A review by kathryn36_reads
New Waves by Kevin Nguyen

3.0

Set in the world of tech startups and online message boards, Nguyen’s novel asks the reader to grapple with defining what people mean to us in a digital age. Our primary narrator, Lucas is friends with Margo from work but also shared a message board from their teens. After her death, Lucas discovers that Margo was messaging with an internet friend everyday (Jill). As Lucas deals with the impact of technology on his relationship to Margo, Jill, his direct reports and his boss, the startup he works at has a reckoning about user privacy and content moderation that echoes the invasion of Margo’s personal digital legacy. Overall, I liked this novel, the themes explored (race, romantic relationships, friendship, privacy), and the use of multiple narrators/.wav files. However, I feel like there were a few threads I wished had tied up at the end.