What an interesting look at mom guilt at its finest. Strong character development. A slow burn plot. Interesting, but just not quite enough to keep my attention.

Becoming is a lifelong process

Just before dawn on a Sunday morning in Shanghai, twenty two year old Lindsey Litvak is standing on a street corner waiting for a car to pick her up. She is in the financial district so the streets are deserted, she has her earbuds in listening to music and is texting people in her life. It is just bad luck that an inebriated young man driving much too fast takes the corner too sharply, hitting the unsuspecting Lindsey and sending her body flying. The driver has no idea what he has done and continues on, leaving Lindsey unconscious on the pavement. While she lies comatose in a nearby hospital the police work to identify her; once they have done so, they notify the American consulate. Claire, Lindsey's mother, gets a late night call informing her that her daughter has been injured in a hit and run. She and her ex-husband Aaron head to China as quickly as they can, stunned at the news and uncertain of what the future may hold, leaving their younger daughter Grace at the summer camp where she has spent the last few weeks. Nothing makes sense....why was Lindsey in Shanghai when, to the best of their knowledge, she was in Beijing teaching English? Why was she in the financial district at that time of night, dressed in a party dress and standing on a corner? There are many question and many fault lines in the LItvak family relationships which slowly come to light as the story unfolds, any of which may have played a role in Lindsey being in that particular place at that particular time. The only thing that is certain is that none of their lives will ever be the same.
There are some novels that from the first pages that I read I am immediately transported into the story that is unfolding, the characters seiming so real and the tale too intriguing not to follow until the end. Rabbit Moon is just such a novel, and in the hands of an author as gifted as Jennifer Haigh it came as no great surprise to me that I was so instantly invested in the people to whom I was being introduced. Lindsey is the biggest mystery, the reader learns about who she is, what has impacted her life, why she has come to China, and what she is doing there only gradually. Johnny Du, who presents himself to his parents as the good son they want him to be while living a very different life when in the city, has become Lindsey's best friend in Shanghai...together they can be completely themselves and shed the personas they present to the world. Claire, who has been estranged from her daughter the last two years, is devastated at Lindsey's condition and is desperate to find a way to make her well. Aaron, always a distant father to his children as they grew up as he worked to build his company, now becomes fixated on solving what happened, who was driving the car, certain the police aren't doing their job. And Grace, the daughter they adopted from China years earlier, stuck at a camp she didn't want to go to in the first place and being given only limited information about what has happened to the older sister she adores, knows that something is horribly wrong. Weaving together themes of the bonds of sisterhood, the question of identity, the failures of marriage and the effects a divorce has on every member of the family, imperfect families, cultural divides, and the corrosive nature of guilt, Ms Haigh has crafted a beautiful, gripping and heartbreaking tale of a family who has lived through painful trials and must now confront their worst nightmare. The writing is taut but lovely, the characters beautifully drawn and nuanced, and the story a hypnotic read...I rate it 4.5 ⭐️ rounded up to 5.. Fans of the author's previous novels will not want to miss this latest offering, and readers of Celeste Ng, Elizabeth Strout and Lily King will not regret picking up a copy at the earliest opportunity. My thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for allowing me access to a copy of this book which took hold of me from the very first page.

A red-haired woman standing on the side of a road in Shanghai is hit by a car, then hours later is transported to the hospital. The police contact her parents, Aaron and Claire Litvak, who quickly make their way to China, leaving their other daughter, Grace, behind at summer camp. Both parents believed Lindsey to have been teaching English in Beijing for the last two years, so they're surprised to find her in a hospital 800 miles away, living in a sterile apartment full of fancy dresses. The story explores Aaron and Claire's differing reactions and priorities in the face of Lindsey's crisis, how Lindsey ended up where she was, and the impact that all of these events had on the family.

The story was told through alternating and perspectives and timelines, which showed how different characters interpreted events differently. This also helped to highlight why some of their relationships to each other were so dysfunctional. The story mostly focuses on the members of the Litvak family, but it also includes some people who were in the periphery of the events. I found the writing to be quite beautiful, although it did hold the characters at a little bit of a distance. I think I would have liked it even more if it had gone just a little bit more in depth with the characters. The book explores themes of adoption, family, heritage, and romantic relationships and their complications. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy stories about the dynamics of relationships both romantic and familial.

A young American woman living in Shanghai is the victim of a random hit-and-run. Lindsey ends up in the hospital, in critical condition. How did she find herself in Shanghai? What brought her to the street she was on when she was hit? In Rabbit Moon, Jennifer Haigh digs deep to answer these questions and more.

Lindsey's divorced parents arrive in Shanghai. Her younger sister Grace, adopted from a Chinese orphanage as an infant, remains stateside at summer camp. The narrative spins around these family members, their back stories in this propulsive family drama. Vibrant Shanghai is a character too as these Americans, fish out of water, try to deal with Chinese culture and bureaucracy, and their pasts.

This novel is moving, poignant, and pointed. Haigh's characters are individuals with unique motivations, unique responses to the traumas they face. There's a good dose of humor too - Grace at camp, the divorced parents navigating being together after their divorce, American tourists in China... and Lindsey herself, a spitfire.

My thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown for the Advance Reader Copy. (pub date 4/1/2025)

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Rabbit Moon.

When their daughter's tragic accident in Shanghai brings two divorced parents together, the former couple is forced to come to terms about their child's life and the events that culminate at their daughter's bedside.

I liked the descriptions of Shanghai but I didn't understand the point of the story.

Why should we care about the Litvaks?

The parents are deeply unlikable and spend the better part of their time in Shanghai bemoaning the other person's flaws and eccentricities.

Why did these people get married at all?

Lindsey is young, beautiful, and impressionable, and has deeply-rooted Freudian Daddy issues.

This is apparent from the terrible choices she makes with men and how susceptible she is to certain types of men, namely married men with families. She's obviously seeking a father figure since her own father works tirelessly and ceaselessly and rarely spent any time with him.

Johnny, Lindsey's BFF, and Grace, her adopted sister from China, are the only interesting characters but even their character development is brief.

The writing is good, but dry, the tone informative, lacking depth, empathy and emotion.

There were parts of the narrative that read as filler like the POV of Sun, the landlord. I guess it was to highlight his own feelings for Lindsey and the young ladies renting in his building.

I'm left wondering what's the point of the story?

Is it about Grace, navigating two worlds, her Chinese side and her adopted side by white parents in America? Her enduring love for her sister?

Is it about Lindsey, who never achieved her true potential because of the poor decisions she made?

Is it about their parents, who seem better off without the other, and ironically seem to have flourished after the eldest child's death?

Or is it just about a dysfunctional family and we all know one or are a part of one so who cares?

3.5 stars —

• when they find out their 22-year-old daughter lindsay has been hurt in a hit-and-run in china, where she’s been teaching english, divorced parents claire & aaron rush to her side. the accident reopens old wounds, and forces them to reexamine the event that ended their marriage & estranged lindsay from them. one thing’s for sure though: nothing is what it seems.
• this story was fast-paced, and the changing perspectives really allowed the reader to see the different sides of what happened & how we got here. i particularly liked learning lindsay’s side of events, and why she ended up in shanghai (when she was thought to be in beijing).
• the audiobook narration for this book was really well done, especially when we got grace’s perspective (with a new narrator) in the final chapter.

When I was 24, I lived In Beijing for 6 months. I went with the naivete of a young foreigner, learning barely any mandarin and assuming I could get by on English and lots of hand gestures (I could not). It was an incredibly challenging period of my life but one that I loved and am eternally grateful for. For this reason, novels about expats in China are particularly close to my heart.

In RABBIT MOON, Lindsey lives in Shanghai. She has been intrigued by Chinese culture since she travelled with her mother to adopt her little sister Grace ten years earlier. When Lindsey's divorced parents receive a call that Lindsey is in the hospital in Shanghai- and not Beijing where they think she has been living for the past 2 years- as a result of a hit and run, their lives are shattered. As Lindsey lies in a coma, their thoughts travel from why Lindsey lied about where she is living and what might have driven her to drop out of college and move halfway across the world in the first place.

Lindsey was a young girl when something bad happened that subconsciously impacted all facets of her life since. Lindsey thinks she has moved on, but like poison, the event from her past has seeped into every decision she's made and altered her life's current trajectory. Lindsey's parents are still at odds over the issue. Lindsey's father thinks he handled the issue the best way he could: Lindsey's mother disagrees and can't forgive him for it. In their anger it seems that what they have forgotten is Lindsey herself.

This is a beautifully written novel about familial relationships and the breakdown of relationships between husbands and wives, fathers and mothers and daughters. It is told in 3 parts- Lindsey's parents POV, Lindsey's POV and then an amalgamation of other supporting characters' POVs, such as Lindsey's gay best friend Johnny Du, her childhood friend, her building managers and ending with her sister Grace, who also makes an appearance earlier in the book.

I was left wanting a little more from the ending, however. The first two-thirds of the book were so compelling and unputdownable, I just wish the last third had packed a bigger punch and perhaps addressed some of the accountability that had been misplaced by the adults in the first two parts.

Haigh is a new to me author but I will definitely be checking out her other publications. Thank you Little, Brown and Company and Hachette Book Group Canada for my copy.

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc and an alc!

this was a sad read about a broken american family facing their complicated past after the eldest daughter dies in a hit and run in china, but i really didn’t feel connected to any members of the family, or the supporting cast.

as for the audio, i loved that there were two narrators, and both did a fantastic job!

Thank you, NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company, for allowing me to read this book early. The opinion in this review is my own.

Lindsay was the victim of a hit-and-run accident while living in China. Her divorced parents need to come together and go to Shanghai to be with Lindsay while she’s in a coma. The last time they spoke with Lindsay, she was working to teach English to Chinese children. Lindsay confides in her adopted sister, Grace, who is a native born Chinese. Grace is the only person in the family who knows what Lindsay is actually doing in Shanghai.

Told in past and present timelines with multiple viewpoints that divulge little bits of information at a time. This book was paced well, but was deliberately written to be a bit slower. It’s one you should plan to take your time with. The writing is beautiful and the dialogue feels natural. This book raised lots of topics like inter-racial adoption. sister love, cultural issues with sexism and homosexuality, broken families, and many more, but I don’t want to give any spoilers. This book gives the reader a lot to think about. The ending had a bit too many coincidences for my liking. Sometimes, that feels like an easy way to wrap up a story, and I didn’t appreciate that. I highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates literary fiction.

Set in Shanghai, Lindsey Litvak, a 22 year old taking a gap year to "teach English" is involved in a hit and run accident, propelling her divorced parents to Shanghai to deal with the aftermath and her sister, her closest confident and also Chinese born, to deal with the grief after losing her sister. This book covers a LOT of themes, but the author is an expert storyteller.

Positives:
Many themes addressed: divorce, intercultural adoption, sister relationships, family dramas, underage sexual relationships, sex workers and abuse, death.
The character of the younder sister, Grace, added SO much to the storyline and character development. The book would not have been complete without her and the final 20% of the book.
Writing and pacing were excellent

Negatives:
I wish we could have heard from Grace and her storyline throughout the novel. More about what she went through being adopted from China and raised in a upper class Boston suburb by white parents.

Smart, thought-provoking, sad, and wistful—this was such a sympathetic portrait of two sisters and the circumstances that pushed them to places they never dreamed they'd go. I couldn't put this down.

Thank you to the publisher, Little, Brown & Co. for an advance copy of this amazing novel. This was my first Jennifer Haigh novel, and I'm already eager to consume her backlist. How have I missed out all these years?

Rabbit Moon is a story about family - Aaron, Claire, and their daughters Lindsey and Grace. Claire and Aaron are divorced. Lindsey, their tall red-haired daughter, dropped out of Wesleyan and, long fascinated by the country, moved to China to teach English. Grace, who was adopted as an infant from China, is 10 years younger than Lindsey. Lindsey is hit by a car in the first few pages of the story. Early one morning, a groggy Claire receives a call from the United States Consulate in Shanghai with the news that her daughter has been gravely injured and is in the hospital. Shocked and confused (Lindsey was supposed to be teaching English in Beijing) Claire is on a flight to China as quickly as possible. She meets Aaron there, and together they navigate a land that is very foreign, and a daughter it seems they hardly knew at all.

Rabbit Moon - while about a broken family on a macro level - does a brilliant job of demonstrating the devastation caused by failure of communication. When Aaron and Claire receive the life-altering news of their daughter's accident, neither can remember the last real conversation they had with her, nor had either of them seen her since she left for China two years prior. Lindsey's closest friend in Shanghai, Jun (Johnny) Du, unable to tell his family he's gay, lies to them every Sunday about his 'girlfriend" Lin. Grace, though "100% Han Chinese" was adopted by Aaron and Claire at 7 months old, and doesn't know a word of Mandarin. As an adult, as she looks at pictures of Lindsey, she studies a tattoo on Lindsey's shoulder. It's a Mandarin character, and Grace needs a friend to translate for her. It's Grace. Taken aback, Grace things, "I should have been able to recognize myself."

The story comes full circle in the end, though perhaps with once coincidence too many. I enjoyed this book immensely, and I'll happily recommend it to anyone who asks.

Pre-Read notes

I was offered a widget of this one. I liked the premise, so I grabbed it. The cover drew me in as well. I am reading and enjoying a few different stories about decolonization, an important theme that makes good stories.

Final Review

The little boy was a preexisting condition; Shen had made him with another woman without knowing there was a Lindsey in the world. But for him to have a second child with his wife would be an unspeakable betrayal, an anguish too terrible to bear. p113

Review summary and recommendations

Sun’s grandmother is dead now, his wife, his parents . He has no children or grandchildren. He is a human island, unconnected to any living person on Earth. p164

Reading Notes

Three things I loved:

1. Without his glasses, he looked younger and gentler, curiously undefended. It was more intimate, in a way, than seeing him naked. p112 One of the hardest things to write in fiction is vulnerability. Here and elsewhere, Haigh masterfully describes that subtle drive possessed by every creature--measuring the risk implicit in everything we to, to one degree or another.

2. This book builds to an incredibly tense and suspenseful second act, leveraging a timeline that is just experimental enough, insightful character development, and a compelling storyline about how our choices and actions can pigeonhole us into the tiny boxes in other people's minds.

3. She had never smoked a cigarette in her life. Meanwhile, Sun, who has smoked since age ten, is in perfect health. It’s a diabolical punishment, a fate worse than cancer, to have caused the death of the woman he loved. Thinking of it fills him with despair, which makes him want to smoke. Since her death, it is his only consolation. p163 This book is full of this wonderful, heartbreaking irony.

One thing I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. I don't usually go for oscillating timelines, but I find this captivating. One reason why it is successful is because the transitions from one section to another are clean and the storyline remains logical.

Rating: 🐇🐇🐇🐇 /5 rabbits
Recommend? yes
Finished: Mar 10 '25
Format: accessible digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
🙃 irony
👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏼 sister stories
👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 family drama
🪢 experimental form

Thank you to the author Jennifer Haigh, publishers Little, Brown, & Co., and NetGalley for an accessible advance digital copy of RABBIT MOON. All views are mine.
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Lindsey Litvak’s parents get a call notifying them that Lindsey has been hit by a car and is in a coma. They know nothing of her life in China, as she only speaks with her adopted sister, Grace, since she moved abroad. As pieces of her life in China is revealed, they realize they knew even less than they thought.

This was my favorite book of Jennifer Haigh’s yet. It’s a new adult story incorporating a lot of culture and nuances of coming of age in a culture different than your own. I loved how we are looking backwards into what happened before the accident and learning as we go. I also loved how every character had different information and took away a different version of the story. That for me was piece de resistance because it was so true to life and not wrapped up neatly like a lot of literature is. Lindsey and Grace are both such unique characters, and very different from each other. This is a book you’ll want to take your time with and truly absorb.

“We live at the intersection of causality and chance.”

Rabbit Moon comes out 4/1.

I know this book has gotten alot of pre release press and I was really looking forward to diving in. Although I enjoyed the writing, overall, not so sure I would recommend it. A bit slow a bit off but I wish you the best with the book.

This is my second book by Jennifer Haigh after having enjoyed The Condition. In Rabbit Moon we meet Lindsey, a young American woman who has had more life experience than her age, living in Shanghai. Her divorced parents are called to Shanghai after learning that their daughter has been in a terrible hit and run accident. They had thought she was teaching English in Beijing and will spend some of their time trying to learn what their daughter has been up to. The only one who knows a little more is her little sister, by ten years, Grace. While the reader waits to find out if Lindsey will come out of a coma, we are provided with Lindsey’s accounting of the past year interspersed with her parents’ viewpoint from Shanghai.

I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel and found the writing and pacing spot on. There were many interesting characters to get to know. While I love a good character, it perhaps was a small flaw as the focus grabbing took away from the story. There is some historical context and a bit of mystery to add interest. The viewpoints, and the final part of the book, that takes place in 2031, didn’t feel like the author was trying to make too much commentary about the time other than how the past appears which I appreciated.

Our present is informed by our past; because of this I would have liked a little more depth from part of Lindsey’s storyline. She is told by a woman that the people she works with are just like Lindsey. Lindsey says something along the lines of ‘without knowing anything about me, including my history, this woman knew exactly what I was.’ I’m not sure I understand this statement fully after reading the book. It could be taken to mean a few different things and maybe that is the point but I feel like a paragraph was missing in the narrative.

We get some detail on how a young Grace views her sister and her parents and a little bit about her as an adult but given the many references to the Cultural Revolution/interracial adoption, I was expecting the story to include more of her storyline.

Thank you to @netgalley and @littlebrown for an eARC in exchange for my honest opinions. Rabbit Moon publishes April 1, 2025.

Jennifer Haigh understands how to suss out a story behind cultural movements and moments, the topography of landscapes and of capitalism, con men and con women, families and communities fizzing apart, and always, the misconceptions of love. She is confident throughout and such a chillingly skilled storyteller that you will follow her anywhere even when you know she is leading you off a cliff, or into the wilds, or speeding toward the center of a doomed enterprise. Rabbit Moon opens in Shanghai when Lindsey Litvak, a striking American girl in her early 20s, gets struck in a hit and run accident. Her phone is gone and she is in a coma. Her divorced parents, Claire and Aaron, who think she is in Beijing teaching English, rush overseas to the hospital; her beloved much younger sister Grace, a Chinese adoptee, is in a Quaker summer camp and is kept in the dark about Lindsey’s situation. But Claire and Aaron are also in the dark about their beautiful daughter’s mysterious life and the plot deftly pivots between flashbacks and clues to this, as well the unraveling of their marriage, the skewering of faith, and the small misunderstood moments and that define a friendship, an affair, a family relationship, and a sense of self. Haigh writes so well: Lindsey’s story is told in fragments that only coalesce toward the end, when a fully grown Grace takes over the narration. There is abundant beauty and sadness here, frequently transformative, in the narration and the power of the wide range of characters spinning out from their timelines. It is something that lingers and grows, long after the book is finished. Haigh does not shy away from big issues: the ethics of adopting babies from other cultures, postpartum alienation, and the mechanisms and long-term repercussions of sexual predators, and the staggering fragility of life.

After a 20 year old American girl is struck by car in Shanghai and left in a coma, the implications are far reaching for her friends and family.

Quite intrigued by the premise, I loved the implications and possibilities of where this might go. In the end, I liked it but perhaps it didn't quite achieve those highest highs I was hoping for.

It took a while to care about the characters and felt like even longer to learn anything about Lindsey. The second act, her backstory and motivation is quite well done but the other characters and the ultimate conclusion to the story is a little thin.

Pleased to have read this one and eager to check out the author's other works. Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to review in advance in exchange for my honest opinion.

Twenty-two year old Lindsey is struck by a drunk driver in Shanghai and lies comatose. Her parents fly to be by her bedside, unsure she will survive her head wound. Her younger sister Grace is away at summer camp and is kept in the dark about Lindsey’s condition. Young, brilliant, but deeply troubled, Lindsay has led a secret life in Shanghai, the truth of which unfolds slowly. Rabbit Moon is a portrait of a family in crisis and it tackles many issues: post-natal depression, divorce cause by crisis, the ensuing trauma of divorce, foreign adoption, sibling bonds, and sexual abuse of a minor.

Rabbit Moon is a deeply affecting novel with well formed characters and setting. Haigh has a unique ability to craft characters of depth and they broke my heart.

Highly recommend.

The story: Rabbit Moon starts with a hit-and-run: Lilly/Lindsay is living and working in Shanghai when she is hit by a car in the early morning hours. We then learn about Lindsay’s lifer — how she came to China to teach English, and her family life back at home in Newton, Massachusetts. Her parents are divorced. Her 11-year-old sister, Grace, is at camp in New Hampshire. This is a slow burn family drama with some mystery to it.

My thoughts: Haight developed the characters in this book in a way that made them jump to life. This book won’t be for everyone, but I enjoy family dramas. The change of narrator late in the book was a bit jarring on audio, but it didn’t detract from the book for me.