Book Review: The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean

  I requested this one on Net Galley  mostly on the strength of the cover.  I mean... look... look at this cover! 

Lucky for me, the audiobook was available  and I sunk into  the world, with the narrator Natalie Nadus disappearing in my mind, replaced by the sounds and smells of Post War Kowloon!  I love her narration because it really is transportative. After a few minutes, I am entirely immersed in the world, and forget I'm just sitting with headphones in rush hour commuting. 

  It's advertised as 'Gothic"  but I'm not sure that Gothic really applies that well to this one. While there's a lot of ghostly happenings and some horrible occurrences, I didn't have that creeping feeling of building and growing fear with this novel that I have gotten with other recent "Gothic" reads- WolfWorm (T. Kingfisher) or Japanese Gothic (Kylie lee Baker). It's got something different, a more shimmering quality than creeping dread. 

I'm going to call this the most Book Club Book I've read all year.

What makes it PERFECT for book clubs?  Well, it has a little bit of all the things that will appeal to a broad base of readers. 

Without Spoilers, Dean takes readers through a time pre- and post WWII Hong Kong and some outlying islands. This part of the narrative is meticulously researched and feels very accurate. Over top this is generously layered a dose of the supernatural- where ghosts flit in and out and can only be managed by exorcists and ghost talkers. The ghosts aren't just made entirely out of Dean's imagination, however, they are created and steeped in cultural beliefs about ghosts, and how to treat and interact with them over time. 

So all rolled into one we have historical fiction, a bit of a war drama, some messy family relations, the supernatural, and fiction that highlights cultural ideas and beliefs over time.  If that isn't a perfect book for the Book club to dive into, I don't know what is.  It's only missing a strong romance, and honestly, for the majority of book clubs, strong romances aren't the best for discussion.  (Unless of course it's the Stabby and Smoochy book club because we are all about ROMANCE) 

 I had not read Sunyi Dean before, and I think I'm going to have to pick up the backlist! 

First Published :  5/5/2026

Pages: 320

Available as an Audio Book :  YES

Trigger Warnings: Abuse, trauma, mental health, violence, ghosts, violent ghosts, War, drowning, brief mention of suicide, death, body horror (this is not a full list, read responsibly)

Book Review: Half City By Kate Golden

 I wanted to LOVE this book.  I saw it on Net Galley and decided not to request it as I already had several ARC's to give feedback on, but I popped the audiobook on hold immediately.  The cover was awesome and I wanted to love this. Did I love this?  Did you read it? Did you Love it? 

This promised to be a pretty darn good time. The premise is that a young woman - who is a demon hunter at night and a literal disaster during the day, finds herself unexpectedly invited to attend Harker University, a school for other demon hunters. 

Yes- this is magical academia, for adults. Think Harry Potter, but with adults. Think Fourth Wing without dragons.  Please, though, whatever, you think, don't think you're going to read anything unique or different. 

   This was, frankly, predictable and boring. Viv has a tragic background pasted on her. She has a loyal group of demon hunting besties and one friend who is unawares of all these things.  This friend pretty much exists as a prop. I kept hoping the friend would turn out to be more than what she was made into, but no dice. 

She agrees to attend the school in order to find out more about her tragic backstory, and finds herself attracted to the Hot professor- who's actually... a demon. 

The plot meanders around, with several breaches in the integrity of the schools "impenetrable walls"; a student goes missing, and her own friend group decides it's most appropriate to attend a lacrosse game before looking for clues about her even after they've decided her absence is fishy, and some other various "hints" being dropped as to what's about to happen. There were other odd phrases in there, such as the main character, written as an American consistently saying "I should have rang him back"  which is distinctly not in America's vernacular. In the end yes, the reveal happens and we end on a cliff hanger. 

The more I write this review, the less I like this book. So I think I should cut to the chase.  This is a book for a reader who's read Fourth Wing and really wants something almost exactly like it. I probably would have enjoyed this a lot more but it was OVER 16 HOURS on Audiobook.  It has an appearance of Teddy Hamilton, which- unfortunately for me- his voice is SO distinct now that it took me out of the story as I was like - OH  what's Teddy Hamilton doing here at the Demon Bar? 

  I gave this 3 stars. It was to me a very average book, that will appeal to some readers, but did not really even make me giggle or kick my heels at what was a somewhat cute romance. I reviewed it also for the Social Media so if you want to meander over there and give that a like, I'd appreciate it.   I was just somehow over it at 8 hours into the listen. I wanted to love this. I wanted to suspend reality and go demon hunting. I found I just wasn't up for more "sparring sessions" gates being breached for the first time in never, and the predictability of this one. Hopefully I'll land on something with a bit more substance soon! 

STATS

First Published: 12/1/26

Pages: 496

Available as an Audio Book :  Yes  16.5 hours 

Trigger Warnings:  Violence, Deception, alcohol and drug use, death, supernatural creatures, forbidden romance (professor /student both of age), kidnapping, poison

(this is not a full list, read responsibly)