A haunting, compassionate tribute to the children of war.
Sixteen-year-old Paul spends a summer in Vietnam tracing the life of his long-absent mother, who was a wartime refugee.
Back home in San Jose from Vietnam, Paul is ready to tell his skeptical sister, Jane, what he learned about their estranged mother, Ngọc Lan. Thirteen years ago, Ngọc Lan walked out on them and their father, causing trauma that Jane continues to process in therapy. It’s 2008, nine years after the events of My Father, the Panda Killer (2023), when Jane was on the cusp of going to college, leaving Paul to contend with their abusive father alone. At that time, Jane recounted to Paul their father Phúc’s raw, hyperreal tale of escape from Vietnam—a harrowing journey through pirate-infested, shark-filled waters. In this poignant companion novel that Hoang calls “history adjacent,” Paul and Ngọc Lan’s stories alternate, their family lore satisfyingly converging. The novel follows Paul as he explores Vietnam’s vibrant streets, searching for clues to his mother’s past. His journey sharply contrasts with Ngọc Lan’s emotional departure from her homeland in 1975. The dual narratives are united through a guiding spirit that swims by “like a mermaid painted with undefined brushstrokes.” Vietnamese superstitions and the complexities of knowing who’s related to whom—and what to call them—form a humorous and informative backdrop, adding bright cultural insights that lighten the somber impact of war’s profound grief.
A haunting, compassionate tribute to the children of war. (content note, character guide, honorifics, resources, author’s note) (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593643006
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
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