It’s not June’s fault that she’s jealous, as the pair were meant to ascend through the publishing ranks together, but instead June doesn't even get a paperback release. Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang (Dutton April 4)Īthena Liu’s star is on the rise in the publishing world, much to the chagrin of her supposed friend June Hayward. The audiobook, narrated by Catherine Ho and Imani Parks, is excellent. This fantastically strange, explosive debut novel entrances even as it unsettles. However, even more than becoming a perfect swimmer, Ren longs to become a mermaid. Both girls experience the coach’s abuse, but whereas Cathy cringes from it, Ren relishes in it.

She only makes a single friend during her childhood and teen years, Cathy, a fellow swimmer whose only passion is watching Ren. She becomes obsessed with swimming, constantly working out and training so her body can transform into the perfect swimmer’s physique. When she tries out for the swim team, despite having little experience with swimming, she’s a natural and immediately catches the coach’s all-consuming eye. The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead May 23)Ĭhinese American Ren Yu’s fascination with mermaids began as a young child, when her mother checked out a collection of mermaid folktales for her from the library.

And here was Alex, naked in their pool.” -Emerson Malone

Cline ratchets up the suspense so well, and sums up Alex’s lawlessness: “These were the type of people who assumed that there were rules, who believed that if they followed them they would one day be rewarded. Her extended grift at the expense of the upper crust could be compared to the recent trend of “eat the rich” narratives, and her odyssey of desperation and misadventures also in a way feels like Barry Lyndon for Gen Z. Leaning on her skills of pretending someone she’s not, she navigates the desires of rich and privileged strangers around her and ingratiates herself into their lives and into their homes. On her own and with a waterlogged phone, Alex has a week to kill before Simon’s Labor Day party, and nowhere to go. But she has no home there, so she decides to stick around. In this white-knuckle paranoid thriller from the author of The Girls, the enigmatic Alex, 22, is staying with Simon, a well-off older man, at his coastal home on the East End of Long Island - until he kicks her out and buys her a train ticket back to the city.

The adult bronwyn fischer