The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King is a dual POV from the perspective of Monica Tsai and her grandmother Yumi. In the backdrop of magical realism, in this story the women are able to reforge the writings of others using magical pencils, and this is how Yumi and her cousin Meng were able to act as spies during WWII in Shanghai.

The magical system is simple and easy to understand, and provides great information on WWII Shanghai. I would strongly recommend this novel to those who like WWII historical fiction, sapphic romance, generational stories and magical realism executed in a slow burn.

Thank you William Morrow and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this eARC. All opinions are my own.

Rating: 4 stars
Pub Date: Jun 03 2025

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This book! I love a book that uses real events as a backdrop to something new - the magical realism of Reforging pencils to learn what someone wrote with them was so incredibly interesting. I loved learning about Yun’s story and the power of modern technology in Monica’s. I do admit that I wish I spent more time in Yun's memories, but really enjoyed the multi-generational story.

The Phoenix Pencil Company is a fascinating debut, that reminds us of how important it is to pass stories along from generation to generation but also, serves as a warning to what we are giving up in return for using present technology to record those stories.

The story alternates POV chapters between Monica, in present day Massachusetts, and her grandmother in the present day, as well as her time in Shanghai during the occupation by Japanese forces.

Monica’s family has a magical secret, and she’s desperate to uncover it, since her grandmother’s health is steadily declining and she fears it could be lost forever. However, when Monica unearths the secret, she is conflicted on whether it really is a gift, or a curse. It has been used for bad in the past, but it also can be used for good.

This book is a solid historical fiction novel, with some magic thrown in, and a dash of romance. I learned a lot about WWII in Shanghai and really felt deeply for the characters, since they were so well written.

I highly recommend this book to fans of The Midnight Library, or anyone who enjoys a history lesson with a bit of magic thrown in.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

What an astonishing debut! Brimming with a singular combination of nostalgia and magical realism, this story captivated me from the outset.

In an early scene at the pencil factory, we’re told that a pencil’s use—whether it will for sketching, drawing, writing—will determine the appropriate blend of graphite. It should be the perfect balance of softness and darkness. I don’t know what kind of pencil the author selected to write this story, but her pencil heart was certainly perfectly calibrated.

At its core, this is a family story with all its concomitant baggage. It deftly explores the tension of privacy and secrets, remembrance and reframing, history and absolution.

The story is expertly told, with incisive, reflective writing. The portrayal of war-time Shanghai was nuanced and complicated, and as the story unfolded I found myself deeply invested. The chapters in Taiwan were particularly compelling, and I'm motivated to read more about that period of Taiwanese history.

This was such an enjoyable and insightful read. My gratitude to Netgalley and William Morrow for the opportunity to read this marvelous novel.

I never expected this book to be what it was. The premise sounded interesting, a little historical fiction, a little magic realism, a lot of family drama, Asian culture. dual timelines, diary entries.. Right up my alley. The characters were very well-written, and well-rounded. They grew as the story went on. The dual timeline was done very well.

The whole idea of pencils being able to not only record words but also secrets, through a process called "reforging" was intriguing.

This was a debut novel for this author, and it's fantastic. I hope she has many more books in her and I will read every one.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the chance to read and review a copy of this book. All opinions expressed are mine and freely given.

The Phoenix Pencil Company is a multi-generational saga with elements of magical realism. Each chapter switches between the grandmother’s story of growing up in Shanghai and the granddaughter’s story in present-day Boston. The grandmother’s family owned the Phoenix Pencil Company, where her mother makes pencils that seem ordinary, but allow them to access all of the words the pencil ever writes. This was utilized during WWII and the communist takeover in China, forcing the grandmother to leave her whole family and move to the US. The granddaughter is trying to help her grandmother reconnect to her heritage, and in the process meets a fellow college student who becomes a potential love interest.

This has a lot of elements I love - a multi-generational saga set during WWII in Asia? Sign me up! Secret magical pencils? I’m in! The premise was incredibly engaging and the history lesson on the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and eventual fall to the communist party was really interesting to me. But the story had some pacing issues, and the present-day storyline with the granddaughter didn't have enough meat to keep me interested.

Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow, and Allison King for my review copy!

“The pencil is one of the simplest yet most revolutionary tools ever created…(a) humble writing instrument…an essential part of human creativity and expression.”

A mix of powdered graphite and clay was shaped into rods and baked. By adjustment to the clay-to-graphite ratio, pencils of varying darkness and hardness would then be placed in a cedar wood casing. This reader loves pencils…pencils in triangular casing, sports team casing, Hello Kitty and super student casings. Pencils rule!

Monica Tsai had been raised by her grandparents, both now in their nineties. Seventy years ago, Grandma Yun lost touch with her cousin, Meng. Yun rarely spoke about the Phoenix Pencil Company, run in Shanghai, by the matriarchs of the family. The husbands/fathers were fighting in two subsequent wars. Yun was reluctant to speak about her haunted past filled with regret. She wished to right a wrong, to beg Meng for forgiveness. Using modern technological coding, Monica was able to “spark a connection with Louise Sun”. Louise had posted, " I’ve been having the time of my life in Shanghai this summer with the absolute BOSS sitting next to me here. She lived through the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and ran the Phoenix Pencil Company…They would make custom pencils for people all over…One of the only woman-run companies in the city at the time!” Meng wanted Louise to send a package to Yun. The package contained…a pencil. Meng’s pencil, in striking black was like the pencils Monica found in the attic of her grandparents house. “The point wasn’t sharp, yet the lead still shone. At the opposite end of the point was a carving of a phoenix”. After seventy years, why would Meng attach importance to a used pencil?

How could families record shared history during a time of upheaval in Shanghai…in a time of “war and betrayal’? Yun and Meng each had a version of the same truth that plagued the family. Through the matriarchal line, a gift (or curse) was put to use…reforging pencils. This superpower could be used for good or unleashed to do harm. People from all walks of life came to the pencil factory for a “pencil fitting” to try out different graphite compositions and then select from a multitude of cedar casing designs. One day, a policeman named Gao came for a fitting. The Wong family was wary of the police who cooperated with local gangs and aided the Japanese in controlling Shanghai. In order to secure their safety, Yun and Meng were forced to reforge battered pencils left by Gao while he left with pristine ones. Nosy neighbors were always on the alert to report any unusual activity.

Reforging -a method by which the point of a pencil was forced into the wrist so that the pencil’s heart flowed into the arm creating the scarring image of a phoenix. The used pencil’s words could either be saved by the reforger, as a memory, or could be blotted onto paper as a written message. In this way, Gao and others, passed wartime messages and strategies to the higher ups. The women of the pencil factory were intimidated and therefore, cooperated.

Yun had “survived wars, moved all over the world, learned new languages and customs…Now her mind is going to betray her, slowly and steadily.” Before she forgets, it is hoped that through reforging she would share her life journey with her granddaughter, Monica.

This very inventive read of literary fiction, by debut author Allison King, focuses on the importance of recording ancestral history to keep family memories alive for future generations.

Highly recommended.

Thank you William Morrow and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When I first heard about this book from Modern Mrs. Darcy, it immediately appealed to me — family drama? secrets? magical pencils? Sign me up! It did not disappoint.

Monica spends this book trying to unravel the mystery surrounding her grandmother's pas, trying to reconnect with family, and trying to decide just what she wants to do with her life — should she stay in college or quit to go work for a computer startup she's been working on while in school? When a family emergency sends her home for a semester off, she learns more about her grandmother's past and her family legacy, the Phoenix Pencil Company, and the unusual ability her family has to reforge memories from those pencils. Her part of the story comes to us via an electronic journal she keeps. At the same time, her grandmother, Wong Yun, is writing her life story with one of her family's pencils, and we're reading as she writes. She begins in Shanghai when she was a child, continuing through her present day in 2018.

Together, their stories create a picture of Wong Yun's life, but they also make us ask questions of ourselves: whose right is it to know your story? what stories should be recorded and preserved as part of the historical record? what do we lose and what do we gain by sharing our stories and data online? what might we gain by keeping some stories to and for ourselves?

I enjoyed the unfolding of Wong Yun's story, and I appreciated seeing Monica's growth over the course of this book. When I finally understood what was happening with both parts and what the implications of that were, it made me appreciate the story more. I'm not sure I'll ever look at a pencil in quite the same way again.

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley. Opinions are my own.

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

I so very badly want Meng's superpower of Reforging that, once I encountered it, I was unable...okay, unwilling but really, really unwilling...to stop reading the story. Injecting an author's actual words directly into my veins?

Magical pencil me, Yun! (Or Monica, if you're now possessed of the power.)

So there you have it, laddies and gentlewomen. My officially enthroned favorite fantasy trope that utterly bypasses my usual Chosen-One Hidden Powers flush button. There really is a way around every prejudice. What didn't really ring for me was Monica's modern-day iteration of these magically delicious pencils made by Yun and her cousin Meng in 1937 Shanghai (all you Iris Chang readers know what the implications of that are already; if you haven't read Chang, go do so.) EMBR, Monica's boss's startup, seems to be a not-evil iteration of Facebook, in my own crude and unnuanced terms, and that's a concept so toxified by that fuck Zuck and his henchrats that I was preemptively squicked out by it.

It's a cool idea for a story, and one that feels like Author King has really gone into to develop her world's natural development. I think the decision not to go into how and what Meng and Yun have as a power paradoxically let me just accept it...use one of the pencils they created and in a future that's never defined by length or relationship, someone hip to the trick can utterly exist within the words you've created. Trying to build out a system around this would not have made it easier to believe.

As to *why* these pencils exist, this brings me to the almost-all-five starrèdness of the read: The entire book is suffused with a deep and highly loving sadness as memory, its utter unreliability, its undeniable centrality to one's identity and selfhood, are examined. Monica, Yun, all their ties and all the facts of their family's life, swept away in the fires of war; recoverable with this one astonishing instrument, writing itself entire in a new head. Monica's journey to understanding this...power, gift, supernatural geas...is tied back to Grandmother Yun and forward to new lover Louise. I've said elsewhere that reading is the act of thinking with another head.

Writing, creating stories, are under direct and explicit threat in a time of rampant and overly successful suppression of books, ideas, and fields of study. NASA's proposed budget eliminates entirely astrophysical research, funding for space-sciences fellowships, all Earth sciences research. Libraries suffer huge challenges to remove particularly queer books and media...all orchestrated and funded by certain religious groups. This is something I'm morally certain Author King is indirectly, and all the more effectively for it, commenting on with Yun and Monica's interconnectedness via the magic of stories to pass forward the truth and the facts of a violent past.

If you wonder how this can happen in the modern world, look at what's under attack...learning, information-gathering, all the weapons against ignorance and chaos. Resisting this, refusing to simply accept it, why this is a thing to be worked toward and desired, you should trust Shakespeare:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire, shall burn
The living record of your memory:

’Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity,
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

It is impious to speak after Divinity has spoken.

NB LINKS TO SOURCES IN MY BLOHHED REVIEW

Wow. I loved this book. Allison King does an excellent job of balancing various elements in a cohesive and moving story. There are elements of a historical fiction, with the retelling of Monica's grandmother's life in Shanghai during Japanese occupation and subsequent immigration to Taiwan and America. There is also a love story, and personal development as Monica grapples with who she is during a time of upheaval. Monica is an extremely engaging narrator, and I enjoyed the structure of journal entries to tell the story. The magical realism elements were a powerful tool for examining how stories and voices are shared. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the power of connection. I am excited to see what other stories Allison King has to share.

Content warnings: discussion of Alzheimer's and political violence.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing an eARC in return for my honest thoughts.

What intrigued me the most about this book was it’s unique premise, connecting historical fiction with a science-y, generational family novel. The beginning hooked me very quickly with the main character having access to the EMBRS platform that allows her to deep search for people. The idea of that alone was crazy yet doesn’t feel that far away in this day in age. However, I found myself having a hard time getting through Yun’s chapters. While the book description did mention ahead of time that Yun’s memory was fading, I didn’t realize that that meant an Alzheimer’s diagnosis which was really hard for me to read about due to my own personal experiences with the disease. I would have appreciated a trigger warning or a heads up that there would be an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. A lot of what Monica was dealing with and seeing Yun’s progression was really tough at times but speaks to how well the book captures it. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read this book!

Courtesy of Harper Collins and Netgalley, I received the ARC of The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King. This debut novel was so creative in approaching generational experiences, family legacies and memories through connections and communication encompassing different mediums. Historically reaching back to Revolutions in China, occupation by Japan, Communists vs Nationalists, Shanghai, Taiwan, the unique roles of these women as matriarchs, and then involvement with espionage, a lot of information was covered! But never a dull moment with these special characters, as the story looks to the past to forge contemporary bonds. I loved the mahjong! Highly recommend!

In 'The Phoenix Pencil Company', Allison King delivers a gently magical debut that spans continents and generations, blending the warmth of familial love with the ache of lost time. The novel follows Monica Tsai, a socially withdrawn computer science students in the present day, who stumbles into a forgotten chapter of her grandmother Yun's past. What begins as a tentative search for identity becomes something richer - a journey into wartime Shanghai, a factory that once crafted pencils capable of preserving memories, and the quiet power of remembering.

The dual timeline structure is handled with care. Monica's modern-day story, told in sharp, observational prose, offers a compelling portrait of digital-age disconnection and emotional reserve. But it's Yun's past that glows most vividly - her time working at the Phoenix Pencil Company, where women "Reforged" used pencils into vessels of memory, unfolds with both intimacy and intrigue. King renders 1940s Shanghai in evocative detail: the city's danger and resilience, its crumbling buildings and secret loyalties, the smell of ink and wood shavings in the factory air.

This is not a book of high drama or sweeping fantasy. Its magic is subtle, almost incidental - anchored not in spells, but in tools, objects, and stories passed down or misplaced. At its core, the novel is about legacy: what gets recorded, what fades, and how silence can be both a burden and a gift. The relationship between Monica and Yun - spanning language gaps, cultural distance, and slowly eroding memory - is especially moving. King handles themes of dementia, migration, and emotional inheritance with restraint and grace.

Some readers may find the pacing slow, particularly in Monica's sections, where introspection takes precedence over action. But patient readers will be rewarded with a novel that builds its emotional impact layer by layer, like graphite accumulating on a page.

'The Phoenix Pencil Company' is a lovely exploration of how the past shapes us - even when it's hidden in drawers, scribbled in margins, or half-forgotten in someone else's story. A quiet triumph of heart and imagination.

The Phoenix Pencil Company is a cross-genre debut novel with elements of historical fiction, romance, and magical realism. I loved the historical fiction elements, especially as I haven't read much about post-WWII China and the mainland/Taiwan dynamics. I loved how the author incorporated the magic pencils and also told us about the custom pencil industry. I want to try some of the pencils even without the magic. What did not work as well for me was the romance. I am not a big romance fan, so this isn't a huge surprise. In this case, the dialogue didn't feel realistic, and I felt distracted every time the author veered to the romance. I loved the relationship between the grandparents, though. This reaction may be more of a "me" issue, though, so if you enjoy romances (in this case, late adolescent romances), I expect you'll enjoy these sections more than I did.

I will look for more by this author. This novel is an excellent debut and worth reading (you can skip over the romance).
Also, kudos to the cover artist, as I am completely mesmerized by the pencil-shaving flowers.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an electronic copy of the book in exchange for a review.

4.25 out of 5 stars.

Anyone who has ever taken care of a loved one for an extended period of time understands the deer in headlights stretch of time in life where you just don't know what to do, what to give up, what to put on hold, what to try to push forward with.

Monica's grandparents have taken care of her after her father left, but they are older now. When her grandmother, Yun, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she puts school on hold to help her grandfather take care of her. Her professor offers her a job helping to continue to code the program, EMBRS, which is supposed to connect people through stories, but when her grandmother takes a turn for the worse, she offers to go down to part-time, which her grandfather promptly refuses.

Told in alternating story-entries from Monica and Yun, we find a heart wrenching story of a woman and her cousin trying to survive Japanese-occupied Shanghai during WWII, learning the painful but exhilarating talent of reforging pencils - pulling what was written from them through their veins and back onto paper, and a granddaughter whose caretakers' frailty threatens to crumble her legs from beneath her.

A dark, sapphic magical realism tale that offers unflinching views of war and family, The Phoenix Pencil Company is a rock solid debut novel for an author I hope to see more of in the future.

The Phoenix Pencil Company is a multi-generational epic story of sisterhood, love, betrayal, and the ways we tell stories. It is historical magical realism within an epistolary novel of letters and journal entries across two time periods (wartime Shanghai and 2018 Massachusetts) in which college student Monica returns home to help take care of the grandmother who raised her, and who's slowly succumbing to dementia. In searching for her grandmother's lost-lost cousin so that they can reconnect, Monica stumbles upon more than she expected: a family secret, and the dangerous truth the women in her family have held close to their hearts for generations.

This was a truly beautiful book. The characters are all fully fleshed out, highly flawed, but doing their best to survive. The amount of research needed for this book is obviously vast, and I'm now determined to learn more about Chinese history, especially under Japanese occupation and the civil war that followed. The world of occupied Shanghai is vivid and yet haunting, a depiction of wartime that many have had the privilege of not facing themselves. The harsh realities--and intricate, fantastical mysteries--depicted in The Phoenix Pencil Company held my attention tightly and I am so glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to read it.

So many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Rating: 4.75 stars

Review posted to StoryGraph: June 2, 2025 (https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/45311c5f-24a6-45fa-83d0-9607f4f281e5?redirect=true)
Review posted to Instagram: June 11, 2025 (https://www.instagram.com/p/DKxWSNfxPQ1/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)

A pencil is just a pencil to most of us. In Shanghai back before WWII, there was a family that had the ability to perform magic with pencils. It’s almost a lost art, until Monica Tsai wants to help her grandmother remember her past and wants to gather her grandmother’s stories before it’s too late.

Monica is a software engineer working on a project that links people through social media posts. She decides to try the software to reconnect her grandmother Yun with her long lost cousin Meng. What she uncovers leads her to a college student, Louise. It will be Louise that has the key to getting Yun and Meng back together.

Yun grew up in Shanghai with her mother at their family’s pencil company. One day her cousin Meng arrives with her mother to stay with Yun and her mother. Yun doesn’t want her there and does everything she can to discourage a friendship with Meng. When a practical joke turns on Yun, she finds out that Meng knows family secrets that Yun doesn’t.

Really beautiful story about pre-Communist Shanghai, Taiwan, and those whose families were torn apart by war and politics. Monica’s journal entries are interwoven with correspondence from Yun to Meng, piecing together the history of Monica’s ancestors. It’s so beautifully written. This novel wonderfully weaves the past and the present together into a cohesive story about families and the stories they share or hide.

Long, but incredible read.

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I liked THE PHOENIX PENCIL COMPANY, although it suffered from a few flaws. The main character, Monica, is working on a data-mining algorithm meant to forge connections between people. She decides to find her grandmother’s long-lost cousin with the program, which unfolds a past history full of secrets and magic centered around the family’s pencil factory—as well as a new friend whose motives may not be entirely pure.

The idea of a pencil that can not only regurgitate the last words it wrote but put you in the writer’s emotional state? As someone who wishes I could get inside people’s minds, this concept was fascinating to me, as was the book’s analysis of how ethical such a connection would actually be (and the way it connected the concept to modern software). I loved the book’s musings on relationship, connection, and the stories we choose to share.

I found other aspects less enjoyable. The “pleasure” aspect to Reforging felt gimmicky to me. In general, the lore of the pencils and how they worked had some holes in it—it was an interesting idea, but I wanted it on a firmer narrative foundation (how did these women learn they could Reforge? What came first, the pencils or the Reforgers? If this was explained in the book, I managed to miss it entirely).

Still, it was an interesting read, and I think it will stay with me. This would be a great option for a book club—it has the potential to be polarizing and touches on many aspects of the human experience.

Thank you @netgalley and @williammorrowbooks for the e-ARC and @librofm for the ALC.

This is such an interesting blend of historical fiction and magical realism. Historical fiction is not a genre that I usually reach for, so it always helps me when it’s blended with a genre I enjoy. Magical realism is one of my favorite genres.

Monica is very tech savvy, coding and building programs as she works her way through college. She is the granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, grandparents that raised her when her own parents couldn’t. They are now in their nineties when Monica learns her grandmother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She returns home to help in her care.

Yun, her grandmother, survived two wars in China before she migrated to the States. Monica uses the program she is building to find a long lost cousin of her grandmother’s. Instead of sending a letter, or calling, the cousin sends Yun a pencil. It turns out Yun and her family possess a special power to reforge a pencil’s words. During the wars the government finds out and forces them into a life of espionage. The alternate POV is Yun’s story of The Phoenix Pencil Company.

A few things to note: this cover!!, a debut!, picked as Reese’s book club pick.

I enjoyed the book. It’s very different than anything else I’ve read. It was also a great way for me to learn more about the history of China. Reforging pencils is such an interesting concept.

The audio is good. I did find Yen’s POV to be a bit quieter than Monica’s, so I was adjusting my volume quite a bit. Otherwise, it was a good listen.

THE PHOENIX PENCIL COMPANY is a journey through memory by an elderly Chinese woman on the cusp of dementia. It is also a story of her granddaughter, heavily invested in creating a new app that connects disparate people, long separated, among other capabilities. Author Allison King has attempted to use both of these tales to discuss inter-generational trauma and the desire of people to leave a unique mark on their world. Those are lofty ambitions for a first time author and not completely realized. The book is fascinating and touches on many innate human desires for stability and family. The book isn’t quite the sum of its parts; but some of its parts are truly inspired. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.