Nhung, aka Noon, is a Vietnamese-American kid from a Louisiana shrimp boat family, dealing with a red bloom, which coats her section of coast in bizarre red algae, and monsters. I won’t say more about the monsters because there’s a very clever monster twist towards the end.
Which I skipped forward to read. This book had a good strong beginning, as Nhung befriends bad grrrl Covey (hey, there was a Covey in the Collins book too), who is so spicy she reads all the time and uses a knife as a bookmark. She’s also the daughter of this story’s racist bully bastard, who gnashes his teeth and stomps around earning his satisfying comeuppance.
And there’s this Scooby Gang of kids, featuring a fashionable bisexual lad named after Laura Ingalls Wilder. My train of thought derailed somewhere after they showed up for some earnest discussion about feelings, and orientations, and romance, and cooking, when there’s a monster sitting right outside just waiting for a skirmish. Kissing happens. Monster fights happen. Nhung loses so many pairs of glasses I kinda wanted to throw her a gofundme so she can get Lasix. Ending satisfies.
This is a decent body horror tale that sticks to reasonable violence parameters and I enjoyed the setting and the protagonist’s voice. So far it’s ahead of the Collins book in my opinion, but I’m just getting started.
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