I received an electronic ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I found the premise of this novel interesting in the beginning. However, as the story became more and more twisted I lost interest quickly. I’m curious if a lot of the story did not make sense to me because it is a translation. A lot of it seemed glossed over, but I wonder if it has more to do with the fact that the story was originally in another language (Korean). The emotion of the story seemed off at times, and parts were rushed.

I just finished reading this book. The plot was absolutely fantastic! It was quite the page turner, and I could not put the book down once I began reading it. I can't wait for it to be released. I will recommend it to everyone I know!

A thrilling and disorienting read. I found myself riveted by the story and intrigued by Jae-Young and her (lack of?) plans as she goes to a mansion to drop off a baby and finds herself compelled to stay...

Thank you to Ballantine and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

My first Se-Ah Jang read but definitely not my last. This one starts with a bang and never lets up. Packed with tension, secrets and great reveals. Excellent characters kept me totally engaged.
Thank you NetGalley, Se-Ah Jang and Bantam Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

She is running away from a desperate situation when she encounters a woman with a child. When that woman disappears leaving the baby and a note, she decides to become that woman. What happens next is Alfred Hitchcock worthy...nothing is what it seems. Tense and edge of your seat packed book. Wish the translation had been a bit better.
Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced reading copy and introduction to a new thrilling author. Enjoyed reading and giving feedback.

It was overall an okay book. For me, I struggled with the whole giving a baby to someone I don't know but in the end I did understand it. Between that and the whole over the top bad decisions, it was hard for me to get really invested in this book.

Two women meet on a train both running away from deadly secrets. When Jae-Young is left with a baby on the train and the other woman disappears she decides to take the baby to the family's house. She finds out the family had a lot of money and is willing to do what it takes to stay with the family. This thriller was very twisty and very well done. It pulled you in from the start!

This book was a wild ride from start to finish. I enjoyed this thriller it was twisty and captivating from start to finish. The only thing is, if you are easily triggered by gaslighting and abuse story plots then this won't be for you.

Review of Advance Reader’s Copy

Jae-Young is escaping . . . running from an abusive boyfriend and a run-down hovel of an apartment. She hopes to take the train to Seoul and then vanish among the crowds of people there.

Aboard the train, she has a casual conversation with a young mother traveling with her three-month-old son, Seung-Joon. She tells Jae-Young that her husband has left her to live with his mistress and she’s decided to take the baby to her in-laws’ home.

Much to Jae-Young’s surprise, the mother disappears, leaving Seung-Joon behind . . . along with a note begging Jae-Young to take the baby to his father’s family home in Juyoung-si.

When Jae-Young arrives at the home, she is stunned by the apparent wealth of the family. After some hesitation, she decides to stay, stepping into the role of Seung-Joon’s mother. But it isn’t long before she begins to realize that things are not quite what they seem in Chairman Jung’s house.

What has Jae-Young gotten herself into, and will she be able to escape?

=========

There are plot twists aplenty in this incredible thriller. Although readers are likely to find that none of the characters are particularly likable, there’s definitely some sympathy for Jae-Young’s situation; readers are drawn into the telling of the tale from the outset. The suspenseful story turns dark; everyone is holding onto secrets and danger is just a step away.

Readers who enjoy twisty mysteries, psychological thrillers, and family drama will find much to appreciate in this book that is too difficult to set aside before reaching the final page.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine / Bantam and NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving this review.
#ATwistofFate #NetGalley

Jae-Young is over it. She’s over her crappy apartment. She’s over her crappy job. She’s REALLY over her abusive boyfriend constantly beating her up. One evening, after a particularly bad fight, she hit him in self-defense, and when he smashed his head on the way down, she panicked and ran straight to the train station. She’s going to Seoul, to hide out in a large city. After that, she has no idea what she’ll do next…

She’s on the train when a young mother carrying an infant sits by her and immediately turns into one of those annoyingly chatty strangers. Hyojin’s husband has moved in with his mistress, so she has also escaped and is going to visit the in-laws she still hasn’t met. Trying to avoid this oversharing woman, Jae-Young excuses herself to go to the bathroom. When she comes back, Hyojin is gone, and there’s a note left on the baby, begging her to take Seung-Joon to his family’s house.

Not knowing what else to do, she indeed takes the baby to the house of Chairman Jung. When she arrives at the address in the note, she’s surprised that the house is more like a resort. These are billionaires, and the father of the baby, Hyun-Wook, hasn’t been seen in years. The chairman lives there with his younger son, Soohyun, and a bevy of caretakers and maids. The elderly man is ailing, but it’s clear he’s excited to see his grandson…and everyone automatically assumes that Jae-Young is the wife they’ve never met. When they insist that she move in, she gladly takes the offer and starts enjoying the life of luxury she’s never had.

Soon after moving in, Jae-Young finds out a lot about the past, the history of the house, and why it’s run the way it is. These things do give her pause, but she feels comfortable with Soohyun, and the gifts and shopping trips help her look the other way…until she gets to a point where there is no denying what is happening. She’s in danger, she’s terrified they’ll find out she’s not Seung-Joon’s mother, and her mental health is starting to fail her.

This book is super twisty, with a ton of shocks built in. I was surprised over and over, all the way to the end. This family has a lot of skeletons in the closet, and figuring things out along with Jae-Young made this quite entertaining and suspenseful. I thought this would be a “Strangers on a Train” situation, but I was totally wrong about that! This was quite original, and a fun read. Four stars!

(Thank you to Random House Bantam, Se-ah Jane and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on July 29, 2025.)

Two women meet on a train. Each is running from a deadly secret. When one disappears, the other decides to take her place, for better, or for worse! Great book! I thought this book was going to be a bit different than it was! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one! It had shocking suspense, murder, mystery, gaslighting, intrigue, and some wild twists! The story was very interesting! I highly recommend reading this book! Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!

“A Twist of Fate” is by Se-Ah Hang, translated from the Korean by S.L. Park. I’ve been told by a Korean acquaintance, that translating Korean books into English can be difficult because the Korean language can be rather subtle, meaning words often have multiple meanings. While I believe that S.L. Park did the best job possible, at times it was obvious to me that the translation wasn’t as smooth as it could’ve been. In some places, the writing just felt, for lack of a better word, clunky where I needed to re-read a few paragraphs to understand what I thought I read. However, if an interesting story is your jam - this one is full of surprises and it held my attention. There’s a host of characters - some main, some secondary - but they’re rather easy to keep apart. There’s also the fact that this story doesn’t really have any characters I could trust - the mother’s actions seemed too convenient, the main female at times too innocent yet very quick to judge, and the boyfriend’s brother seemed way too good to be true at times. I’d recommend this book, but with caution - great idea, but I wish that the translation was a lot smoother.

3.75 stars

Everyone is so impressed by Jae-young's magical boyfriend, except for her, because she knows the truth; he's an abusive nightmare. That's why it's such a thrill when she hops on a train to escape him. But like most things in Jae-young's life, apparently, this won't be just an ordinary train ride to go off the radar. It'll result in her shepherding a baby to its alleged relatives and herself into an unexpected set of new opportunities.

I love the setup of two characters crossing paths and potentially impacting each other's outcomes in shocking and irrepairable ways. That all manifests in such a fascinating manner in this book. From the train to the conclusion, readers go on an absolutely wild, chaotic ride through twists, surprises, and horrors, and there is truly no rest for the characters or readers. We definitely win out of that pairing.

While this is a little too wild at times, as most representations of this genre are, I enjoyed the pacing and the oddity of this quite a bit. I had never heard of this writer previously, and now I'll be on the lookout for Jang's work.

This was a twisty excellent thriller. Jae-Young is running from an abusive boyfriend. On the train another young woman with a baby talks to her . Then she disappears leaving her baby behind. She left a note begging Jae-Young to go the baby’s father family. She does this reluctantly and discovers the family is extremely wealthy. She is not sure if she is going to stay but the wealth appeals to her and she thinks she can stay for a while. Then everything gets messed up and she doesn’t know what is true and what is not. There were plenty of twists and psychotic people.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This could be due to the translation, but something about the writing just didn't click with me. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

This is one of those great books that hooks you from the beginning and doesn't let go until the end! Jae-Young is running from an abusive boyfriend when she meets a young mother on a train who then hurriedly gives her an infant and disappears! So now Jae-Young must navigate life with a young baby and still fears what will happen when she's discovered as she fears her boyfriend is dead. Now in a huge mansion with the baby's family, she doesn't know who to believe or what to do as she must solve several mysteries at once!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you for the opportunity to preview A Twist of Fate.
Two women meet on a train, they both are fleeing from their lives, both need to make a big change. So what happens when the tables are turned and a switch is made.
Very similar to Strangers on a Train which I loved
The tale of two women who are in trouble and need a change desperately. What can happen ? Well nothing good can come of it.
Good book. Some translation issues but all in Al very good.
3.5 stars

A young woman escaping an abusive relationship meets a young mother on the train she is taking to escape her home. After the overly chatty mother tells her all about the baby and his M.I.A. father, she abandons the baby and disappears. The young woman can't just leave a 3 month old baby alone on the train and so finds herself reading a note slipped into his diaper which gives the address of the young mother's in-laws whom she has never met. Arriving at the in-laws mansion, Jae-Young is mistaken for the wife of the estranged eldest son and despite her attempts at rectifying the situation, she is accepted as the mother of their infant grandson. Going from a life of poverty to one of riches is at first shocking but as the months slip by, Jae-Young finds herself settling in nicely in her new lifestyle. When the text threats begin and the rumors of untimely deaths occurring at the mansion start to surface, Jae-Young must decide who she can trust and who is out to kill her in order to claim the inheritance that she and "her" baby stand to receive.

At first I thought, "this is just a Korean soap-opera" but as the twists and turns of the family's story started to unfold into a dark suspense-filled plot, I was hooked.

A suspenseful read that does a decent job keeping the audience on edge. The latter half dragged a bit, then ended with a wild twist. Some of the prose was difficult to trudge through due to some translation issues and some plot explanation that seemed to be left out. I could see fans of psychological thrillers enjoying this, notwithstanding some of its faults.

When Jae-young leaves her house one morning–abandoning her life and her dead boyfriend on the kitchen floor–she meets a young mother on the train, looking for refuge with in-laws she has never met for her and her new baby. They talk for a bit when Jae-young excuses herself to the restroom, on her return she finds the mother gone and in her place she’s left her crying baby with a note saying to take him to the house of her mysterious in-laws. Out of obligation, Jae-young decides to take the baby and is welcomed into the luxurious mansion of the in-laws. Where she realizes there’s no better way to hide, than to have a new identity. But the two women and the house have dark secrets and Jae-young will stop at nothing to keep her new life.

Darkly atmospheric in a secluded mansion, A Twist of Fate is a thrilling book filled with complex characters all harboring their own secrets. Some are just more dangerous than others.

I read this book in its entirety in one day. Though it was a little predictable at times, it was so addicting I couldn’t put it down to see what happens next. I would love to see this adapted into a drama! It’s fast-paced and keeps you wanting more. Full of scheming, lies, and cunning games that leaves you devouring each chapter. I definitely recommend this for a a fast, intriguing, psychological suspense!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine/Bantam for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review!