My love for Sylvia Plath knows no bounds so when I learned about Penny Zang’s debut novel, “Doll Parts,” which revolves around the Sylvia Club and the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring college students, I was so excited to read it. With plenty of dark academia vibes, page-turning mysteries, and deeply rooted female friendships told in dual timelines “Dolls Parts” lived up to my expectations and I cannot wait to read her next book.

I highly recommend Penny Zang’s debut if you enjoyed “The World Cannot Give” by Tara Isabella Burton, “The Things We Do to Our Friends” by Heather Darwent, and “The Truants” by Kate Weinberg.

This is a twisted, intense love letter to girlhood. The beauty, the pain, all of it is found in these pages. I will never forget this story or the way it made me feel.

3.5/5 ✨️

It took me a minute after finishing this to fully process how I felt about this book. I absolutely loved the premise, I loved the multi-timeline story telling, I enjoyed the relationship of Sadie & Nikki in the past. I did find there to be some plot holes or times when I needed more information, we never even really discussed how Harrison & Sadie ended up together...

Fans of thrillers, mystery & girls who yearn for more, will enjoy this. It was captivating & I had a hard time setting it down, I needed to know what was going to happen next.

10/10 recommend this book! Where do I even begin? This book is one I devoured as an ebook ARC and have also preordered a physical copy for my shelf. I absolutely adored Zang’s style of writing.

This book is immersive and visceral. Beautiful and chaotic. Think part mystery, part thriller, and part horror told in dual timelines and dual POVs. I loved the contrast in settings as well as the depth to each of the characters. Once I started this book, it was hard to put it down! Definitely recommend!

2.5/3⭐️
I am afraid I am about to come on here with a very unpopular opinion. I was obsessed with the concept of this book. I love dark academia and I had such high expectations. Throw in some paranormal stuff, suicides, Sylvia Plath… I should have devoured this book! So maybe a lot of it is on me because I set the bar too high in my head. I needed so much more in that college timeline. It didn’t help that I figured out the eventual plot twist early on and that the book just moved slowly. I also felt like at times I was reading the same things over and over again. I love girl friendships, especially those long time, have been through the trenches together ones but I don’t need to read a description of that friendship every other page. It literally pains me to write this review because I want to love this book so much. I’m tempted to erase everything I’ve written and just say I loved it. Five stars. This is honestly the most difficult review I have ever had to write.

Haunting, Lyrical, and Utterly Mesmerizing

Doll Parts is a beautifully unsettling debut that weaves grief, friendship, and dark academia into something truly unforgettable. Told in dual timelines, it explores the intense bond between Sadie and Nikki, then and now, unraveling a haunting mystery tied to the enigmatic Sylvia Club.

Penny Zang’s prose is lyrical and razor-sharp, balancing melancholy with suspense. The atmosphere is thick with dread, but the emotional weight is what lingers most, especially its sharp look at how we mythologize girlhood and loss.

I couldn’t put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC!

What a suspenseful story unlike anything I have read! At first a little confusing but once you immerse in the atmosphere you really start to grasp what is occurring.

We follow Sadie in the present and Nikki in the past - two inseparable & co-dependent childhood friends who became distant once they both dropped out of Loch Raven college after a horrible crime.

I loved the atmosphere that Zang created, as we slowly peeled back the layers of this onion. However, I wanted something more ominous and dark at the reveal, it built up this dark mystery but I found the motives to be unrealistic. I think the characters could’ve had more depth but they were unique.

To conclude— this was a dark academics mystery thriller , that has a slow start but the story keeps you hooked as we keeping moving in this dual timeline tale.

4.5 stars

This book took me a few pages to get into, but once I got it I was hooked. We follow Sadie in the current timeline and Nikki in the past timeline - two inseparable friends who became distant during college. I really enjoyed both POVs and thought the author did a fantastic job of keeping each voice unique. There’s a mystery underlying everything and I did not see a few of the twists coming.

Overall I think this is a very solid thriller with important themes of grief, loneliness, and female friendship.

There are so many books coming out nowadays that somewhat follow in the footsteps of Bunny by Mona Awad & The Secret HIstory by Donna Tartt. College campus setting, a group of girls who worship dead women writers, an eerie atmosphere, culty behavior, and young women coming-of-age in odd circumstances. But there’s a reason these novels find success, especially among a female audience. They’re fun in a macabre way. They speak to the experiences of being a young woman while also having an escapist edge. Doll Parts is split into two timelines, the past one following two best friends, Nikki and Sadie, as freshman at Loch Raven College, and the present one following Sadie 20 years later who, after the death of Nikki, moves in and has a baby with Nikki’s widow. There was an event that broke the friendship of the girls at Loch Raven and led to them both dropping out. There was also the eerie presence of a group of girls on campus who were infatuated with Sylvia Plath (and more specifically, her death) and a professor who himself was infatuated with dead women. The writing in this was great in mood and tone, if at times it felt a bit on the nose. The cover to this one is also dreamy. That pink!

This thriller follows best friends, Nikki and Sadie, in dual timelines from an all women’s college in the nineties to suburbia in present day as they both seek to unravel the mystery of a pattern of student suicides, the Sylvia Club. Compare to: the movie A Simple Favor, the post-partum delirium of All Fours or My Murder, sprinkled with some Bunny-esque horror.

I wish the characters were more developed in this book, especially those of the Sylvia Club and the villains behind it all. Ultimately I had a hard time believing the motives behind most of the crimes and why it seemed so hard for the characters to communicate with each other. For example, Nikki left Sadie the absolute vaguest notes from beyond the grave, why wouldn’t she be more explicit with her daughter at risk? Why couldn’t Sadie ever seem to ask all her questions to… anyone?

The strength of this book for me was the ghostly element. Zang’s ghosts were so well described and just creepy enough to feel like the ghosts that appear in a dream. They’re zombies, they’re decay and gore, they’re muck, they’re glitter. I would love to see Zang try horror as a genre and leave some of the thriller tropes behind.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Twisty in the best of ways, DOLL PARTS belongs in your summer beach bag. Zang has crafted a multi-layered story that explores the complexities of girlhood friendship. The novel is structured in a dual timeline, which works exceptionally well. There is just the right amount of angst in the college storyline. The theme of obsession is dark and gripping. Nikki and Sadie will stay with you.

My one minor complaint is that the pacing would have been improved if the novel was shorter.

Unlike some other readers, I thoroughly enjoyed the ending and did not find it too unbelievable or too tidy. To me it felt very satisfying.

I will look forward to more from this talented author.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

If this book is Penny Zang’s debut, I cannot wait to see her writing evolve even further. This book exceeded any expectations I had, and forced me through so many different emotions and thoughts.

I’m extremely excited for this book to be published and want to thank NetGalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this book! It’s a beautifully layered story that blends nostalgia, mystery, and the complexities of girlhood friendships. The dual timelines were so well done, seamlessly weaving college years filled with angst and obsession with a chilling present day unraveling.

The Sylvia Club adds a haunting literary twist, and I was hooked watching Nikki’s obsession grow. Sadie’s storyline brings a quiet intensity that builds with every chapter, especially as she steps into Nikki’s life and begins to question everything around her. The dark themes of grief, mental health, betrayal, and suicide are handled with care and depth, and the atmosphere is absolutely electric with unease. This is one of those books that lingers long after the final page. Well done, Penny Zang!

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

As I have seen noted in several other reviews, I appreciated the character development in this novel. The characters, especially the two POV characters Nikki and Sadie, felt fully considered and distinct. There was really a lot going on in this story, and it was more layered and kept me more engaged than many typical thrillers. However I found the suspension of disbelief required at the end a little hard to come by, it seemed a little to tidy that the Nikki character had orchestrated everything before her death, including her old friend shacking up with her husband.

4.5 rounded up. Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and Netgalley for the arc.

How do you move forward in a life chased by grief? What do you do with a life defined by it? Full transparency, I was hesitant about this book at first. The sad girl litfic genre has become heavily oversaturated within the last five years, and finding new and exciting perspectives within the genre has grown difficult. Thankfully, Penny Zang rises to the occasion with a wonderfully new voice and a fascinating concept. Sadie’s struggle with grief and the absence of a person she was once conjoined with is all too familiar, and approaching mystery/thriller through this lens was a great decision. The last handful of pages are a gut punch of prose that few writers can achieve when the finish line is in sight but Zang’s voice only gets stronger as the novel progresses. For the readers who yearn for flowery writing and gutting sentences, Doll Parts is for you. This book was a three, then four, then five star by the final page. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Doll Parts (Pub Date 8.26.25): If you ever wanna kidnap me, just offer me a book about 90s grunge sad girls that are obsessed with Sylvia Plath. Doll Parts quickly caught my eye because of these themes.

Nikki & Sadie are best friends and have been since elementary school. They both come from humble beginnings and tragedy which strengthens their bond into college. A deadly secret also does this. You’ll get dual timelines and points of view and will be immersed in 90s sad girl lore. I may have worn my flannels and listened to Hole while reading.

How you’ll feel: If you’re a GenX/Millennial, you’ll feel nostalgic. You’ll also be in suspense throughout and appreciate the depths friendship will go.

Such a solid read! Well done

The writing in this book is top-notch. I loved the ambiance--spooky, mysterious. The dual timeline narrative kept the pace nice and fast. The characters were well-drawn and interesting. The ending was a bit hard to believe, but I still enjoyed the book. It felt like dipping into another world, a true indulgence.

BOOK REPORT
Received a complimentary copy of Doll Parts, by Penny Zang, from Sourcebooks Landmark/NetGalley, for which I am appreciative, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Scroll past the BOOK REPORT section for a cut-and-paste of the DESCRIPTION of it from them if you want to read my thoughts on the book in the context of that summary.

Meh.

I was going to say better in concept than execution, except—the more that I think about it—the concepts themselves weren’t that great. And most of what happened was implausible as hell.

My guidance? Better to spend your time reading (or re-reading, as the case might be) Our Sivvy her own self.

DESCRIPTION
The Virgin Suicides meets I Have Some Questions For You in a dual timeline suspense following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring sad girls they attended college with decades ago, all while holding a secret that will slowly unravel her new, suburban dream life.

Some stories refuse to stay buried.

For best friends Nikki and Sadie, college was supposed to be a fresh start, a way to blast Courtney Love from car speakers and leave their youth behind. But along with sadness-obsessed girls and intrusive professors, a dark story plagues their small all-women's school: the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring students, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the tragic tales, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. As she digs deeper, Nikki soon suspects there's much more to the story - a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.

It's been nearly twenty years since Sadie last saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead, and when Sadie ends up pregnant by Nikki's grieving husband not long after the funeral, she finds herself stepping into her ex-best friend's seemingly perfect life. But the longer Sadie lives in Nikki's eerily preserved home, the more she sees her appear and soon, she's convinced that Nikki is sending her clues from beyond the grave. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.

Told in a dual timeline, Doll Parts is an evocative and irresistible debut, at once an exploration of the dark chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you.

Years after graduating college, Sadie finds herself unexpectedly pregnant by the husband of her late best friend, Nikki. She moves into Nikki’s former home, only to be drawn into the unsettling mystery surrounding the Sylvia Club and the disturbing truths it left behind.
This was easily one of the most original and enthralling novels I’ve read this year. The synopsis immediately intrigued me, but the execution far surpassed my expectations. I was so taken with it that I deliberately paused halfway through, using it as a reward to power through another book on my list. While it could be categorized as a literary thriller, it felt richer—layered with emotion, atmosphere, and thematic weight.

The writing itself is stunning—lyrical, haunting, and immersive. From the opening line, I felt entirely pulled into its world. Penny Zang’s style is so emotionally resonant and evocative that reading it felt like drifting silently beside the characters, bearing witness to their unraveling. Her storytelling strikes a rare balance: slow-burning yet urgent, deeply intimate yet chillingly eerie.

The book feels like a modern nod to The Virgin Suicides and the legacy of Sylvia Plath—moody, tragic, and spellbinding.

The Sylvia Club offers an intriguing story and excels in mood-setting—its gothic atmosphere and layered dual timelines lend the novel an eerie elegance—the execution falls short of its potential. The central mystery unfolds at a languid pace, risking reader disengagement despite its well-constructed premise. Still, the parallel narratives, each steeped in secrets and brooding tension, are compelling enough to sustain interest. A moody, atmospheric read that rewards patience, though one wishes it moved with sharper intent. I am giving it 4 stars based on how much I love Sylvia Plath's work and enjoyed all of the references throughout the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC!