Brutal and poignant; Dang writes beautifully about the complexity of adolescence and generational trauma.
An act of violence leaves a teenage girl hungry for more than revenge.
Veronica “Ronny” Nguyen and her brother, Tommy—the family’s golden child—are embarking on what Tommy calls “The Big Summer” as they get ready to enter high school and college, respectively. Americanized children of Vietnamese refugees, the siblings are pushing boundaries with their parents, Mẹ and Ba. When Tommy is killed in a car accident, the family is devastated and the gulfs among them—already filled with secrets and silences—begin to widen. When Ba’s brash and distant sister, Cô Mỹ, comes to stay, she brings with her stories from Mẹ and Ba’s past, as well as urban legends from Vietnam. While navigating unimaginable loss, Ronny tries her best to be a normal teenager by excitedly and nervously attending her first high school party. Unfortunately, this rite of passage turns into a nightmare when a classmate sexually assaults her—and something that had been dormant inside her awakens. As rumors swirl at school about Ronny, she finds it harder and harder to tamp down her rage and insatiable hunger for vengeance…and the sharp, salty, metallic taste of raw meat. As secrets about her parents and Tommy come to the surface, Ronny has to grapple with the realization that she has never seen the fullness of their lives: “I could only see them as what they showed me.” When Ronny embarks on her final act of revenge, she unexpectedly sets off a chain of events that brings her closer to her mother than she ever imagined. To move forward, they must do something they’ve never done before: unbury the past. Bound together with new understanding and tenderness, their relationship is forever changed. Balancing vulnerability, rage, horror, and compassion, the novel explores identity as both a blessing and curse.
Brutal and poignant; Dang writes beautifully about the complexity of adolescence and generational trauma.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9781668065570
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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