April Showers Bring May Flowers

As both a teenager and an avid fan, the cancellation of your favorite TV show is truly devastating. For Scarlett Epstein, who commands an online following with her fanfiction for Lycanthrope High, it means potentially losing her own fans and friends. Desperate to keep the community together, she begins writing new fanfiction…about her ex-best-friend-turned-popular-bro and his impossibly pretty (and unbearable) new girlfriend, plus a few other colorful characters from her high school. While Scarlett’s plan strengthens her ties with her Internet friends, she doesn’t anticipate the IRL consequences.

In the opening pages of Ng’s debut novel, the body of seventeen-year-old popular girl Lydia Lee is dredged out of the local lake. As we follow along with her family, floored by this unexpected loss of their beloved middle child, we discover (in the tradition of Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex) the small quirks and big choices that led to Lydia’s final moments. While her death hangs over the entire book, her family is also able to achieve some form of closure and—most important—move on with their lives. There’s no greater demonstration of darkness bringing forth light than the (figuratively and literally) uplifting ending that will have you blinking back bittersweet tears.