Column Book—Tails
The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He
Book and Cocktail Club n
None of us live without consequence. Our personal preferences are not truly personal. One person’s needs will deny another’s. Our privileges can harm ourselves and others. — Joan He
30 • Benicia Magazine
Cooper Mickelson
One of the most electrifying, surprising, engaging page-turner YA reads of the year, I just had to make this our September Booktails pick! Imagine Studio Ghibli wrote an episode of Black Mirror...that’s what Joan He’s novel, The Ones We’re Meant to Find, has brought to the literary world. After waking up to find herself stranded on an abandoned island with nothing but the memory of a sister waiting for her to return, Cee’s entire world becomes about finding her way home. Unfortunately, after three years of trying to escape the island only to be lured back time and time again, Cee’s island home has become her captor, her prison, and her only source of comfort and support. Back home in her floating city, Kasey navigates mourning a sister whose body was never found, assumed lost to the sea forever. Kasey attempts to shift her focus to the tumultuous future of the
eco-city, humankind’s last sanctuary. Her unique gifts and cientific knowledge could ensure a future for Earth, but the remaining citizens might not be willing to make the sacrifices needed for Kasey’s plan to work. As Cee inches closer to desperation, an unlikely body washes up on the shore of her island. Meanwhile, Kasey works to argue her case to the world. Two sisters, set adrift by odd circumstances, must find their destiny. This novel immediately ensnared me in its grasp through superior worldbuilding and its vision of a future that’s not so far off from our own. Taking place on an Earth that’s practically unlivable due to climate change, The Ones We’re Meant to Find created intense feelings of anxiety and impending doom that only added to the perplexity of the plot. A combination of thriller and science fiction, He wrote a story whose air of
