A Publishers Weekly, Amazon, Washington Post, Library Journal, and Elle Best Book of 2025; The Guardian, Goodreads, Book Riot, Reactor Mag, The Nerd Daily, Gizmodo, and Bustle Most Anticipated Book of 2025; a Goodreads Choice Nominee for Best Science Fiction

"A quiet but riveting story about life on a changing planet, this novel offers a realistic picture of the future we may experience, while never straying from the characters’ inner journeys and love for sailing at the heart of the novel... Wonderfully constructed and told, the sisters’ world is one full of both darkness and hope, as humans continue to find their way in a crumbling, changed environment. Luminous, credible, and engrossing from beginning to end." —Kirkus, starred review

"Kitasei demonstrates her range in this moving portrayal of sibling dynamics set in a disturbing near future... Kitasei pays as much attention to her protagonist’s nuanced inner life as to the page-turning apocalyptic plotline, creating a tale that feels both intimate and expansive. It’s an impressive feat." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A compelling tale of sisterhood involving risky situations that shows how the women reconcile their feelings of being different from one another while remaining connected." —Booklist

"Set in a watery world of environmental catastrophe, Saltcrop is a moving testament to the distant places we’ll sail to in order to salvage the Earth and our families. Part eco-thriller, part sisterhood epic, Kitasei has written an unforgettable novel that teems with big ideas and abundant heart." —Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author of Camp Zero

"The blighted and ruined landscapes the Shimizu sisters traverse, and the disease-struck, semi-feral communities they encounter, all feel dangerously nearby, a world three minutes into the future of our present disastrous trajectory. The love they bear for one another, even if it’s often tangled up in old pains and many mutual irritations, makes even that future feel survivable. Get a copy of Saltcrop for all the perpetually warring siblings you know." —Vajra Chandrasekera, author of the Nebula, Ignyte, Crawford, and Locus award-winning The Saint of Bright Doors

"Saltcrop's near-future world of blight and corporate greed is terrifyingly plausible, but this is a story of resilience and survival, and of the strength of family bonds. The novel finds beauty in the natural world, even as it is exploited and threatened, and it finds hope in the messy, relatable, and life-affirming love between the Shimizu sisters. Urgent and gorgeously written, Saltcrop is an adventure, a family drama, an ecological thriller, and above all a story of ordinary humans doing extraordinary things." —Sarah Brooks, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

"This is a beautiful book about the people you'd cross oceans for. A brilliant triumph and a heartfelt love letter to the siblings we don't understand but are irrevocably sworn to." —J. R. Dawson, award-winning author of The First Bright Thing

"In many recent novels, humanity has created its own apocalypse, and Kitasei’s stands with the best of them. What makes her novel rise above are the family dynamics... An unputdownable novel of family bonds and ordinary people fighting corporate greed, sure to appeal to fans of Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless and Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway." —Library Journal, starred review