Thank you to Penguin Random House and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my personal opinions.

I’d like to call this book a modern 1984. This is my first Celeste Ng novel and it sure won’t be the last (Little Fires Everywhere you’re next).

I absolutely loved how Ng tackled the dystopian theme; eerily lifelike and ominously fictional. This is one of those books that you’ll think about long after you’ve read it. It does make you feel like you’re looking into a dark future, asking when and not if things will turn out like that.

Ng has the impeccable ability to build meaning through clever structure of words, her preferred style it seems is a mix between personification and metaphors with a healthy dose of irony.

This was beautiful. This was breathtaking.
I cannot express enough how much I love Celeste Ng writing is simply exquisite.

I cannot wait for you all to read it!!!

Thank you so much to penguin press for kindly providing me with a free copy of this book.

What a chilling and powerful dystopian novel!
It's the story of young boy, Bird, who desperately seeks to find his mother, whose work the government and society has deemed unacceptable. The story is terrifying. Ng, once again, captures the terror of the story in her persuasive and cogent prose.
As I was reading this book, what was more frightening than this fictional story is the connection to the reality of today's political climate, warning today's world to take note. The story is heart-wrenching but the words so convincing. This is a book sure to shake up all who read it.

Set in the dystopian future, Our Missing Hearts is a heartbreaking story about anti-Asian sentiment. Anyone who disagrees with the government may be subject to being tracked or having their kids permanently removed from their household.

The book focuses on Bird, a twelve years old boy, who is looking for his mother. His mother is an Asian American poet whose poem “Our Missing Hearts” helped reunite parents with their separated kids. She fled from the household so Bird and his father could stay together. Bird began to understand the horrible truths about the world he was growing up in.

I enjoyed how the libraries were the safe rooms that quietly helped reunification between the parents and the children that were taken away from the parents by the government. The librarians were the unsung heroes that helped make this happen at their own risk. It made me proud that they risked their lives for the children's sake. I also felt a little troubled reading this book, knowing how close to home this book can be to some readers today. This book demonstrates how it is still a sad reality and something numerous people face today, such as when people blamed Chinese people for the pandemic, separating children from parents at the Mexican border, and unknowingly killing immigrants while transporting them in a closed-off trailer. This book should be on any book club list because I feel like this book would create a lot of interesting discussions. This book is a must-read for any reader!


Thank you to NetGallery and to Penguin Press for giving me a copy of the book.

4.5! Touching, mysterious, and unsettling - This was a finish-in-one-night kind of book for me. Ng’s writing is just so masterful and her beautiful descriptions of even the smallest moments are like finding the M&Ms in the trail mix.

I hear and see the other valid reviews that highlight the downfalls of this book, but I push back on the idea that this is just another “brick in the dystopian wall”. The seeds of reality which Ng uses to grow her fictional tale are presented so authentically that at times I felt like I was reading a historical fiction set in the future. There are elements of Ng’s fictional American society that are not so fictional, however many in our current society deny they are happening (Asian hate crimes, excessive book banning, injustice within the foster care/adoption system, etc.). This book doesn't present anything new per-say, but instead marries a unique set of fictional elements with chunks of our current reality that results in a very uncomfortable reflection on one of the paths our country could soon be taking.

Are these Ng’s strongest characters? No, but they do tug at your heartstrings all the same. Also, do they have to be? Now I will say Sadie holds a very special place in my heart and so do all the nameless librarians that I do not think got the credit they deserve for their work (per usual) <3

I also wasn’t a fan of the ending; without spoiling anything I will say I think she tried to do something as ambiguous as The Giver or The Handmaid's Tale but it just left me unsatisfied.

All that aside, I truly love this book and recommend it to anyone interested in modern dystopia, teens and adults alike!

Celeste Ng does it again! Entertainment that is thought provoking. You will able asking yourself the hard questions again. Plus a book where LIBRARIANS are the heroes!

A prescient vision of our near future down the path of school book bans, and a commentary on family separation that sadly remains as relevant as ever while we wait to hear the Supreme Court's ruling on ICWA regarding native family separations. On top of all this, it's a beautiful tale that takes the time to paint a soft and moving portrait of parenthood. I'll be recommending this one to everyone all winter.

This was such an anticipated read for me. I absolutely loved Little Fires Everywhere so I was really looking forward to Celeste Ng's next book.

Our Missing Hearts is such a great read. Its is a perfect book club pick. Reese hit it on the head with yet another pick. you can talk about this books for hours and debate the ending and the topics for hours. This book covers a ton of heavy topics and has so much to unpack. It can be quite heavy at times but it has an ambitious ending.

A story about the power of art to change the world and legacies left to children from acclaimed author Celeste Ng. Easy read with an inspiring message.

I struggled some with this book and think that it may have not been what I was expecting from Ng based on what I had read of her writing in the past. It is definitely a timely story especially as we are seeing large movements wanting to remove books from libraries and even declare them as profane and not able to be sold in bookstores.

This was...something.

I LOVE Celeste Ng. Everything I Never Told You remains my favorite book to this day, and I read it purely by chance. But Our Missing Hearts it something else entirely. Celeste Ng takes a sharp genre departure from her normal fare and I'm not sure it really worked out for her. I saw another reviewer call this "YA dystopia dressing up as literary fiction because there are no quotation marks around the dialogue" and I can't help but agree. There's something a bit juvenile about this book given Celeste Ng's chops, and I think it boils down to the lack of deep character diving. If you're expecting anything like her previous novels...don't.

I think the real-life implications of the scenario Ng is posing in the novel are worth considering (specially involving PACT, which reminded me of the historical issue of indigenous children being taken away from their home and "educated" in religious schools), but I'm not sure Ng is the one to pose it in this particular circumstance.

This was not the book I was expecting when I pick it up. I knew nothing about this book, other than I loved Celeste Ng's previous books, but this book was so moving and touching.

This book is rooted in a world like ours, but not quite. A world where hate and fear has truly taken over and the people slowly working to turn the world around. I really loved how the story started with Bird's point of view, and how we started learning the world from the viewpoint of a child, we then transform the viewpoint of the mother where we see how the world became the way it did and the spaces filled in where Bird wasn't able to know what was happening.

This book was so mesmerizing and enchanting that it was hard to put it down.

Not my favorite Celeste Ng - I don’t love dystopian fiction and this felt a little heavy handed and dragged at the end.

I found the narrator boring and the story line uninteresting. Not for me, although my library will purchase because the author is popular around here.

I’ve loved each Celeste Ng book I’ve read thus far, and Our Missing Hearts was no different. This novel felt different than other Celeste Ng books, in that it felt more like a fairy tale or a translated Japanese story in a lot of ways. The author's note at the end was important to give context to the book for people that might be blind to the reality most of this novel is steeped in. I hope this book finds the right audience, and it breeds some much needed empathy in our world.

Wow. Just wow. I approached Celeste Ng's latest work expected another story about mothers and children with a frisson of suspense. I enjoyed, but wasn't overly impressed, with her earlier work. This is at a completely different level. The writing is gorgeous and the social commentary is chilling. What a powerful, powerful story. I highly recommend it.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC.

This book started a bit slowly, and I wasn't sure if it was really for me. And then I realized it was becoming dystopic, and I *really* wasn't sure if it was for me. I'm glad that I persevered just long enough to get sucked in, though, as the rewards were great...a reminder that it's good to stretch your comfort zone from time to time.

This novel begins with twelve-year-old Bird and his father, living in a dormitory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after having gone through major, debilitating change. We don't know why the former linguistics professor father now shelves books for a living. We don't know why their former home sits vacant. And we don't know where Bird's mother has gone, although we know that her poetry has been part of a revolution, a protest against the tyrannical government.

A shout out to the librarians of this book who basically run an underground railroad for missing children. To say this book is haunting is too romantic. This book is terrifying, because it's all too believable.

I need to start by telling you two very important things about 𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗦 by Celeste Ng. First, I loved it! Next, it IS dystopian and it IS political. I know both those things scare some readers off, but here I don’t think it should. It’s dystopian in a political way much like 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘥’𝘴 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘦 (not as extreme) or 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 (slightly more so).⁣⁣⁣⁣
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In Ng’s new book, the United States had gone through a period of inflation, massive shortages, unemployment and violence. Right or wrong, much of the blame was placed on China, and out of that time rose a new political power that required complete loyalty to U.S. values. People who spoke out would often find themselves punished. For some, their children were taken away and relocated to a loyal family with the “right values.” Anyone Asian became particularly vulnerable, not only from the government, but from angry citizens.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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The story follows Bird, a 12-year old boy, whose mother, a Chinese American poet, voluntarily left Bird and her husband three years earlier. She did this to protect Bird from being relocated. He is now at an age where he’s becoming acutely aware of the world around him and he begins questioning more and more why his mom left and where she could be. The book brings us Bird’s quest to find answers. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
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As always Ng’s writing is spectacular and her characters extremely well-developed. This has a clever, heart-felt plot in which she wove together many elements beautifully. I suspect there will be those who don’t like the political angles in this book, and they'll need to examine their own reasons why. I would simply say that no matter where you stand politically, 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 is a wonderful coming-of-age story and a book I highly recommend. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫⁣⁣⁣⁣
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Thanks to @penguinpress for an ARC of #OurMissingHearts.

Our Missing Hearts is a YA dystopia. It was slow-paced and show the crumbling of justice and society all around, but Bird seems detached and takes most of it in stride. Much of the novel is spent describing the details and injustices of PACT (Preserving American Culture and Traditions. ) Our Missing Hearts with its controlling government, banning books, secret resistance and flat characters was missing something to hold my attention and make me care.

I read this right after reading another dystopian novel, Lark Ascending by Silas House. They are going to be my must read recommendations of the year. As a librarian, I loved that librarians were heros/resistance fighters. As a librarian, I fear we are not too far from empty spaces on library shelves due to censorship. Such a timely book and one that I hope will open eyes.