thank you #NetGalley for this ARC!!! honestly, loved it. gave weird Vassar vibes (probably bc liberal arts college obsessed with Sylvia Plath). but the friendship between Sadie & Nikki was disturbingly beautiful.

"but what if? what if you conjured a woman out of death and couldn't put her back?"

doll parts by penny zang follows sadie and nikki, childhood best friends who suddenly dropped out of loch raven college and stopped speaking one day. now, twenty years later, nikki is dead, and sadie is pregnant by nikki's still grieving husband. told in dual timelines, doll parts follows nikki as she is haunted by dead girls, by professors and classmates obsessed with sylvia plath, and by her own mother, while twenty years later sadie is barely treading water as she finds herself captivated by nikki's unfinished research and the circumstances surrounding nikki's death.

whenever i wasn't reading this book, i was thinking about it. doll parts is sour mud, haunting poetry, glitter stuck in grout, fingers gripping hard enough to leave bruises. embedded with poetry from plath and millay and reminiscent of the bell jar and the virgin suicides, doll parts plays to the intellect as well as the heart. the depth of friendship between nikki & sadie held a special place in my heart, because it reminded me of my own relationship with my best friend. i hope she knows i'll haunt her, too.

"me in a life without her, unfinished and unfinished and unfinished."

thank you, penny zang, for your story and soul. i am so grateful for the opportunity to read this arc. doll parts comes out in the u.s. on aug 26th - go read it or else!!!

RELEASE DATE: August 26, 2025. Doll Parts is a dual-timeline and dual-POV novel about two best friends, Nikki and Sadie. In the 90s, they’re two grunge college girls making radical feminist art and trying to pass their classes. They get involved in The Sylvia Club, a fringe group of sad girls who love Sylvia Plath not just for her poetry but for her gruesome end. Nikki recognizes that a person is so much more than their death - their lives deserve to be celebrated and remembered much more than their final moments. There has been a rash of suicides at the school, and Nikki wants answers (as do the ghosts of the dead girls who haunt her). Cut to the present, and Nikki is dead. Both Sadie and Nikki work to investigate all this tragedy in different timelines, trying to find answers for all these victims before anyone else gets hurt.
Doll Parts by Penny Zang is so much more than a psychological thriller - it’s a story which invokes deep introspection. It is a moving exploration of female friendship that cuts through our culture’s misguided romanticization of dead women. Reading this novel felt like giving voice to the voiceless, honoring the women who weren’t so lucky as those of us who survived by the skin of our teeth. Girls who have suffered through terrible things in silence. It seemed to validate me in ways I never thought anyone else would recognize. Full of riot grrrl and grunge, ripped tights and Doc Martens, Dr. Pepper lip smackers and girlhood trauma. This book is for the girls who feel like they’re playing dress up as grown women, wives, and mothers. We may have survived the horror show that was college, but this is a tribute to the girls who didn’t. Read it and honor their memories.
Thank you so much to SOURCEBOOKS Landmark for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.

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.