Book Review: Our Missing Hearts

Bought the hardback at the Strand for $12.50 and read during my cruise of Greece and Turkey. Yet another dystopian near-future novel, felt kinda familiar after so many similar works by Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro. Ng is clearly influenced by recent events involving anti-Asian hate crimes and the MAGA movement. Twelve-year-old Bird is growing up in an oppressive America where any dissent with the government is severely punished and children can be taken from their parents for the slightest infraction. Bird's mom, a poet whose work has inspired some unpopular protests, disappeared three years ago and the action centers on the kid finding her. Suspenseful and chilling, but too much like Atwood's vision of a dictatorial future.