4.5 stars. I was so excited to get an ARC of this book! It was a different direction than Little Fires Everywhere and I truly loved her strong storytelling. The characters were so real and the second half of the book flew by for me! The set up and beginning were at times hard to read (because of what is going on in this world) and it was not the most uplifting. But the ending more than made up for a slow start and I cant recommend this enough!

Our Missing Hearts is based on our current reality and events in the news. Though it is set in the future it is easy to imagine this kind of world happening. Life is ruled by the Preserving American Culture Act and anyone seen as not following this can be punished. Children are taken away from parents who are not viewed as patriotic. Several books are banned and the complete American history is not taught to students. In the story, Bird's mother leaves Bird and his dad. She is Asian and had written several poems. One of the poems becomes part of the movement against PACT. Bird doesn't know why his mom left until he receives a letter in the mail that he is sure is from her. He sets out to learn more about his mom.

I saw this blurbed as a dystopian novel, and I suppose it is, but honestly, it felt like just an extension of the current headlines. Which makes for a sometimes uncomfortable reading experience. That being said, I couldn't put it down. I wanted to know what happened to Bird, to his mom, to his dad. I needed to see how the story would spin out.

This book is very different in tone and content from Ng's other books. What's the same is her poignant observations on what it means to be alive and to be part of a family.

Like many other books published recently (Cloud Cuckoo Land, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, etc), Our Missing Hearts hinges on the power of story and information. I'm biased toward to that idea, but I was grateful for the hope in this book. I'll be recommending it often.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

‘Our Missing Hearts’ is a very interesting book which I felt was almost too adventurous in parts, I enjoyed the characters who are all compelling in different ways. Full of very interesting concepts but still managed to drag a little sometimes.
Overall a good read which kept me interested until the end when it came to a satisfactory conclusion.
I am sure our library patrons will enjoy the new Celeste Ng book and I will be happy to recommend it.

Five years ago, I was a huge fan of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and I was happy to receive a copy of Our Missing Hearts from Penguin Group/Press and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

It is one of my less-favorite genres, a dystopian novel… set in a time following a period of great upheaw al, during which the government instituted PACT, a law (or perhaps series of laws) designed to “preserve American Culture.” These laws were instituted to calm things down, to protect people, to make people safe. The protagonist is a young man named Bird who goes to school, and comes home to life with his father, a man who has a subsistence-level job shelving books in a library. The two of them are living alone after the disappearance of Margaret, Bird’s mother. She was a danger to them, with her pesky resistance and activism.

This is definitely a political book, covering topics including anti-Asian hate, motherhood, family separation, police brutality, socioeconomic inequality, and much more. It’s absolutely terrifying to read, especially for anyone who has been paying attention to the current threats to our democracy. Yes, it is fiction, but with the current state of the nation, it just feels absolutely possible, if not probable.

TBH, it was a bit much for me. Incredibly unsettling. Extremely thought-provoking. Very entertaining, Definitely book club material. Five stars, with the caveat that it may give readers nightmares. Hopefully, it will also inspire people to vote.

I loved this book! There were some beautiful passages about motherhood, grief, language, and community. I love the way Ng describes visual art - she did it beautifully in "Little Fires Everywhere", and she does it again here to great success. Bonus points for writing about a library where I have worked ;)

Celeste Ng is back with another amazing novel. Our Missing Hearts blurs the line between reality and fiction.

Bird is a twelve-year old boy living with his father, a former linguistics professor now shelving books at the university. Bird has been raised to keep a low profile and not draw attention to himself. The United States has enacted laws to maintain “American culture” and children of dissidents can now be relocated in order to maintain the peace. Books on the library shelves have been eliminated if they are determined to be unpatriotic. Bird’s mother disappeared three years ago after her poetry became a rallying cry for people protesting the censorship. Now, he and his father must learn how to live by the rules and stay together.

This is a novel that will stay with you long after you read it. Touching on socioeconomic and political issues in today’s society make the plot plausible in the near future. The story of a mother and son’s love will tug at your heart strings. I also enjoyed the novel’s use of art to enact change in society.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for the opportunity to review this novel before it’s release.

Dystopian novels are not typically my favorite, but I knew I had to read this one by Celeste Ng; I will read anything she writes! While this is not my preferred genre, Ng managed to pull me in immediately with her beautiful prose and her incredible storytelling. This story blurs the line between reality and and fiction, and it is chilling to think how close to reality it might be.
Overall this was a gripping story that I really enjoyed reading (I appreciated the role of the librarians in this book, too!). Thank you to NetGalley and to Penguin Press for the e-galley.

Thanks to NetGalley & Penguin for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is, I suppose, the book in which Celeste Ng becomes a "serious" writer; not that she wasn't serious before, but this title marks a change in the tone of her fiction, to me. Where her other books were about interpersonal issues, this one is about (well, it's about interpersonal stuff, too, of course, but) bigger political ideas.

In the near future (?), there is a Crisis so big it ends up being capitalized in the media. There is unrest, there are food shortages, there is mayhem and curfews and lockdowns. Hmm, sounds familiar. But in this particular Crisis, a particular group ends up taking the blame: the Chinese. The government and the media decide that China is to blame for its economic issues, supply chain problems, unrest. China, with its alleged manipulation of currency and tariffs, has caused these problems in the US, and anyone who is Chinese (or even looks Chinese) is now suspect, much as Japanese Americans were suspected during WWII. After the Crisis, the US passes a law called PACT, which is supposed to crack down on "un-American activity," but in fact separates children from "seditious" households, censors and burns books that espouse unpatriotic views, and makes it so that no reporter or even citizen question or disagree with PACT, to the extent that those who do are forced into hiding, after their children are taken from them and put into foster care, lest they be infected with anti-American rhetoric.

But of course there's more to it than that - there are emotions of all the people separated from loved ones, and you know that's what Celeste Ng does best. If you are a parent, get ready to ugly cry.

This is the kind of book I'll be turning over in my mind for awhile. I think that most anyone can relate to the story, especially after the two years we've had. More strictures and rules, while unwelcome, wouldn't feel that out of place anymore. Censorship is always hovering in the background, and so libraries removing "dangerous" books of poetry is not ideal, but you can see it happening.

I ... didn't love the ending. But then, I don't love endings that lack concreteness, if that doesn't spoil anything. It was a little too paint with all the colors of the wind, to me. And Bird, while a sweet and wonderful child, is essentially a mini-adult, rather than a 12 year old boy. Minor imperfections.

Our Missing Hearts is the riveting story of Bird Gardner and the family past he doesn't know he has, but goes on a quest to find. Ng's prose pulls you in, but the unease and politics of the world Bird lives in make you want to scream out. Could not put this one down.

Really beautiful! I had a hard time at the beginning of the novel, just because it so perfectly captures the suffocating future we might have; one where we tattle on one another in a mistaken hope that it will make us safer and more American. Bird is twelve and lives with his father. They live a quiet life, one designed not to bring attention. Bird's mother disappeared three years ago, after her poetry became a touchstone in the protests against the oppressive laws written to protect "American culture." But is the mysterious drawing Bird receives in the mail a message from her? This was a powerful and touching novel about the power and limitations of art and love.

Elizabeth Strout once said, "You only have one story, and you will tell it over and over."

Celeste Ng has one story, the story of motherhood, and I will read every iteration of this story she cares to write.

I loved the not so distant, extremely plausible dystopian future described in this book where Persons of Asian Origin are targeted as the source of America's GDP decline and targeted in the police state our country becomes.

Told from both son, and mother's perspective, I couldn't get enough. It left me feeling both wary and hopeful.

Celeste Ng has done it again with ‘Our Missing Hearts’ - her ability to write fiction that grinds so close to the bone, that feels eerily familiar and yet completely transports you is an utter gift to readers.

It is all too easy to imagine a world in which the terrible, politically motivated events of the story become a reality in our own lives. Reading it, you can tell that a lot of the events have a basis in reality - something both terrifying and humbling. A reminder of what has gone before, and what we may yet experience.

She writes the characters with such accuracy and detail, it’s hard not to fall in love with them. Her work is poetry - and it’s important poetry, with bite and an urgent message behind it: can we really sit by and watch atrocities performed on others, and only care when it’s happening to us? Or should we risk everything to take a stand and make a difference?

Another powerful piece of literary fiction from the Little Fires Everywhere author that looks at so many topucs we experience in our world today. I enjoyed it (maybe not as much as other reviewers) but I think this will be another huge hit for the author.

I was excited to start this book … and it didn’t take long to realize I was very, very bored. I wasn’t sure where it was headed and realized I didn’t care. I do like this author, I just didn’t care for this book.

Our Missing Hearts
by Celeste Ng
Pub Date: October 4, 2022
Penguin Press
Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book. What a powerful book! The story itself Is devastating, beautiful, terrifying, but ultimately, also hopeful. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the power—and limitations—of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.
Fiction
Literary Fiction
It’s a deeply political book, commenting on topics such as anti-Asian hate, motherhood, family separation, police brutality, socioeconomic inequality, and so much more. It’s terrifying to read because while it is a work of fiction, the state of the nation in this book feels all too real.
If you’ve read All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, you’ll also love this book.
5 stars

This book is a heart breaker, a glorious homage to love at all costs, and a young boy's quest to find out the truth, it broke my cold old bitter heart at times but it also melted it into a gooey mess.

This is a dystopian novel but it feels like it set is only a heartbeat away from just now. I love a novel which is a story through the eyes of a child, in this one our story is told mostly by Bird Gardner, he lives with his father now because his mother, Margaret, has gone. She was beloved by both Bird and his dad Ethan. She didn't want to go, but for their safety she no longer lives with them. Bird pines for her, he remembers so many things of their life when his mum was there, the songs she sang to him, the crafts they made, the garden they worked on together. Now Bird and Ethan live in a university dorm, it is bleak and it is hard. Ethan now calls Bird Noah and the live a quiet almost secretive existence. So the mystery is, why did Margaret leave? Where is she now?

Bird goes to school, he learns about PACT - the law that is to Protect American Culture, a law that was bought in after the country went through terrible trials, where hunger was rife and there was rioting in the streets, nobody was safe. The government bought in this law to calm things down. To protect people, but is that all it did? Did it stifle creativity and bring suspicion and racism into a new wave?

This book is like a great big flashing warning of things that seem just so close to us. Bird and his families story seemed like it could happen so easily. It is a musing on things that could come to pass tomorrow, this makes it so uncomfortable, but so powerful that I eked out reading it until I just had to finish it is a great big race to find out the truth about Margaret.

This is a book about family, love, the quest for truth and of a little boy who wants answers and who is brave and courageous even though he doesn't know it. These characters will stay with you long after you've finished it, they jump off the page and are fully real in your mind. I adored every word and I'm recommending it to anyone who will listen to me.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. It is my favourite read so far this year, and there have been some wonderful books

In a not-so-distant dystopian future, the government has created PACT to protect patriotism in the United States. Following The Crisis (an economic depression during which China became the villain to blame), PACT means racism and acts of brutality against any and all PAOs (or People of Asian descent). It's been three years since Bird's mother has disappeared, and when a mysterious drawing reaches him in the mail, he immediately knows it's from her. But will he be able to find out what it means and find his mother in the process?

This was an absolute gut-punch to read. Focused around the increased crime and attacks against Asian Americans in the wake of Covid19, Ng imagines what life would look like if our government itself supported, spurned, and rewarded such hate. Ng also doesn't neglect to mention the struggle of other minority groups, or the classist issues many Americans face as well. Hate based patriotism is cyclical in this country and everything Ng addresses is an imperative, warning echo of what could be our near future. This was definitely an emotional read, and I wish we could have had more Sadie chapters, as well as chapters from Bird's father's perspective. Overall this is an important and valuable read that will encourage a lot of serious and important discussions about the state of American culture.

This book was ok for me. I really enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere so I was eager to read Our Missing Hearts. However, I felt it was less plot driven and more about the setting and characters than her last book (but still really well-written nevertheless). I enjoy dystopian fiction and felt that the author really nailed what a right-wing America could look like in the future based on the current social and political situation (and past history). I just wish the book had been propelled along with more action.

In a near future in America, an economic crisis and the resulting breakdown in society has led to a repressive government where so-called patriotism is uppermost. Particular hostility is felt towards anyone who appears to be of Chinese origin, as China has been seen to flourish at America’s expense, and random acts of violence are common. Children of anyone suspected of protesting against the regime are now being removed and sent to new families where they are unlikely to ever be found. Twelve year old Noah (Bird) does not understand why his Chinese-American mother left the family, and why his linguistics professor father was demoted to a book shelver in the university library. He begins to notice signs of subversion around him, and to see that the protest slogan is a phrase from one of his mother’s poems, “Our Missing Hearts.” When he discovers clues to where she is, he determines to find her and to discover the truth. This is a powerful novel which also seems frighteningly plausible, especially considering the anti-Chinese feeling that was displayed after the Coronavirus pandemic broke out. A thoughtful exploration of how quickly democracy can be eroded in extreme circumstances and how people can find ways to protest this, often at huge personal cost, is made particularly effective by illustrating it through the eyes of a child. There are all sorts of resonances to modern life- book censorship, cancellation culture, racism, toxic patriotism to name a few. There is also a strong emotional pull from the portrayal of parent/child bonds and the power of that love and loss. A wonderful, devastating but ultimately hopeful book.