A Twist of Fate

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.

Jae-Young has just left everything she's ever known, not that it was much: her thankless job, her infested apartment, and her abusive boyfriend--who happens to be dead on the kitchen floor. Murder was never the way she envisioned leaving, but times were desperate. Now on a train to the bustling city of Seoul, Jae-Young is hoping to escape her transgressions and just become invisible--safe.

On the train, she meets a chatty mother fleeing with her infant son from an unfaithful husband and hoping to find refuge with the in-laws she's never met. To avoid further conversation, Jae-Young excuses herself for a moment. When she returns, the woman is nowhere to be found. But her crying child remains with a note, pleading with Jae-Young to take him to his father's family in a remote province far from Seoul. It's not an ideal pit stop, but for the sake of the child, she can't ignore the request.

When Jae-Young arrives, the house takes her by surprise. It's a gated manor oozing with opulence and the finest luxuries--the kind of place she could only dream of setting foot in. What's more, the family assumes Jae-Young is their daughter-in-law and invites her to stay. She imagines an easy life in their care, free of worry and fear. And Jae-Young realizes: There's nothing more invisible than becoming someone else.

But both women have ghosts in their pasts. Though unaware of the rot lurking beneath the shiny veneer of her new life, Jae-Young will do whatever it takes to make sure she never goes back.

Author: Se-Ah Jang
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 07/29/2025
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780593875148


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/09/2025
Booklist 07/25/2025

About the Author
Se-Ah Jang has worked as a marketer for a luxury brand and is now running a book review channel, Love-or-Hate Prescriptions for Readers. She writes under multiple pseudonyms and covers a variety of genres, from web novels to fashion photo books. A Twist of Fate is her first full-length novel published under this name. It was selected as a book-to-film project by South Korea's biggest bookstore, Kyobo, and was optioned for film only weeks after its original publication.

S. L. Park is the translator of If YouLive to 100, You Might as Well Be Happy by Rhee Kun Hoo. Her work has won the Indiana Review Fiction Prize and the Writer's Digest fiction award. Under her full name, she has also written one poetry collection and a forthcoming chapbook. Born and raised in South Korea, Park holds a bachelor of arts in English from New York University and a master of fine arts in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin. Her translations of Korean literature have appeared in the Cincinnati Review, the Los Angeles Review, and the New England Review, among others.