard to tell who is parenting whom.

Linli is forced to defer graduate school after her mother shows up deformed and near death following her latest procedure. While Linli works to nurse her back to health, Fanny somehow manages to get herself selected as a contestant on a reality television show that promises reconstructive surgery for people like her - plastic surgery addicts.

This book had so much going on that it was difficult to settle into a rhythm. I wanted to sympathize with the mother-daughter duo as they navigated all the trauma and drama, not all of which was self-inflicted. The novel offers both satirical and serious takes on a wide range of topics - the immigrant experience, higher education, the job market, the unattainable ideals of Western beauty, reality television, generational trauma, and the broken judicial system - but it becomes difficult to care about any one thread before the story moves on to the next.

The plot grows increasingly unbelievable, and the satire begins to feel heavy-handed, as if applied with a sledgehammer. I eventually lost interest. By the end, I found myself approaching it like a train wreck - you can’t look away, but you’re not sure you want to know what’s happening. It borders on bizarro fiction.

I think this may work for readers interested in explorations of toxic mother-daughter relationships, reality television parodies, or those who enjoy darkly satirical reads with unlikable characters. Not my cup of tea. 2 stars

[Taylor Penn · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Skin by Sarah Wang follows Linli, who returns home after years of estrangement to care for her mother, Fanny, whose face is literally decaying after a series of botched cosmetic surgeries. Linli needs to get out of town for her dream graduate school program but instead finds herself drowning in her mother’s legal troubles, financial disasters, and endless secrets while Fanny chases yet another impossible promise of reinvention via a reality game show. The prize? The reconstructive surgeries she desperately needs.

What really worked for me was how believable the resentment between Linli and Fanny felt. Linli’s exhaustion bleeds off the page, especially in moments where she reflects on growing up with a beauty-obsessed mother. There is a scene early on where Linli tells the reader about being forced to wear eyelid tape as a first grader. As a thicc girl with a diet-culture obsessed mom, I saw myself in Linli and my heart broke for her.

Fanny was also a fascinating character because she manages to feel selfish and tragic at the same time. She loves her daughter dearly, but in that specific parental way where sacrifice and emotional neglect are two things that can be true at the same time.

The body-horror elements and reality show storyline grabbed my attention. But on a deeper level, the novel is also a critique of the beauty industry and a commentary on informal labor markets and their effects on undocumented workers, immigration, and the generational damage that gets passed down like an unwanted heirloom.

This was a timely book to finish the day before Mother’s Day. It made me want to call my mom and at the same time, the whole reading experience felt like when you get a call from a parent and have to stare at the phone screen for a while before you answer. A very solid 4 stars!

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for sending the advance copy. And fuck ICE always and forever <3

[Jada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

Linli Feng ran away from her mother, Fanny Feng, three years ago, and is now about to start a new life working on her graduate degree in New York. Well, she was about to start her new life, but her mother's health crisis has dragged her back to Los Angeles.

Fanny has been getting plastic surgery and other procedures since Linli was eight years old. The number of procedures has skyrocketed in the past three years, leaving Fanny's face disfigured and drooping. But hope is not lost! Fanny has found a place on America's Beauty Extreme, a reality TV show, where she has the opportunity to win reconstructive surgery. While Linli tries to hold together the threads of their family, she must face the past and decide her future.

This was a very strange read. It was a bit like watching a reality TV train wreck. I just couldn't look away. I found many of the scenes and descriptions hilarious in their absurdity.

It was an interesting look at beauty standards, plastic surgery, and reality TV through a satirical lens. I enjoyed seeing it through Linli's eyes specifically, a second generation Asian American in California. The Asian community Fanny was in brought many of the East Asian perspectives of beauty with them. I enjoyed the way New Skin explored these themes.

I didn't feel connected enough to the characters to root for Linli or Fanny, and I found their relationship dynamic very confusing at times. I'm really unsure of what to make of their relationship now that I've finished the book. Things feel unfinished with too many questions left unanswered. But I appreciate the look into the immigrant life/worldview and how these experiences shape the parent they become and the children who come out the other end.

[Haley]

New Skin explores themes of beauty horror, complex mother-daughter dynamics, and the othering and ostracization of immigrants. Linli is Chinese-American and her mother immigrated to the U.S. to escape abuse and poverty. The book focuses on the relationship between Linli and her mother Fanny, particularly surrounding Fanny’s many beauty treatments and procedures. The blurb of the book implies that the reality TV show will be a central focus of the story, yet I was pleasantly surprised to see it take a backseat to the other thematic elements. The inclusion of the TV show added a really interesting element of voyeurism and spectacle to the story, with Fanny being othered and portrayed as capable of a sort of dark magic due to her ethnic background.

My favorite aspect of the book was the relationship between Linli and Fanny. The book does a fantastic job portraying enmeshment and dysfunction between a parent and an adult child. At the start of the book, Linli has been away for several years and upon returning she is clear that she doesn’t want to be around her mother and finds her manipulative. As the book progresses Linli begins to fall into old patterns that put her in compromising situations, and the lines between mother and daughter blur. It’s awful to witness her get sucked back in (complimentary). I also appreciate that Linli learns more about her mother throughout the book; there is room for nuance and the possibility that Linli may have judged her mother harshly at times. I really enjoyed the story and characters, and how no one was without their faults. My only wish is that we had more time at the end of the book to wrap everything up. The last few chapters felt a bit rushed to me, especially since the book had been paced a bit slower up to that point.

*Thanks to Little, Brown and Company, NetGalley, and the author for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thought provoking novel that explores the relationship and lives of Linli and her mother Fanny. Fanny came to America from Taiwan and worked illegally for many years and Linli was born there. Their fragile relationship fractured when Linli was just 8 and arrived home from school to find her mother had had plastic surgery. She eventually ran away and has returned to see her mother 3 years later.

Briefly, on arriving home Linli is shocked to see how her mother has changed. Multiple procedures have made her virtually unrecognisable and shortly after she arrives home her mother has another procedure which causes her to be hospitalised. Linli has to put off her plans to leave and take up a graduate program. To add to the trauma Fanny has been taking other women to these underground beauty parlours where dangerous fillers are used and unqualified ‘doctors’ undertake medical treatments and she is facing a court case. Fanny decides her way out is to take part in a reality television show with a prize that would allow complete reconstructive surgery of her face and body.

This is not just about the relationship between the two women but a look at the multibillion dollar beauty and plastic surgery industry. Women having unrealistic expectations of how they should look and becoming addicted to the needle and the knife often with results they aren’t happy with so another one is booked in. Fanny was extremely needy and for some reason she never really told Linli much about her past before Linli was born. I just wanted Linli to run, to get away, but deep down she really loves her mother and wants to help. This is quite a harrowing read, with some unpleasant (one in particular) descriptions that turned my stomach. Fascinating read.

[whatzoreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my early 20s, I was addicted to watching The Swan, a reality TV show that turned radical cosmetic surgery into entertainment. Twenty years later, New Skin by Sarah Wang made me realise just how corrosive that commodification of women’s bodies was to my own self-worth.

This is a story that doesn’t just entertain it exposes the machinery of perfection and its human cost. A daughter returns home to find her mother physically and emotionally unrecognisable, trapped in bargain basement procedures in pursuit of the “right” kind of beauty. Set against the backdrop of a grotesque reality TV competition for reconstructive surgery, the novel also captures the culturally urgent realities of undocumented immigrants: fear of ICE, exploitation, risk-taking under the table, and the constant threat of exposure or harm. It amplifies societal cruelty alongside the personal costs of assimilation, debt, family obligations, intergeneration tension, and mother-daughter rot. Emotionally searing, cinematic, and unflinching, New Skin feels like reading trauma under a microscope.

You will feel seen by this book if you’ve ever struggled with family expectations, societal pressures, or the weight of ideals that promise perfection but exact ruin. Readers seeking light escapism or tidy resolutions will find it intentionally unsettling. This one is for readers who love fearless literary fiction that fuses social critique, dark humour, and horror. New Skin is thrilling, disturbing, and unforgettable.

Thank you to NetGalley and Picador for allowing me to read an advance copy in exchange for my honest thoughts. 5 stars, no notes.

[Erin Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

New Skin
by Sarah Wang

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for the ARC.

New Skin is not the book its synopsis suggests. While it gestures toward reality TV and beauty culture, the actual focus is much narrower and more personal, centered on a strained, deeply enmeshed mother-daughter relationship shaped by immigration, survival, and unresolved trauma.

The dynamic between Linli and Fanny is the core of the novel, and it is not an easy one to sit with. There is a constant push and pull between obligation and resentment, care and damage, that feels grounded even when the surrounding plot becomes more chaotic. Fanny, in particular, is difficult to read at times, but intentionally so. She represents a cycle that the book is clearly trying to examine rather than excuse.

The writing is sharp and often unsettling, with moments of dark humor that cut through the heavier themes. There is also a broader layer here touching on undocumented labor, exploitation within immigrant communities, and the ways people are used and discarded within different systems. Those elements are compelling, though not always as fully developed as they could be.

Where the book struggles is in its structure. It pulls in a lot of ideas, sometimes without fully integrating them, which can make the story feel uneven. The reality TV thread, in particular, feels less central than advertised. The ending also leaves things more open than resolved, which will work for some readers and frustrate others.

A strange, often uncomfortable novel with strong character work at its center, even if its broader ambitions do not always come together cleanly.
3.5 stars.

[Whatithinkaboutthisbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Skin by Sarah Wang

A dark satirical, tragicomic examination of identity and a toxic mother-daughter relationship filtered through the lens of addiction to cosmetic surgery.

Fanny’s pursuit of cosmetic surgery begins after she immigrates, shedding light on how vulnerable people can be when they’re motivated by white beauty standards and desperate to “fit in” in a new country. This novel isn’t focused on the high cost plastic surgery industry but instead explores the underground illegal world that provides botched services - services that then require further procedures, creating a vicious cycle.

Fanny’s disfigured face, her reckless choices and her cunning reflect the addictive nature of these procedures and the promise of transformation. At the same time the book interrogates a deeper hunger: the desire to belong, to fit in and to build an identity that matches the hopes and dreams of a new life.

Fanny’s orbit is powerful, and any independence Fenli has fought to create is easily swallowed by it. Wang uses dark humour and Fanny’s larger than life personality to explore the intense enmeshed attachment between Fanny and Fenli, rooted in trauma, loneliness and not belonging. Fenli both loves and hates her mother in equal measure, constantly torn between self preservation and a sense of obligation.

Watching Fenli slip back under her mother’s control is like watching a train hurtling towards disaster. Wang masterfully renders Fenli’s slow self destruction, and Fanny’s manipulative cunning with frenetic, chaotic energy you can’t look away from.

A captivating read I couldn’t put down. It reminded me in some ways of Rouge by Awad.

[Ink · Rating 5 out of 5]

New Skin by Sarah Wang is knock-me sideways brilliant! (Not to the level of requiring reconstructive surgery, but that doesn't stop our protagonists mother practically rebuilding her face and body!)

Linli has a fraught relationship with her mother Fanny and is desperate to keep as far, far away from her as she is able. However, when Fanny's latest endeavour into "surgical self improvement" (my phrasing) goes wrong Linli is forced to support her mother while she recovers. However, she discovers that her mothers addiction to plastic runs far, far deeper than she realised, to the extent that she has applied to be on a famous reality show to try and win a complete overhaul of her plastic surgery disasters

Throughout this book I was screaming internally for Linli to cut ties with her mother, go no contact, but by eckers I get it, I totally get why whe didn't, even when she should have a million times over

A witty, whip-smart observational tale that dives into every fold and crevice of the contemporary world of image and reconstructive surgery and the trends we are exposed to. An absolute screamer in parts, I was howling with laughter until my face ached,, but also reflecting on what we are all succombed to in our daily lives and on our screens

An absolute belter of a novel that is certainly a keeper and definitely a writer to keep your eye on (lifted or not!)

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Pan Macmillan | Picador for this incredible ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an exploration of both the fractured relationship between a mother and a daughter and the unrealistioc demands that the beauty industry and in particular the "tweakments" industry puts on people. For Linli she felt she "lost" her mother when, aged 8, she came home one day to find that her mother had had a facelift and various eye treatments to make her fit a warped expectation of what it means to be beautiful and what it means to blend in. From then onwards she had to watch her mother lurch from one botched treatment to the next until her face was barely recognisable. When Linli is finally breaking away from her mother after a 3 year break she finds herself having to give up the chance of a graduate programme to come and look after her mother following yet another botched procedure. But as she spends more time with her mother she learns through some unexpected sources the sacrifices her mother really made for her and the tough immigrant life her mother has faced. She also tries to get inside the illegal treatment industry to try to help not only her mother but also the countless immigrant Asian young women who are caught in a spiral of trafficking, debt and damaging treatements. I found the book both harrowing and insightful and was pleased to see elements of Linli's own self discovery and possible hope for both hers and her mother's futures. Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced read.

[Megan Magee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't help but think New Skin is THAT BITCH by Bea Miller in book form. Linli is a prodigal daughter of sorts, returning home to find a mother who looks disfigured and hellacious with the amount of plastic surgery she has undergone. As it only makes sense to do, Fanny then ends up the subject of a reality show in which the prize to "winning" is reconstructive surgeries. We learn about the other contestants and what it took to send them over the edge of surgeries or injectables (spoiler alert its mostly poverty stricken folks being taken advantage of by back alley drug shilling companies). This is obviously a zany take on societal and beauty standards, but there is oh so much reality seeping between the pages of this novel as well. Wang takes a tricky topic and gives it her own spin, writing in a deadpan humor at times that reeks of codependent and motherly love. Expect some triggers here, perhaps some interesting takes on culture, and a positively new twist on surgical literary fiction. Thanks so much to the author and Little, Brown and Company for the advanced digital copy. All opinions are entirely my own.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is harrowing story about mother and daughter in a world where beauty can destroy lives.

I was so intrigued by this story and loved the different dynamics that were had between mother and daughter. The cultural significances were really impactful to me.

Linli's questionable and destructive actions were also a testament to her love for her mother and how much she wanted to save her. How she slowly got to know the truth behind her mother's past and who she is as the story progressed and heart wrenching. And watching it unfold on reality TV.

I only wish we were given more information about how the case unfolded and what happened to the other characters. I think that would have rounded out the conclusion of the story a little better.

I enjoyed this story and found it not only educational in a sense but suspenseful and tugged at the heart strings.
While portraying a dismantling of an industry that destroys women and the impacts it can have no just to ourselves but that it touches the people around us as well.

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

[Allison Meakem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Botox injections are becoming common among American women. If anything can stymie this trend, it might be Sarah Wang’s debut novel, New Skin. The book paints such a cleverly grotesque picture of the U.S. plastic surgery scene that it could serve as a disincentive to anyone considering such procedures.

New Skin begins when 26-year-old Linli Feng returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to care for her mother, Fan-Ju, or Fanny. Fanny, an immigrant from Taiwan, is broke and addicted to plastic surgery. “My mother was equal parts artificial and human,” Linli says. “The differing aesthetic goals of myriad doctors had made her face a battleground of warring ideals.” Fanny’s obsession with fillers and skin bleaching causes her a range of health issues, and Linli must sacrifice her professional ambitions to deal with them.

Things get even worse when FBI agents show up at the Fengs’ door with news: Fanny has been indicted. The U.S. government claims that Fanny is part of an investigation into a sprawling network of... [[READ THE REST IN FP: https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/01/...]]

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the reader that loves complicated mother-daughter stories…. Boy, this is the toxic, hilarious, heartwarming, codependent mess for you.

This story follows Linli and her mother Fanny as they are tossed back together after Fanny’s latest plastic surgery foray leaves her with a disastrous infection. The two become entangled in each other’s lives and freeing herself becomes increasingly impossible for Linli.

The strength of this novel lies in its exploration of the complicated nature of Fanny and Lesli’s relationship. Yes, it’s ugly, emotionally manipulative, and unhealthily codependent, but the two are also fiercely loyal to each other and protective of one another. The novel was funny, poignant, difficult, and almost perfect. I feel that the last quarter sort of lost the momentum of the rest of the novel. The ending fell just a little flat, for me, but I think the novel is worth the read for its themes about beauty, exploitation, immigration & The American Dream, and motherhood.

[Jazmyn Hartman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was gross, this was unsettling, this was poignant. I felt for Fanny and Linli, though I didn't agree with their decisions. I understood the reasoning behind every awful choice they each made. I was SO invested in this story, begging for someone to be a voice of reason, almost wanting to shake them into their senses. A terribly toxic mother and daughter relationship that you won't be able to get enough of!
Linli moves back to LA to take care of her mother Fan-Ju "Fanny" Feng. Fanny is obsessed with plastic surgery, constantly getting nose jobs and fillers, "Americanizing" her face. Back alley botox goes wrong, and Fanny has to deal with an investigation, one she'll go to prison for if she doesn't cooperate. In addition, Fanny has a shot on a reality TV show! Obviously nothing can go wrong! Following these events feels like a fever dream, a settling into pores fever dream, a wild ride. But I was absolutely hooked!
I really don't want to say much more because I don't want to spoil anything!

[twoey (rachel q.) · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Skin by Sarah Wang is a powerful addition to the beauty horror canon, alongside Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang and Rouge by Mona Awad. However, I think this one is insanely visceral, and doesn't pull any punches when describing the body horror that comes with Fanny and Linli's progressively horrific beauty treatments.

It certainly kept me hooked throughout. I love a good dysfunctional family story, and Fanny is the definition of a narcissistic mother who you also can't help but feel bad for. They're complicated, and I love when an author is able to balance cruelty and victimhood within the same characters.

The reality TV aspect was also unrelenting and cruel. It reminded me of a more extreme version of The Compound by Aisling Rawle. I have to say I feel like the book lost me a bit at the end, and I wish the conclusion was as potent as the rest of the book. Overall, a very enjoyable and insane read. I flew through it.

[Reading Xennial · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fascinating with its unique and interesting premise. The writing was by far the best part. The descriptions Wang used were vivid. I liked how she showed the dichotomy between mother and daughter and how mental illness and abuse can form a relationship throughout the years. There were many through lines in this book that at times the plot was lost. It’s satirical and horrific at the same time without being an actual horror.

I had a hard time putting this book down because of morbid curiosity. Fanny and Linly are a train wreck and I couldn’t take my eyes off. I would recommend this book if you’re interested in its premise. It does bring up many topics of beauty standards and how it affects immigrant populations, generational trauma, and the absurdity of reality television.

Thank you, NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for allowing me to read this book early. The opinion in this review is my own.

[Karen Bullock · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!