A solid 3.4 stars for this one, so 3 stars.

Claire and Aaron Litvak were divorced four years before they got a phone call telling them their daughter Lindsey, who is teaching English in China during her gap year has been critically injured in a hit and run. The race to Shanghai to be with her.

While there they learn about Lindsey’s life in Shanghai, which is fraught and further explore the event that ended their marriage and left Lindsey estranged from them and she has confided only in her sister, Grace who was adopted from China as an infant. What is happening is Lindsey’s life?

Maybe I’m just jaded, but this book was so not shocking, and seemed a bit sterile. Grace was really the only character I liked, other than the wonderful friend, Johnny. The book’s brevity meant that readers don’t know any characters well. So, it was fine.

I absolutely loved this novel. It reminded me in a way of Run Lola Run (if you haven't seen it, go watch it right now) wherein every time we brushed up against a character who was part of Lindsey's life, we got to peer inside. The satisfaction of all the threads coming together and forming such an exquisitely detailed picture of the lives of the characters! Fanatastic. I felt like I was witnessing a master-class in writing character and POV. This novel is very character-driven - a standout in a sea of plotty-novels for those of us who always want to be climbing into other people's heads. Highly recommend! This one is going to be on a lot of lists in 2025.

A wonderful novel. I have read Jennifer Haigh's other books and also love them, and this book is also a gripping read. The characters are super interesting in particular.

I could not put this book down. Jennifer Haigh’s writing is powerful and gives you this deep complex story. I enjoyed the multiple POVs and felt like it added to the mystery. This isn’t just a book about a daughter who is severely injure while in China “teaching”. It’s a story of two bitter divorcées, Lyndsay a Chinese adopted daughter who is stuck at a Quaker camp.

The story begins with every parent’s nightmare—a call from across the world informing Claire and Aaron Litvak that their daughter Lindsey has been critically injured in a hit-and-run in Shanghai. The ex-spouses, who haven’t spoken in years since a bitter divorce, are suddenly thrust back into each other’s lives as they sit by Lindsey’s bedside, facing the hope and heartbreak of her uncertain fate.

What makes this novel remarkable is how it deftly balances the immediate drama of Lindsey’s accident with the complex, layered history of the Litvak family. As they confront the trauma of the accident, Claire and Aaron also confront the “incident” that tore their family apart and left their daughter estranged from them. This tragedy is intertwined with the relationship between Lindsey and her adopted sister, Grace, who becomes crucial to the family’s healing—and further unraveling.

Set against Shanghai's vibrant, rapidly evolving backdrop, the novel also delves into questions of cultural identity, belonging, and the weight of expectations. The bustling “miracle city” is more than just a setting; it’s a character that reflects the family’s disorientation and the contrasts within Lindsey’s life that they never truly understood.

The author has done an excellent job crafting rich, multidimensional characters who face their own flawed histories and biases. The journey Claire and Aaron undertake—not just through Shanghai but through the hidden aspects of their daughter’s life and shared past—keeps readers invested and on edge, wondering whether the family can ever truly mend.

This is an intensely moving, beautifully written novel about the fragility of family ties, the long shadows of past mistakes, and the difficult path to forgiveness.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

As a Chinese adoptee, I have immensely complicated thoughts on this novel.

"The memory has lingered with me, for a compelling reason: It's the first time I can remember reacting as a Chinese person rather than as a white person."

"We live at the intersection of causality and chance."

I wanted to read this because this book centers around a Chinese adoptee, but I was incredibly unprepared for the emotions this brought up. For starters, most of the book is not told from Grace's perspective, the adopted Chinese daughter of two white parents from Boston. This book begins when Grace's adoptive sister Lindsey is hit by a car in the middle of the night while living in Shanghai. After the accident, Lindsey becomes comatose and the reader is taught about Lindsey and Grace's lives through the perspectives of their parents, Claire and Aaron, and Lindsey's closest friend in Shanghai, Johnny Du. It is only towards the end of this book that we hear the truth of Lindsey's year abroad and Grace's discovery of everything her big sister hid from her as well as the culture she was born into, yet always felt a part from.

I know my anger towards parts of this story stem from my own personal experience, but it definitely made it hard to give this an unbiased rating. I think Haigh's writing is powerful and wonderfully plotted for the most intense emotional reaction. In just two-hundred pages, Haigh absolutely ripped me apart. I don't see how anyone could read this novel, especially a parent or a sibling, and not feel just a little bit broken by it. For that, I am giving this five full stars.

But if you want my opinion as a Chinese adoptee, and I think this may be especially helpful for others like me looking for stories that reflect our own, I am left with so much anger after finishing this. There is a moment towards the end of this book where Grace asks someone to identify a Chinese character for her because she can't read the language herself. Lindsey had it tattooed on her arm while living in Shanghai so when Grace shares a photo of the tattoo to someone who can read it, they think it's a joke that Grace is unable to identify her own name in her own mother-tongue.

I could go on for hours about my experiences attempting to discover my own culture that ended in feeling even more distant than I was before. How growing up as a transracial adoptee with white parents tricked me into believing I was no different than the fifth generation Italian American sitting next me. For the integrity of this review, I won't, but fair warning to other adoptees: be sure you are ready to read this book.

Rabbit Moon is a propulsive family drama surrounding two sisters. Lindsey the older sister has a hit and run accident while working in China during a gap year from college. As we search backward from vignettes of the family's life, we find that Lindsey's younger sister, Grace is adopted from China in the early 200s at the peak of China's one child policy. We also find that Claire and Aaron (their parents) are bitterly divorced and rarely talk. But, now they meet in a Shanghai hospital--800 miles away from Beijing where they thought Lindsey was living.

Rabbit Moon explores both the randomness of life/existence and the ties and consequences of choice and family. Jennifer Haigh writes a beautiful novel with some truly mesmerizing characters. Both the main and smaller side characters weave a complicated and bustling image reminiscent of the lively and throning street scene in Shanghai.

These people have hung in my mind for most of a week, and I cannot stop obsessing over Lindsey Litvak. I have a feeling a lot of you will as well.

Finally, let's all have a collective appreciation over this gorgeous cover art.

Thank you netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for the advanced copy. Rabbit Moon will debut April 7, 2025.

I loved this novel. It has everything I want in a book - drama, great characterization, compelling narrative, and a riveting plot.

Lindsey Litvak, who her parents think is in Beijing China, teaching English as a Second Language, is actually in Shanghai. When Lindsey gets hit by a hit-and-run driver in the middle of the night, her life hangs by a thread in a Chinese hospital. She is in a coma, kept alive by tubes and force of will, Her divorced parents, Claire and Aaron, puzzled about Lindsey being in Shanghai, fly there immediately to be with their injured daughter. They have no idea what she is doing in Shanghai or why and when she left Beijing.

Grace is Lindsey's younger adopted sister with whom she's always been very close. Ethnically Chinese, Grace was adopted in China and has been raised in the United States by the Litvak family since infancy. She and Lindsey usually text regularly and, when Lindsey no longer answers Grace's texts, she becomes worried. Grace is in a Quaker sleep-away camp and is left in the dark about the severity of Lindsay's accident.

Lindsey is not teaching English. In fact, she is doing nothing like that. She is involved in something that she has not told her parents about because it is shady. She has one good friend, a gay hair stylist, and he does his best to avoid Lindsey's parents when they arrive in Shanghai.

I found this novel almost impossible to set down. Grace's denouement moved me to tears. I highly recommend Rabbit Moon to anyone who loves compelling literary fiction. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for granting me early access to Ms. Haigh's wonderful novel.

I have loved Jennifer Haigh’s novels since I read her first. This novel was no disappointment. In fact, I suspect it will (should) be on the BEST BOOKS of 2025 lists. It is the story of a young woman whose life was turned upside down by her fragility and the predator next door.

Lyndsey escapes the unhappiness and dissatisfaction with her life by escaping to China, theoretically to teach English. There she becomes the target of a very different predator and becomes enmeshed in the horrors of the underbelly of Shanghai.

Her parents, newly divorced, are called to China after a horrific accident puts Lindsay in a comatose state in a strange Shanghai hospital.

The ray of sunshine is provided by Lyndsey’s adopted sister Grace, brought from China as an infant. They have enjoyed a close and loving relationship. It is Grace who tells much of the story, including the closure that readers (especially me) crave after reading a book of this power with such sympathetic characters.

I really loved this book. I highly recommend it to book groups, so much to discuss. I think it is extremely timely vis-à-vis our current interest in China. Haughty approaches the eternal mother-daughter struggle with empathy.

Thank you Netgalley for the privilege of reading this extraordinary novel.

Jennifer Haigh is the author of Mercy Street, a testament to women's rights to choose and a complex narrative. She continues on that thread in this very dense family drama set in China,

Very early on, divorced parents Claire and Aaron Litvak are called to Shanghai. Their eldest daughter has been in an accident and and is in a hospital. I feel that Haigh missed a bit here - the complete confusion of what was going on in the hospital could have likely been mined for more drama and description. She instead moves quickly to the life of the daughter Lindsey and what transpired up until her accident.

It's a curious novel It is certainly gripping and I do understand (I think!) what Haigh is trying to do. But the end, or the conclusion is unsatisfying to me and I wanted a bit more. It almost felt like some of the narrative was cut from interesting secondary characters that could have added to the drama and the overall point.
All in all, I was transfixed in the beginning and although I wish more drama had been sustained I enjoyed this novel and would recommend to any literary lover. I just hold Haigh to a bit higher standard. #littlebrownandcompany #rabbitmoon #jenniferhaigh

With her trademark psychological acuity, Jennifer Haigh delivers a taut, suspenseful story about family, secret lives, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters, the fabled red thread that ties them together across time and space.

Writing: 5/5 Plot: 4/5 Characters: 5/5

When red haired, six-foot tall Lindsey Litvak is slammed by a hit and run driver in Shanghai, her suspension between life and death is a shock for her family and friends, each of whom reflects on how this completely unforeseen point was reached. Her (bitterly) divorced parents — Aaron and Claire — who race across the world in a panic; her ethnically Chinese adopted sister Grace, now stuck in a Quaker summer camp that she hates while her parents abandon their homes; her secretive and stylish gay best friend Johnny, who fades into the background as the Americans march in; and even the apartment building manager who knew more about her situation than he lets on.

Backcasting through time, pieces of history help us to understand how the intersections between lives were set into motion, eventually crashing into the blunt trauma of the accident. The writing is excellent, full of small reflections and insight on the part of each character. Themes around cultural differences, coming-of-age stories, sexual predators, multi-cultural adoption, queerness, and all the various influences that shape a person permeate the novel.

Quotes:

“The Quaker camp, which Grace hates, looks like a penal colony and is priced like a five–star resort.”

“When disaster strikes, Claire can always be counted on to lose her shit, her anguish eclipsing the original crisis in its demands for attention and care. If the house burst into flames, Claire’s distress would demand the firefighters’ full attention. It would be unforgivable, an act of monstrous insensitivity, to put out the fire first.”

“Since earliest childhood, Lindsay has drawn up language like a cut flower and water.”

“Efficient sleeping is Aaron’s superpower. He can fall asleep at will – anytime, anywhere — and wake on time without setting an alarm. His consciousness operates on a toggle switch: the two settings are wide-awake and dead asleep, with nothing in between.”

“In those moments Lindsay was the whole world to him, the center of the known universe. The feeling was intoxicating. She would chase it for the rest of her life.”

“His skepticism was infectious; it made believing sympathetic. Eventually, Claire surrendered to it. Exhibiting a striking lack of foresight, she neglected to cultivate a relationship with God, to pray or fast or do any of the things a person would do if she actually believed. Now, in her hour of need, she feels unable to ask for blessings.”