Review by Booklist Review
As the climate in Mercy, Louisiana, worsens following an ill-fated hurricane, Nhung "Noon" Lê and her mother are attempting to survive as they mourn the loss of Noon's brother and father, though her mother believes they may be out there, reborn as something else. They catch shrimp and fish off of the coast, avoid the red algae bloom overtaking waterways and neighborhoods, and make trades with the predatory Jimmy of Jimmy's Gator Swamp Tour and Emporium, hoping he doesn't decide to repossess Wild Things, her late father's boat. But there's something in the water, stealing people in the night. Jimmy decides to take advantage of the Lês' precarious position, threatening to withhold supplies and take the boat if they don't help his daughter, Covey, track down and capture whatever may be harming the locals so that he can add it to his burgeoning tourist trap. Noon soon finds that Covey isn't a loyalist to her father, and they strike a tenuous alliance to find the creature and Covey's missing mother. But something isn't quite right with Noon, and it just might be the key to finding the monster. Though filled with intensely unsettling imagery of twisted creatures and a disaster-stricken landscape, Tran's sophomore work contrasts the disturbing with the beauty of human connection. While portraying multidimensional characters and relationships that feature realistic familial trauma and recovery, Tran succeeds in creating a moving contemplation on queerness and gender identity, the immigrant experience, and moving beyond survival to fight back against oppressors.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Seventeen-year-old Vietnamese American Nhung--or Noon--and Noon's mother live on their boat Wild Things in Mercy, La., where a sinister red algae bloom has mutated the wildlife in the aftermath of a deadly hurricane. Though Noon is desperate to leave Mercy, Mom refuses, certain that Noon's father and brother--whose bodies were never recovered following the storm--are "out there somewhere, reincarnated and waiting for us to rescue them." They make their living catching and selling mutated sea creatures to Jimmy, Mercy's de facto ruler. When people start disappearing, including a scientist studying the bloom, Jimmy threatens to repossess Wild Things unless they find the monster he believes is responsible. Along for the hunt is his daughter, white-cued lesbian 17-year-old Covey, who is also searching for her missing mother. As the trio scour the contaminated waters, Noon contemplates issues of gender identity, struggles to process a previous sexual assault, and contends with inexplicable body changes. While fluid prose occasionally makes for murky, complex plotting, it simultaneously conjures surreal and harrowing atmosphere through which Tran (She Is a Haunting) weaves a pulsing-pounding climate disaster thriller. Ages 14--up. Agent: Katelyn Detweiler, Jill Grinberg Literary. (Mar.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up--After a devastating hurricane, the water keeps rising in tiny Mercy, LA, where a deadly, clinging red algae has begun to warp biology into something unrecognizable. To avoid the memories and dangers in town, Vietnamese American teen Nhung and her mom have been living on their family's shrimp boat on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, catching increasingly rare seafood to afford to live. Forced to sell the most normal things they catch to local business criminal Jimmy Boudreaux, they have no way out when he demands they hunt down whoever (or whatever) is responsible for a string of local disappearances; Nhung's mother's attempts to resist leave her with a raging tetanus infection. Jimmy's sharp-edged daughter Covey and Nhung forge ahead into Mercy, where the difference between hunter and hunted is hard to discern. As Nhung struggles with familial and cultural expectations, especially those tied to gender, she diverges from the path she has long felt was inevitable and allows herself to contemplate becoming something more authentic. After all, there is beauty to be found even in the darkest of places. Tran's adeptness with body horror resurfaces in this sophomore novel; the shifting environment of south Louisiana can be dangerous and untrustworthy at the best of times, perfectly suited to blurred boundaries between science and reality and powerful emotional reckonings. VERDICT A strange and grisly tale of what we can survive to get closer to our truest selves, deeply infused with Vietnamese cultural concepts.--Allie Stevens
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Review by Horn Book Review
In the wake of a hurricane, a strange red algal bloom has taken over the waters of Mercy, Louisiana, where Noon ekes out a life capturing mutant sea creatures and trading them to the crooked harbormaster. As people go missing, rumors of a monster emerge, and Noon must hunt down the monster for the harbormaster or risk losing everything. The mission forces Noon to team up with the harbormaster's daughter to probe the mysteries haunting the town, all the while threatening to expose the monstrous things inside our own protagonist. Tran (She Is a Haunting) makes deft use of horror genre conventions to construct a narrative about how trauma shapes and changes people. The atmospheric, immersive descriptions of the setting underscore the vital symbiotic relationship between human and nature that gets ignored in the pursuit of capitalistic extraction. Noon's narrative perspective encourages identification with the shadowy Other of the monster. As a child of Vietnamese refugees, a queer person who feels out of place in their body (the occasional pronouns used in the first-person narration shift from she/her to they/them), and a survivor of sexual violence, Noon knows what it means to suffocate under the pressure of oppressive norms that seek to punish their self-expression and neutralize its subversive potential. Freeing the monster in themself means confronting their traumatic past and embracing their own power of unsettling. Shenwei ChangMarch/April 2025 p.85 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Vietnamese American teen searches for something monstrous in a post-apocalyptic near future. Twenty-one months ago, Hurricane Arlene left the town of Mercy, Mississippi, waterlogged and its economy devastated. Worse, red algae lingers, enveloping everything from buildings to fish in a blood-red bloom. Now, Noon and Mom scavenge the contaminated waters in their shrimp trawler, looking for traces of Noon's brother and father, who superstitious Mom believes have been reincarnated as sea creatures. Noon, who has never felt comfortable anywhere--"I have always been different. Iam different"--feels at home in this strange new landscape. But things are becoming stranger still: The wildlife is mutating, Noon's body is mysteriously changing, and people are going missing at an alarming rate. Jimmy Boudreaux, a crooked businessman and a tyrannical local boss figure, believes that a monster is stalking the waters. Using the loan Noon's parents owe him as leverage, Jimmy extorts Noon into helping him hunt it down. With Jimmy's ornery daughter, Covey, in tow, Noon returns to Mercy to investigate. The teens discover the shocking, skin-crawling truth about what's overtaken the region--and Noon grapples with long-suppressed wounds. Tran fills the pages with sensory detail, creating a haunting setting that immerses readers in their worldbuilding. Noon is a complex and multifaceted protagonist, whose reckoning with trauma and selfhood (especially gender identity and Vietnamese ancestry) is the emotional center anchoring the extraordinary plot events. Overflowing with horrors--and with heart.(Horror. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
