I couldn't finish this soon enough. You're probably thinking, wow, is it that good?

Well... I couldn't finish it soon enough because I desperately wanted to move on to a more enjoyable book. This was monotonous, tedious (long, long, long paragraphs), unstructured and probably one of the worst cases of head-hopping I've come across: practically mid-sentence. The story was meant to be told from different POVs, but it was badly executed.

What is it about? I couldn't tell you, really. There were: a murder, rape, lots of waxing, massaging, eye-lashing tinting, Botoxing, bitching, funerals and weddings. Who was it about, mainly? I don't know. Maybe it was Karen, the single mother working in a beauty salon, but moonlighting as a prostitute. Or was it the part-time narrator, Claire, a lonely, middle-aged, frustrated pschyo-analyst? Or was it the mother of the murder victim, seeking justice for her murdered daughter?

This was set in Colombia…not a place you want to put on your bucket list. The story flitted about randomly, and I spent most of the time thinking: Who are you? What's happening now? The dialogue was starchy and stiff, and there wasn't a single character I liked or cared enough about to get to know, probably because the characters didn't care for each other and actually, were pretty snotty to each other, too. And if they did manage to throw in a reasonably affectionate term of address, all they could come up with was 'gorgeous'. Which was totally incongruous most of the time.

A translated book never bodes well, in my view: the text never flows as well as the original…there were some rather clunky phrasing and word choices. A book I regret wasting my reading time on.

This is a woman's-eye view of poverty. A beautiful single woman leaves her child behind in order to earn enough money to return to her. She works in an aesthetician's salon in which she helps her clients. Almost everything that inflicts misery on the poor is touched upon in the narrative of the book, above all the vulnerability of some women’s work. It’s more than sad, since it's evidently social criticism voiced as tragedy.

This book was so refreshing - an unusual take on a murder mystery, with a Colombian setting and lashings of injustice adding to the noir factor. Fans of the Netflix TV series Narcos will love this!

An atmospheric book that was an interesting read. Different from the normal style I read. The characters were hard to engage with and the book was not written in a style I like.

I have just returned from a trip to Columbia and so I was very interested to read this. It is unusual in that most of the characters in this quite violent book are women and it resonates with our own daily lives - who has not wondered what the beauty therapist sees in a day ! The characters are not especially warm and from my own time in Columbia I guess this rings true - everyone has a secret and no body is telling

Worth a read for the curious

This is an interesting read which throws a different angle on things but I was quite frustrated by the ending and not in a good way.

I so badly wanted House of Beauty to be good. A crime novel revolving around a Bogotá beauty salon, featuring the murder of a schoolgirl and a coverup by corrupt officials involved in massive healthcare fraud? The idea of a salon as a place where women go to tell each other things and feel safe, where the world of men cannot—for a brief while—intrude? Yes please.

Part of the problem—and I don’t speak Spanish, but I understand a little—is, I think, the translation. Dialogue sounds stilted, motivation is explained with cartoonish specificity. Worst of all, it’s just confusing. The book is being told from the perspective of two women, Claire and Lucía, who are upper-middle-class Bogotáns, after the events have already played out; but there’s nothing to mark their points of view apart, so I was frequently startled by hearing Claire apparently refer to herself, then realise that Lucía was now speaking. We also get third-person chapters from the perspective of Karen, a beautician at the eponymous salon; from Sabrina Guzmán, the girl who dies; and from Sabrina’s mother, Consuelo. But none of them really move us towards an understanding of the crime: we arrive at that understanding only because we get to see into everyone’s heads, which characters in the book cannot do, so their deductions are unearned. The ending, meanwhile, had me staring at my phone in baffled rage, wanting to throw the thing against a wall—not because it’s incomplete, but because it suddenly partakes of the grossest stereotype. I think this is meant to make us feel differently about one of the narrators—which it sure did—but again, it felt unearned. In between the disorienting points of view and the leaps in plot, there are some interesting and upsetting things being said in House of Beauty about contemporary Colombian society, and the place of women (especially dark-skinned women) within it, but there’s just too much getting in the reader’s way.

This book is a crime novel but also a study in misogyny and exploitation of women ,set in Colombia.The book is largely set in an upmarket beauty salon in Bogota ,where Karen,a beautician,was the last person to see Sabrina,a young girl who was murdered,alive.Although we find out what happened to her, the plot mainly deals with Karen and the way she is treated by her rich clients.Karen is dealt some hard blows and has to make some very hard choices in order to survive .
The narrators keep switching to tell the story from different viewpoints which can be a bit confusing.
I enjoyed the book but finished it feeling angry at the way the female characters are treated by a range of thoroughly unpleasant men.It has a lot to say about life in Colombia too,with lots of local detail.The translation is good and reads well

Steeped in a noir atmosphere, this has potential but the writing (or translation?) is flat and engaging, and the prose style is stilted and just doesn't flow. The narrative voices weren't convincing to me, and the whole thing feels flimsy and superficial - disappointing.

A psychological mystery set in a beauty salon is an unusual premise, Such is the case of the aptly named House of Beauty from Colombian journalist turned author Melba Escobar.. Karen is a struggling young beautician who has moved to a Bogota for a better life. Despite the location, there is a universal feel to the descriptions of how her clients confide in her in the anonymity of the salon. When a client is murdered and Karen was the last person to see her alive we have the beginnings of the mystery at the heart of the novel. Karen is a very likeable character and her own story is well woven through the novel. This is an ambitious work and quotes form Sherlock Homes give it an extra gravitas. While the setting of a beauty salon is unusual, so to is the setting of Colombia especially where everyday life is depicted and depicted well.
In a world teeming with psychological thriller, it is refreshing to meet one where the twist is more the unusual setting.