(2) YA In this haunting sequel to My Father, the Panda Killer (rev. 9/23), readers are reacquainted with the complicated Vu family; this time the multilayered story focuses on one San Jose teen's life-changing Vietnam summer trip while revisiting hardships his estranged refugee mother experienced as a teen during the Vietnam War. Paul, sixteen, travels to Da Nang in 2008 with his abusive father to visit his paternal grandmother. Paul is initially ambivalent about the trip since his older sister, Jane (a protagonist in the first novel), bails, and he feels like an outsider. He eventually bonds with a distant cousin and meets his maternal grandmother. The teen then learns more about his mother, Ngoc Lan, who abandoned the family several years earlier. Alternating chapters from Ngoc Lan's point of view cover her own parental abandonment and wrenching sea evacuation, her older sister's drowning (the titular mermaid), and her struggles to establish a new life in California. Hoang's dramatic coming-of-age novel is an intense exploration of grief, loss, and multigenerational trauma that ultimately leads to understanding, forgiveness, and even love. Back matter includes a list of professional resources for people dealing with abuse and mental health issues.

Reviewer: Michelle Lee | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2025

(2) YA In this unflinching dual-perspective coming-of-age story, a California teen who at first loathes being Vietnamese gains pride in her heritage while also coming to terms with her emotionally distant, physically abusive refugee father. It's the summer of 1999, and Jane Vu, seventeen, is about to leave San Jose to attend UCLA. She is excited about college but worries about leaving her seven-year-old brother with their single father, Phúc. In lyrically written chapters that alternate with Jane's narrative, readers follow Phúc's traumatic youth in war-torn Vietnam, including acts of love and of violence within his family, and his harrowing escape by boat on the Pacific Ocean. He survives attacks by Thai pirates and starvation only to lose his final shred of innocence with the titular panda-killing. The twin tales of complicated family love come together when Jane gains sympathy for her father after she learns more about his experiences from cousins at a family reunion, and then later while visiting her grandparents in Da Nang. Hoang does a skillful job in capturing multigenerational trauma with Jane's teenage angst and Phúc's damaging voyage. Pair with the adult graphic memoirs 7Vietnamerica7 by G. B. Tran and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (illustrator of A Different Pond, rev. 9/17).

Reviewer: Michelle Lee | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2023