There’s just something so spectacular about reading a book from a debut author and getting blown away, which is probably why I still seek them out. For some reason, this phenomenon hits me even harder when the book is a thriller, because it’s often hard for even experienced and lauded thriller writers to write a thriller that will blow your socks off; so when a debut author does it (like in 2023 with Clemence Michallon’s The Quiet Tenant) the feeling is close to literary nirvana. 

Nguyen has written a dizzying, creepy, effective psychological thriller about the daughter of a Vietnam War refugee (Annie) who has a form of OCD that runs along with feelings of disgust and contamination. This is in direct contrast from her aging, controlling, and abusive mother, who has the form of OCD that runs along with hoarding behaviors. Very early in the book the mother dies inside the carriage house she lives in on Annie’s family property. This death is only the beginning of the unraveling and fracturing of the life Annie thought she was living and the person she thought she was. 

This story is told solely from Annie’s POV, though the timeline skips around a bit. Not to worry about it being lazy storytelling or infodumping: The flashbacks to past events between Annie and her mother help to shine light on both their relationship dynamic and who Annie is today, the cryptic present-day passages are disorienting at first, but once they catch up to present-day events you can see how they fit in, and a certain repetitive half-memory does get explained, eventually. 

There’s a lot of commentary about intergenerational trauma, PTSD, the toll mental illness can take on children in families, and culture shock. Is there a twist? Yes. It’s a doozy!

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.