Published in 2025
432 pages
Clara Kumagai is from Ireland, Japan, and Canada. Catfish Rolling, her debut novel, was a 2024 YOTO Carnegie Medal nominee, shortlisted for the 2023 Great Reads Award, and winner of the 2024 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year. She lives and writes in Ireland.
What is this book about?
This genre-bending YA novel follows a boy who finds a century-old diary written by a young woman in Nagasaki, Japan—and becomes haunted by her vengeful spirit.
When Japanese-American teenager, Adam, discovers a diary in his attic, he is enthralled by its account of a young woman’s life in Nagasaki. A hundred years separate them, yet she, like Adam, is caught between cultures, relationships, and heartbreak.
She also writes of the ghosts that have begun to seek her out, which Adam dismisses as fantasy—until he begins to be haunted by her terrifying spirit. Unravelling the mystery of her identity—and the wrong done to her—seems to be the only way to save himself.
With the help of his new crush on a summer trip to Nagasaki, the two boys race against time to untangle a story that has rippled through generations…
