This novel is a stunning debut by actress Sonya Walger. I had the pleasure of listening to the audiobook, read by the author herself, and she is an excellent narrator. I knew from the first chapter about the one who stayed versus the one who left, when she says “and here, I write a book about the one who left”, that it would be a compelling work. The story is an autobiographical fiction about a daughter and her complicated relationship with her larger-than-life father. The work is listed as fiction (which I did not initially realize when listening to it) but it reads like an incredibly realistic memoir, so much that I was convinced it was one. The writing is poignant and beautiful, making it easy to empathize with the main character. The book evokes all aspects of emotion as we learn of her upbringing and her continuously evolving relationship with her father who left her when she was young but whom she still sees from time to time. I will say that the timeline was occasionally confusing because the chapters jumped around. However, overall, I really enjoyed this work, especially in audiobook form, and would highly recommend to others! Thank you to NetGalley, Sonya Walger, and HighBridge Audio for the gifted ALC in an exchange for an honest review.

LION
@sonyawalgerofficial
Thank you @nyrbooks for the gifted copy.

Well. To date, this is my favorite 2025 publication.

Sonya Walger is a lot of things, yes, a multitalented gift to all, and hear me when I say that while I LOVE MOLLY COBB, y’all must know that Sonya Walger is a NOVELIST.

LION proves it over and over again.

A brief, autobiographical debut novel, LION hits every single note of a masterpiece. My favorite aspect is how the prose lives in the exact center of the venn diagram where lush/luxuriant meets uncomplicated/undemanding. It reads like a walk on a path in a well-kept garden.

LION explores the relationship of a daughter to her charismatic caricature of a father—an adrenaline junkie who cannot, will not be contained or constrained.

As LION bounces here and there in time, indicating the age of the narrator, something about the storytelling begins to create that unnameable magic really found only in a great novel. As we gather perspectives from the adult, the child, the teenager, the infant, all different selves of the same character, LION forms a dreamlike focus on memory, and how time across a lifespan does not have to be explained simply or chronologically. Often, it is different versions of our past selves who have the best insight into what is at hand. Walger also spoke to me here in an intangible, deeply personal way as she equilibrated the value in viewpoints of adults and children. So many times, a child’s perspective is treated as uninformed and unqualified, but here it’s elevated and respected. Beautiful.

LION meditates on time, how it’s never enough when you’re young, how it’s never enough as you age, and how, when we lose a loved one, it’s never after we have had enough of them. This element of yearning for MORE contrasts with a fully explored bit of irony—that physical distance is required to maintain some relationships. And, profoundly, only after the loss of someone as complex as a parent like this narrator’s father, can they begin to come into view, especially the with the kind of vision that allows for such a clear-eyed work of art as this novel to be possible.

I deeply love this book. I think you will, too.

“He fell in all the ways there are to fall: short, out, apart, in love, from grace, afoul of the law, by the wayside, off the map.”

A devastatingly beautiful memoir of and tribute to the author’s father - a peripatetic adventurer who went in and out of her life but left lasting impressions. These are her collected reminiscences and observations, fleshed out with details from others in his life. It is also a self-examination of her life with and without him, and the ways in which she protected herself from his absences.

“I know how to to keep safe, how to tuck in, how to keep chaos at bay. I am still learning how to bathe in the soft hue of a blood moon.”

Lion is narrated by the author, an actor and talented writer. It moves from when her parents first met to his death, but this linear through-line is regularly interspersed with other vignettes in the way we often remember things, where one thought unlocks another, regardless of time and place.

My thanks to the author, publisher, @HighgateAudio, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #Lion for review purposes. Publication date is today: 4 Feb 25.

3 Stars

This was beautifully written, but I struggled to stay invested. The father-daughter relationship is fascinating—Lion is larger than life, chaotic, and impossible to ignore—but at times, the storytelling felt distant. The perpetual present tense made it hard to fully sink into the narrative, and while I appreciated the introspection, it sometimes felt like I was being kept at arm’s length from the emotions.

That said, the writing is undeniably strong, and if you love reflective, literary family sagas, this might hit harder for you. For me, it was interesting but didn’t fully grip me the way I’d hoped.