"Song’s debut is a strikingly original coming-of-age story... Full of contradictions, magnificently balancing and remarkably sustaining wonder with dread and magical realism with harsh reality, with a heartbreakingly beautiful and intensely uneasy tone, this is a story that will hold readers in its thrall. Ripe for discussion, Chlorine is a great choice for fans of weird, immersive, female-driven body horror by authors like Julia Armfield, Cassandra Khaw, and Carmen Maria Machado."

—Booklist, starred review

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"A spiky, sapphic coming-of-age that embraces fantasy and horror to explore girlhood and its discontents."

—The Millions, Most Anticipated Books of 2023

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"In Song’s disturbing and visionary debut, a child pushed too hard to succeed becomes a monster of her own making. Her mermaid’s tail is revealed in all its Cronenberg-esque glory. The body horror is striking, as is Song’s prose... It’s a singular coming-of-age."

—Publisher's Weekly

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"Song’s body horror here somehow accurately mirrors the terrifying process of puberty in a coming-of-age story that’s not for the faint of heart."

—Buzzfeed, 2023 Books You Should Read

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"This book was viscerally unnerving and I could not put it down."

—Sarah Gailey, bestselling author of The Echo Wife

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"Song’s harrowing novel subverts the standards of merfolk lore — clamshell bras, underwater kingdoms, the love of a sailor or prince. 'For too long you’ve been inundated by G-rated fairy tales,' Ren says. She is not beneficent or seductive; she’s ruthless and mutilated."

—The New York Times

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"Mermaids are having a moment in the cultural slipstream: Chlorine sees a high school swimmer go to drastic lengths to assume what she believes is her true form... The creatures have traded languid hair combing for power brokering on their own terms. It's a welcome tidal shift."

—Vanity Fair

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"Probably one of the darkest and most twisted books over the year, this coming-of-age story of a young Chinese swimmer and her dream of becoming of mermaid is the stuff of both dreams and nightmares."

—Cosmopolitan, 30 Best Books of 2023

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"I think I have been waiting my whole life for this book — for someone to write adolescence like the body horror it is, with all of the cultural specificity of being a Chinese American girl, simply bursting at the seams with sapphic longing. Jade Song’s writing is gruesomely lyrical, contrasting the sublime with the deeply disturbing. There were several points where this book almost made me throw up, and I mean that as a high compliment."

—Nicole Clark, Polygon

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"Song sucks readers in with unforgettable language & explores our carnal desire of want. Reading it was like an out-of-body experience."

—Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful​

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"Jade Song's fierce and propulsive debut..."

—The Economist

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"...An aching siren song, one that points us towards those uncharted dimensions of desire and identity that swim and shimmer, in and out of being."

—Trisha Low, Tor.com

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"Like the scent of chlorine on one’s skin, this not-to-be-missed debut novel lingers.”

—Library Journal, starred review

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"Chlorine is not for the faint of heart.  Fierce and visceral, it seethes with rage and pain and the urgency of transformation.  There are no pretty mermaids wearing seashell bras here, but readers open to sinking into darker waters will be captivated."

—Ann Claycomb, author of Silenced

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"Fierce... so vivid... both beautiful and frightening. Chlorine isn’t just a coming of age story. It’s the tale of transformation from human to something wilder and more transcendent. It’s about love and longing and the willingness to do anything to become who you truly are."

—Richard Kadrey, bestselling author of Sandman Slim

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