Thank you Penguin Teen for giving me an early copy to read and review. All thoughts are my own!

I’m not too knowledgeable when it comes to Vietnamese lore and culture but after reading this; I intend to educate myself on it more.

I really enjoyed this plot and found each character interesting. I did get myself confused a little bit while reading but that’s mainly because I’m not familiar with the lore and history. I found the writing style very easy to understand and this book was very fast pace. I literally sat down and read this in one sitting.

I really enjoyed it going from “real world” to the “magic world” and how they were intertwined. There was one character I was getting irritated at but then at the end when something major happened, my heart broke.

I’m really excited for book two and I really hope it has more world building in it because I’m very intrigued with what’s going to happen next.

4 stars!

The mythological aspects are the best part of this book. The way it's written, though, makes it really hard to separate the visions from the reality, which I'm sure is the point, but it was jarring to read. I'm also just really burnt out on mean girls, so that made it harder to enjoy. I did not like Huong's friends or Jolie's ex-friends.

This is a slow-moving book with lots of bullying, which is not a fun combination for me. I loved certain parts and was so annoyed by others.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

Really interesting story based on Vietnamese folklore. The main character, Jolie, is likable and I found myself rooting for her. She’s having a horrible time in high school until she saves the queen bee popular girl, Huong. That should change her luck, but it just adds more complications. The Vietnamese folklore and mythology meshed into the story really make for a compelling read. I’m so happy I requested this book and even happier that I was approved to read. Thank you!

This Young Adult novel grabbed me from the first chapter and I couldn't stop reading. Great characters, an enticing story based on Vietnamese folklore, and unexpected twists made this a thoroughly enjoyable read. This is the first book in a duology and I can't wait to read the second book in the series. Highly recommended

Thanks to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for an advanced reader copy.

Am I the villain? Am I the drama?

I did not like this one for so many reasons, and I was so mad by the end of this book that I will not be picking up the rest of this duology.

First of all, I felt like this duology could've been a standalone. By the end of this book, it was giving "this meeting could've been an email" energy. The first 50% is so slow and all we do is linger in Jolie's sad sack life. All the twists were predictable, and these immortal gods all felt like immature children rather than powerful beings of earth and time.

I also found some of the dialogue to be filled with racial self hatred. Like what do you mean the full Viet teenager thinks the Bible is cooler than Viet history and mythology?? Also, one of the MCs racially discriminates against mixed people?? It felt very icky reading that. I kind of get how it plays into characterization, but it's barely countered so it almost normalizes it. There's also classism. Again, feeds into the character but the language felt out of place for a couple of high schoolers.

That leads me to dialogue and language as a whole. So much exposition, high schoolers sounding either too hauty or too over-the-top cruel, and immortals sounding like sixteen year old brats (you're hundreds of years old, get your life together??). I read an ARC, so I hope a lot of that is cleaned up for the final copy.

Lastly, the world building was okay. The mythology was mildly interesting, but it also started to become a mess in the second half. After a while, I kind of gave up on trying to follow the world building elements because the magic was all kind of everywhere. There's no real distinction between what the divine elements versus the prime elements do, and they all kind of are able to just make anything happen, so I don't see what makes one more special than the other?? Either way, it was kind of chaotic and the book ended the way it did in that kind of felt like someone took a breath in, but didn't get to exhale. So, there is drama, but it didn't capture me enough to want to read book two.

This was a highly anticipated book for me, and the version of it I read just didn't hit the mark in any way, shape, or form.

TW: vomit, injury detail, body shaming, dementia, ableism/ableist language, bullying, cyber bullying, death of a parent, war, fire/fire injury, toxic relationship, toxic friendship, gaslighting, grooming, alienation as a tactic for manipulation, emotional abuse, racism, micro-aggressions, suicidal ideation; mentions a pool accident, pregnancy, cancer, death, earthquake, car accident, disappearance of a minor, injury leading to blindness

ARC gifted by Penguin Teen Canada in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for an e-arc of this amazing book in exchange of a review.

I kind of asked for it without really reading the blurb.
I thought it was going to be an Isekai kind of story when in fact it was even better.

The story is a mix between the Vietnamese lore and the modern world. A battle between sisters. Magic and powers that can be shared.

I just cannot wait to read it’s sequel because when I turned the last page I was just begging for more of it 💞

This book delivered on most of what I expected from the description. I really loved the setting, and all of the references to Vietnamese folklore. The main character, Jolie, experiences a lot of character development throughout the book, and I think her character development is, for the most part, done well.
However, I did feel that the pacing was a little off, and that affected other aspects of the story. The pacing was slower for the first half of the book, and then picked up in the second half. Normally I enjoy books with a quicker pace, but I think the pace change was really to the detriment of plot points. There is a lot of being told what is happening in the second half of the book, rather than seeing those things actually happen. There were opportunities to have more developed side characters, and more character development for them was hinted at, but never actually achieved.
Overall, I enjoyed reading The Lost Queen, and I look forward to reading the sequel when it comes out.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy!
Rating: 3.75/5, rounded to 4

The Lost Queen by Aimee Phan was a surprising ride—slow to start but deeply rewarding by the end. What begins as a story about a bullied teenage girl slowly transforms into something much richer, blending contemporary teen issues with Vietnamese history, mythology, and unexpected emotional turns.

In the first half, we follow Jolie as she tries to navigate life after being targeted by her former friends. The bullying is intense and isolating, and it’s clear Jolie is struggling to find her place. At this point, I thought I was reading a standard coming-of-age YA. But then Huong enters the picture, and the story takes a sharp and fascinating turn.

The second half is where the novel truly shines. With the introduction of Huong’s backstory, we’re pulled into themes of heritage, reincarnation, and the powerful legacy of the Trung sisters—legendary warrior queens from Vietnamese history. This was my first time learning about them, and their story added incredible depth to the novel. There were moments that felt like filler early on, but they ultimately paid off, especially as the threads of the past and present began to intertwine.

Jolie’s character development was a highlight. Watching her transform from a timid, bullied girl into someone who begins to understand her strength and identity was incredibly satisfying. Huong, on the other hand, caught me completely off guard. She had me in the first half, and then—well, let’s just say the twist was wild.

While I wished some of the supporting characters had a bit more depth, the story’s emotional focus made up for it. It’s not just about bullying or family secrets—it’s about the weight of history, the bonds between women, and what it means to reclaim your voice.

The Lost Queen takes sophomore Jolie Lam through the journey of unlocking who she really is, the history of her family and the foundational story of Vietnam.
This book started out really strong and I really liked. I got bogged down with last part and the ending felt very abrupt. I really enjoyed the mythology and characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for this DRC.
#TheLostQueen #NetGalley

This one’s hard to review. I loved the first 40ish% and absolutely tore through it. We had unexplained / unwanted powers, dangerous visions, high school mean girls, a sprinkling of Vietnamese mythology, fraught family dynamics (made even more fraught with the added pressure of dementia). Jolie (though her name wasn’t mentioned until almost 1/3 into the book, whoops) was a very relatable protagonist; she has normal teenage girl problems, mixed race kid problems, absent father problems, bullying victim problems. And then we add some supernatural problems and things get much more interesting.

However, once the first layer of truth falls into place, we get kind of repetitive. Jolie loses her defined edges and gets swept up in Huong without really doing much. This is where it kind of started to lose me. We were told that Jolie was getting more confident, more popular (?), but we didn’t really see it. So little of the book actually takes place at school. It took us a long time to get to the “so what” - like, why do we care about the things Huong is telling us to care about.

And then when things shifted again, the villains all felt very cartoonish. We have the same sort of “why should anyone care about weak, mortal humans? Blah blah blah” speech over and over by 4 different people.

I did like the end a lot and think it really brought our sisters full circle, but it also felt a little too neat.

The premise here is fantastic: reincarnated warrior sisters, magic rooted in Vietnamese folklore, and a modern setting. It sounded like exactly the kind of book I’d want to love. And I do think there’s something really valuable about what it’s trying to do.

But the execution didn’t land for me. The pacing felt off, and the emotional moments that should have hit just didn’t. I liked the idea of the sister dynamic, but it stayed surface-level when I wanted more depth. It’s not that it was bad. It just felt like it could have been so much more.

Still, I’m glad it exists. Readers who connect with the cultural elements or who like quieter YA fantasy might get more out of it than I did.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

As a Vietnamese-American who was highly anticipating this book, it breaks my heart to be rating this so low. I was so excited for the incorporation of Vietnamese myth and culture, and to be fair, those were the parts of the book I enjoyed the most, but everything else was...disappointing, to say the least. I wanted a lot more from this book than it gave me. The prose was not lyrical as I was promised but lackluster; the dialogue tags were littered with very basic "said"s with little exploration of how the characters were actually feeling/acting. I feel like Jolie's numerous realizations came out of nowhere because there was no real exploration of how she reached them. The characters' dialogue and interactions came across flat and basic; I felt a lot of times like they were repeating the same arguments to each other. There was also a lot of telling instead of showing, particularly in the last 25% which I really struggled through because of all the sudden revelations that weren't properly foreshadowed until the moment they're revealed and also because the sequence of events was just plain confusing. I think the author was going for a surreal and dreamy atmosphere but the transitions between the mundane and the fantastical were jarring and didn't flow very well. I also never really felt transported back to ancient Vietnam in certain portions because of how bare-bones the descriptions were, and I feel like I had a difficult time understanding how the elements worked and what "realms" are even supposed to be. Speaking of the elements, the whole quest (if you can call it that) to hunt them down felt very underwhelming; I think this is part of the reason why I didn't feel like I fully grasped their significance.

A major issue with this book also is the lack of depth in the characters and relationships. I thought there was a lot of potential with Jolie and Huong's relationship in the beginning and I see what the author was going for, but it just wasn't executed very well, with Jolie's feelings seeming to flip flop at certain times. To be fair, this can be realistic in real life relationships but I think here it could've been executed more smoothly in a subtler way. Another area where I feel like there was missed potential was Jolie's relationships with her two former friends. Because Jolie is hanging out with Huong for most of the book, we never really get to have a good sense of how good friends they were before Jolie's incident and are again just told that they were, so interactions with them felt very shallow. There was a similar lack of development for Huong's relationships with KT and Harsha, as well as certain other characters around her. I get the focus of the book is on Jolie and Huong but the rest of the characters should've appeared much more and been fleshed out more for the author's ideas to work. I did like Jolie's relationship with Ông Nội, however.

All in all, I didn't hate this book but it was underwhelming to me and I had more issues with it than things I liked. I'm not sure I'll pick up the sequel, but I'm not opposed to reading more of the author's work in the future and I wish her the best.

Unfortunately this is a DNF for me. I really tried to give it a shot but it comes across veryyy young even for a YA. I typically love YA fantasy so this was a bit of a disappointing surprise. I also did not enjoy the interactions between characters a lot of the time. It was giving me flashbacks to the cringy dialogue and characters I wrote on wattpad in middle school…

I’m sure I would’ve loved this if I were younger but sadly adult me cannot get through this.

This book was an advance reader copy given by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This was the story of Jolie, a bullied teenager, who learns she is a reincarnated goddess. This revelation changes her life as she puts together the pieces of her past life, discovering her sister and brothers and a power that she never realized she had.

The pacing felt slow to me, which is why I gave it the rating I did.

I was new to Vietnamese Mythology going into this book, so I can’t speak with any knowledge on the comparison, but I loved the concept of dragons and reincarnation.

The world was original and wonderfully vibrant. I’m excited that this will be more of a late spring, early summer read for most because that is the perfect season for this. I felt transported into this colorful world through lush descriptions and an interesting plot.

The characters were fully developed, interesting to follow, and had their own struggles. I was rooting for Jolie the whole time.

If you’re a lover of YA fantasy, this is a must read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Young Readers for this ARC!

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Lost Queen by Aimee Phan is a first person YA contemporary fantasy retelling the story of the Trưng sisters. After a freakout the previous year, Jolie Lam has lost her old friends, Daphne and Lana, and is going through high school as an ostracized loner. When she saves Huong, a popular new student from Vietnam, after an accident at the school pool, Huong takes a liking to her. Their friendship will be the beginning of the end of a story centuries in the making.

I rarely comment on covers, but I feel compelled to talk about this one, especially after finishing the book. The purple and yellow color scheme matches the colors associated with Huong and Jolie, respectively, and are the two colors that appear the most often in the text. The dragons are the brothers of the Trưng sisters and the bright white castle has a traditional Vietnamese structure that draws the eye to the center without overwhelming any of the other pieces. My favorite part is the magical girl-esque composition, especially with the bottom of the cover being a reflection that features a modern setting and Jolie’s current life.

The rest of this review is not spoiler free

A major theme is toxic friendships and finding out who you can trust after someone has wormed their way into your life and destroyed your other relationships. I think a lot of people want obvious red flags when finding abusers, but some people are extremely good at hiding it and people who are trusting or lonely can miss obvious signs. Isolated, compassionate people are often targeted for a reason and it’s never their fault. I think it’s great for YA to explore these themes with friendships, not only romance, because friendships can be just as destructive and abusive as a romantic or familial relationship. I thought something was weird was going on, but it took a long time for me to start seeing any signs and I suspect that the centuries of waiting played a part in how well so much was hidden.

I really appreciated how there was a bit of a history lesson at the beginning of the book regarding the tensions between the Han and Vietnam and then expanded out to highlight tensions between some other Asian nations, though not in detail. I wasn’t surprised at all that some of the students of Asian descent drew lines and started treating each other with distrust as the impact of these historical events can have far-reaching consequences and it was rarely just one conflict, but was often a series of them. Things are often skipped in world history classes and a focus on European history is, unfortunately, common, so taking the time to spell this out a bit will help readers who are unfamiliar with the history of Vietnam will have a bit more background to better understand the significance of the Trưng sisters.

Content warning for abusive friendships

I would recommend this to fans of contemporary fantasy retellings and readers of YA looking for biracial leads exploring complex topics

3.5

The Lost Queen is a surreal YA coming-of-age story that blends Vietnamese mythology with the perils of being an outcast teenager in California. Following Jolie Lam, after an embarrassing and disastrous swim meet that has her labelled as ‘Loser Lam’, when she starts experiencing strange visions and dreams that link her to the legendary goddesses of ancient Vietnam she quickly realizes that the world she knew is about to be changed forever.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book, I loved the juxtaposition between Jolie’s school life and her learning more about Vietnamese mythology and coming to terms with her newfound powers. However, at the 60% mark, I felt the pacing of the story to be a bit strange, there was a lot of information being thrown at the reader then everything comes to a head in the final battle in the end and the revelation from both Jolie and Huong at the end seemed really rushed before the story ended.

I will say, I always love surrealist and dreamy explorations of myth and identity, and I really enjoyed the way we got to see these Vietnamese tales being brought to life in the novel!

Thank you to Penguin Teen for this e-arc. All opinions in this review are my own.

A novel YA fantasy story rich in vietnamese culture and lore. This story is set in modern day California - following our heroine Jolie, a mix vietnamese American. This start to get weirder when she starts having visions and magical ability.

The pacing of the story is good imbued with the lore that helps propel the story along. I like the interpretation of the Lore. I have never heard of vietnamese lore so this was very unique.

The cover art is fantastic with the ao dai contribution.
And who does not love dragons

Thank you PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, and NetGalley for the advanced electronic review copy of this book. This is a wonderful blend of Vietnamese mythology in a contemporary fantasy setting. Great characters, fast moving action filled plot that grips you and doesn’t let you go till the end. Would love to see more written in this world.

Thank you to Netgallery & the publisher for a free arc for review. All opinions are my own.

I made it 4% in and it's just so bad. The writing is just awful. The story has contractions, and multiple times I had to reread pages to even try to read it.