The Plans I Have for You by Lai Sanders: A dark, seductive debut about revenge, race, and dangerous devotion

A viral video destroys one young woman’s future in The Plans I Have for You by Lai Sanders, and what follows is a gothic-tinged descent into revenge, obsession, and the perilous gap between justice and annihilation.

Releasing March 17, 2026, Sanders’s debut has already been named one of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Thrillers of 2026, but this novel resists easy categorization. It blends psychological suspense with sharp social critique and an undercurrent of supernatural ambiguity that keeps the reader unsettled from the first page.

Shelley Hu’s life implodes after a video of her worst day goes viral. In a matter of hours, she loses her place at Columbia Law, her prestigious Manhattan law firm internship, and the future she believed would secure stability for herself and her mother. Instead, she’s back in Kissimmee, Florida, working the night shift at a kitschy motel near Disney World—the same job she held in high school.

But the shame Shelley carries does not belong to her. It belongs to the white male boss who sexually harassed her. It belongs to the white woman who escalated a confrontation over a subway seat—despite an empty one sitting right beside it—until Shelley broke under the pressure. And it belongs to the journalist who sent the video viral and continued to profit from the worst day of Shelley’s life.

When Sophia Moon checks into Shelley’s motel with her husband and young son, she offers something intoxicating: restoration. Sophia, who has endured her own public shaming, proposes a plan. A new identity. A new career. A way to return to New York and quietly infiltrate the lives of the three people who derailed Shelley’s future.

At first, the revenge is methodical. Shelley slips back into elite spaces under a new identity and watches as her targets begin to suffer subtle, destabilizing setbacks. But the true tension of the novel lies not in the takedown—it lies in the shifting balance between Shelley and Sophia. Shelley wants consequences. Sophia wants something far darker.

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The gothic undertones generate unease long before Shelley consciously feels it. She is too busy falling in love, too busy imagining a future where Sophia leaves her husband and chooses her, to recognize how carefully she is being guided. Death is never part of Shelley’s plan. Yet as Sophia’s fixation intensifies, the gap between their visions of justice widens. By the time Shelley begins to grasp the true scope of Sophia’s plans, the ground has already shifted beneath her feet—and disentangling herself may cost more than she ever intended to risk.

Sanders also delivers a layered examination of racism and power. She interrogates white racism against people of color in the United States, but she also draws striking parallels to Han Chinese discrimination against ethnic minorities in China. The effect broadens the novel’s reach, underscoring how majority power structures marginalize in hauntingly similar ways across cultures.

One of the book’s most provocative threads explores the ethics of white Americans traveling overseas to adopt children—sometimes treating the process as a transaction—while insisting they cannot possibly be racist because they see themselves as saviors. Sanders refuses easy condemnation or absolution. Instead, she exposes the narratives people construct to preserve their self-image while benefiting from inequitable systems.

Threaded throughout the novel is the enigmatic presence of a jinn. Is it real? A supernatural force nudging events toward catastrophe? Or a manifestation of inherited trauma and buried guilt? Sanders leaves the question open, allowing the ambiguity to amplify the story’s lingering sense of dread.

Readers who appreciated the biting social commentary and moral ambiguity of Yellowface by R. F. Kuang will find a similar willingness to unsettle here. Like Yellowface, this novel interrogates ambition, racial politics, and the stories people tell themselves to justify harm.

The Plans I Have for You is a daring debut that refuses to comfort. It asks who gets to be shamed, who gets to profit, and what happens when the person offering you salvation has an agenda of her own. It lingers long after the final page—not because of its twists, but because of the moral questions it refuses to resolve.

Are you planning to pick this one up? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Related Content

• How getting rejected by 90+ literary agents helped me get a book deal (The Trash Museum)
• Lai Sanders author snapshot (BookBrowse)
• No fixed cultural identity: New Chinese-American writers are telling their own stories (The Star)

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