The Farm: Book summary and reviews of The Farm by Joanne Ramos

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Becky H

Exploitation or a Godsend
An idea – pay poor women large sums to be the surrogate for busy, important, wealthy, lazy women who want their own child, but don’t want the bother, time commitment, inconvenience of actually bearing them.
Ramos has written a novel that presents that idea carried out to the fullest extent. The Farm is a lap of luxury prison for the surrogates. Reagan, an idealist asserting her independence from her father but controlling father, Jane, an impoverished Filipina eager for the large financial payout, and Lisa, a wild child with unknown needs, are the three surrogates.
The novel presents many topics for book groups to discuss and casual readers to ponder. Among them – attitudes toward money; styles of parenting; the poor; immigrants (legal or not); power vs weakness, education; exploitation by class, money, education, status, or race; crime and punishment; family; and of course, women.
A question that is not addressed in the novel but should be: What did Reagan do with her bonus and why? Although there is an epilogue, several questions remain of the final outcome for each of the women presented in the novel.

I received an ARC for my freely given opinion.

Sandi W.

the 'haves and the have nots'...
3.5 stars Thank you NetGalley and Random House for allowing me to read and review this book. Published May 2019.

This is a debut book. I had started it months ago and was unable to finish it in the time frame I had, so restarted it again from the beginning and quickly got through it. It was an easy book to read and the story carried you along.

Some of the major themes were related to the 'haves and the have nots', 'unfortunate situations', and 'greed'. A large corporation feeding off the need and the inability to succeed of immigrant women. Not only using immigrant women, holding them hostage, but adding pregnancy to their corrupt scheme.

In a baby for sale to the highest bidder, this farm preyed off foreign women. Women agreeing to carry babies to term, regardless of all else. And our protagonist, Jane, learned just how cruel that agreement could be. Betrayed by her own family, preyed upon by the farm, and heartbroken to learn of the mistreatment of her your daughter, Jane decides to change everyone's plans.

I did like the way this story ended, however it was a long sad trip to finally end up there.

I think that Ramos did a very good job on her debut book and I will look for more from this author in the future.

Betty Taylor

Baby Farm
Enter the world of the “haves” vs the “have-nots”. When the wealthy want children but vanity or convenience is more important, they can hire surrogates. The concept behind “The Farm” is to provide high-end luxury services to their Clients. The Farm pays Scouts to recruit young healthy women (Hosts) who are then impregnated with fertilized eggs from the Clients. Many of these Hosts are very poor, coming from impoverished conditions. The Farm provides housing and full medical care for the Hosts. Give The Farm your body (and life) for nine months and walk away with a healthy paycheck.

The facility is run by Mae Yu, a Chinese-American Harvard Business School graduate with questionable morality and unlimited ambition. One of the Hosts is Jane (aka #84), Filipina, who has a six-month daughter of her own and is desperate for a job. She soon becomes friends with her roommate Reagan who is not the typical Host – she comes from a life of privilege, is white, and a Duke graduate. She is looking for purpose in her life and is determined to escape her controlling father. Jane and Reagan are both first time Hosts. Lisa, the “bad girl” back for her third time as a Host, seems to be the only one who sees through the manipulations going on around her. She is the one you love to hate. There are moments in the story that are truly chilling – forced abortions, manipulation, “stand-in” clients. But there is one Host who cannot be bought. The characters are believable and some are engaging.

I didn’t particularly like the premise and the first part of the book was especially slow and, in my opinion, boring. And the ending just did not work at all for me. Too ‘hurry up and tie up the loose ends and give us a happily-ever-after”. I had no problem laying the book aside and not picking it up again for a couple of days.

My thanks to Random House for the finished copy. All opinions are my own and are not influenced by the publisher.