Face

 

 I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Face

Author: Joma West

Publisher: Tordotcom

Release Date: 8.2.22

Publisher’s Summary 

Life is competitive; all the best babies are designed now.

Schuyler and Madeline Burroughs have the perfect Face—rich and powerful enough to assure their dominance in society.

But in SchAddie’s household, cracks are beginning to appear. Schuyler is bored and taking risks. Maddie is becoming brittle, her happiness ever more fleeting. And their menial is fighting the most bizarre compulsions.

In Face, skin color is an aesthetic choice designed by professionals, consent is a pre-checked box on the path to social acceptance, and your online profile isn’t just the most important thing—it’s the only thing.

Face is a novel about the lies we allow ourselves to believe in order to make us feel whole.

My Review

Based on the summary, I thought I would LOVE this futuristic look at a predominantly virtual society and its commentary on racism and classism, but it really fell flat. The primary goal of this caste-based society is image, aka the "face" you present to the world. High-class couples literally customize and order their babies to be delivered via surrogate because there is no touching here--not between husbands and wives and not between parents and children. The ultimate goal is to have children with contrasting features from the parents, thus presenting the ultimate desired aesthetic appearance. While these ideas may seem strange, a talented author would know how to present them in a way that readers could understand and piece together into the larger picture (World Building 101) but that is not the case here. There are no follow-up descriptions of processes or backstory as to why things are happening. Instead, the EXACT conversations are repeated over and over from each participant's point of view to the point that I just about screamed. Overall, great potential and a stellar concept but it falls extremely short of my expectations on delivery.