USA TODAY Book Club: Celeste Ng's 'Our Missing Hearts' is a book that demands discussion

Some books simply demand to be discussed – especially when they're written by Celeste Ng.

The "Little Fires Everywhere" author did not disappoint with her third novel, "Our Missing Hearts" (Penguin Press, 352 pp.), a dystopian tale set in the near future when Asian Americans are marked by the government with distrust and their art is destroyed. Ng called the setting a “version of America that’s like ours but maybe with the volume turned up a little bit,” in a recent interview with NPR.

Those qualities and more make it a no-brainer pick for the USA TODAY Book Club. Join us at 7 p.m. EST Wednesday for a Twitter Spaces conversation between the author and USA TODAY's Laura Trujillo as they discuss the story of 12-year-old Bird Gardiner, who, after living the last few years with his father – a former linguist who now shelves library books – has learned to disavow his artist and dissident mother, a Chinese American poet. In this America, books critical of the nation are not allowed, children of unpatriotic parents are removed from their homes and hatred toward people of Asian origin seems accepted.

In her ★★★★ (out of four) review, Trujillo writes, "Coupled with the humanity and sweetness of the unbreakable love between a mother and her child, it is a book you won’t be able to put down, nor stop thinking about long after you do."

'Our Missing Hearts' review: Celeste Ng's new novel brings humanity and sweetness to the dystopian novel

Trujillo continues, "'Our Missing Hearts' would be a perfect book club selection, lending itself to questions from how to teach our children to create a better world when we have failed to do so and how we can confront injustice in our own communities."

"Our Missing Hearts" debuted on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list in October at No. 8, and it has remained on the list for the past five weeks. It joins Ng's other bestsellers, "Everything I Never Told You" and "Little Fires Everywhere," which spent a total of 44 and 131 weeks on the list respectively.

Contributing: Laura Trujillo, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USA TODAY Book Club's November pick: Celeste Ng's 'Our Missing Hearts'