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TL/DR: The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He is a potential favorite of the year.  Solid 5 stars. 

Darling readers, I went down a rabbit hole to attempt to remember / discover how The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He landed on my holds list.  It wasn’t in any of the usual places, so my guess is that it came from the Goodreads Awards Best YA Fantasy and Science Fiction nominees list.  This list, which includes 20 titles, is exceptional, if the five I’ve read are any indication.  I have a few more on my TBR too!

If that doesn’t do it for you, The Ones We’re Meant to Find follows Cee, who is stuck alone on an island with no memory of her life before or how she got there, but she knows her sister Kay is out there somewhere and is working to get to her.  It also follows Kasey, a science prodigy who lives in an eco-city where people spend at least a third of their time in stasis pods to diminish their environmental impact.  While Kasey’s content with this lifestyle, her sister Celia craves the outside, and goes missing months before the story opens.  Kasey’s desire to determine exactly what happens to Celia drives the action in this amazing story.  

The Ones We’re Meant to Find is YA science fiction and dives deep into climate change, how communities relate to each other, power, justice, grief, family, implications of AI, celebrity, and more.  The way He layers themes in this mysteriously quiet-feeling story is truly magical, and the way the easter eggs are all laid out is what might drive me to reread this novel.  

My favorite part wasn’t the plethora of themes though, it was the writing.  He’s style is picturesque and melodic.  I could envision both Cee’s island and Kasey’s trip through the stratum.  I was engrossed in the story quickly after finding the rhythm of the alternating perspectives, and did not want the story to end, even when I saw it approaching and thoroughly appreciated the bow at the end.  

As mentioned earlier, I’m giving The Ones We’re Meant to Find five solid stars, and it has potential for a favorite of the year!  We’ll see if I reread it, but I’m very interested in He’s other novels.  

What’s a book that pleasantly surprised you with its depth of theme?

~Nikki 

The Ones We’re Meant to Find is Joan He’s debut novel and it is a doozy. She’s also written last year’s Descendant of the Crane, and Strike the Zither, a duology that will be finished up with next year’s release Sound the Gong. A native Philadelphian, she studied Psychology and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. But, currently splits her time between Chicago and Philly. As a child she was instructed in oil painting, but we’re so dang glad she decided that “storytelling is her favorite form of expression.” 

Like Nikki, I wish I could have just kept reading. The characters were immensely three dimensional, the plot took some time to figure out (but the slight mystery WAS THE POINT so that is not a complaint, just an observation), and the concept of society in a post-climate change world was amazingly new for me. The relationship between Kasey and her sister Celia was like so many sisterly stories, both a mirror into how other sisters act around and with one another and their other family members and a window into how different most sisters are and how they relate to each other. There were plot surprises I never expected to occur and one or two I anticipated that never came to fruition – but what we got was so much better than the expectation. 

Truly, this YA Science Fiction novel needs to have a genre all on its own, because that just doesn’t do it justice. It’s almost post-apocalyptic because of the new society that was created because of climate change, but yet it’s not. Maybe it’s just apocalyptic because they are still dealing with the process of everything changing – and you’d want space to be a bigger deal than it is, and it’s not and that’s oddly refreshing for science fiction.

I’m also giving this book a five star review. Not one ding dang complaint and so many things to warrant a re-read. Also, an excellent choice for a beach or pool-side title, and I’m so so glad Nikki found this off the Holds List.

~Ashley

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