Twin Tides / Hien Nguyen / Book Review

TWIN TIDES

When Aria Nguyen gets a call from a police officer in Minnesota, she knows one chapter of her life is finally coming to a close. Her mother's body has been found. It's strange she was found in the middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, absolutely. But that doesn't stop Aria from hopping on the next plane to finally put her mother to rest.

But something here isn't right. Because waiting for her at the police station is a girl who looks just like Aria. A girl also here to identify the body of her mother. Their mother. Because Aria Nguyen and Calliste Ha are identical twins.

Aria and Calliste have lived drastically different lives. Aria's struggled to stay afloat, barely managing to pay her sick aunt's medical bills while keeping atop her college work. Calliste, on the other hand, has been living as a lifestyle influencer in LA, funded by the food mogul father Aria didn't know she had. Why they were separated is a mystery to them, one they're bound to get to the bottom of. Even if everyone--their aunt, their father, even the small town Minnesota police force--is begging them to stop prying, to let dead things stay dead and gone.

THOUGHTS

On a prose level, this book definitely delivers something. But I just never found myself invested in anything that was happening here. I loved the ideas. I loved some of the imagery. I wanted to love this story, but at the end of the day, this one has left absolutely no impression on me whatsoever.

PROS

Ghoulishly Great	I did love the waterlogged ghoul that haunts these pages, and I loved even more that we get a chance to dive into her own perspective. Waking up in the murk, knowing only your (reborn) purpose, and slowly having your life and death come back: some great storytelling here! I liked how this woman haunts the edges of the narrative until right at the end, always there and not there at the same time. It's really well done!
Small Town Claustrophobic	The idyllic Minnesota town where these girls end up for most of the book feels so right... and so wrong. It comes with a sort of suburban sense of sameness, where these two Vietnamese twins really do stand out with stark contrast. There's a sense of watching eyes, of (white) privilege that can get away with anything, and of utter isolation. What more could you want from a creepy setting than that?
Haunted	These small-town folk might know they've been plagued by a string of drownings, but these incidents are not so frequent nor so malicious that locals would believe these drownings stem from something, you know, sinister. This is just a regular tragedy. And I liked that. I liked how utterly unaware this cast of characters are of anything more than the mundane happening, because in what world would something like this be happening? It adds a nice sense of reality to a haunted narrative.

CONS

I don't know. I don't usually have a hard time at least paying attention during a book, but this one, I had to keep rereading passages. I kept losing focus, getting distracted. I just wasn't very invested, and I'm not quite sure why. It wasn't a prose problem, because I do think Hien Nguyen writes well. I just found my attention wandering again and again while trying to digest this piece.	Attention Span
I'm not spoiling anything. That's not what we do here. So I won't be diving into how this book really ends. I'll just say that I predicted it, and while I believe on some level we were meant to predict where this one was going, the execution felt rather... one note. Like any social commentary that could be dragged out of it just didn't have an impact because it feels so flat. Where's the nuance? Where's the depth? Not here.	Unfortunate Ending
We've somehow got an excuse for separating the twins in this book that's flimsier than the one presented in The Parent Trap, and that's quite a feat! Sure, they gave reasons, but their reasons just... aren't very good. It felt like such a let-down when one of the central hooks of this book happens to be these two twins discovering each other after years without knowing about the other's existence. I wanted so much more than I got, and that made me sad.	Missing Piece

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
6/10

Fans of Your Lonely Nights Are Over by Adam Sass might just like diving into this historied small town. Those who loved Emma Lord's You Have a Match but wanted something a little... darker might just love this book.

Details Publisher: Delacorte Press Date: December 9, 2025 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.