Nest of Tongues

 

Rating: 4 out of 5 | Highly recommended for horror, paranormal, aswang and manananggal fans (IYKYK)

My Thoughts:

This is my third Randy Ribay book I read (not counting the Avatar book). While the first two, Patron Saints of Nothing and Everything We Never Had dealt with family history and realism, this horror book is a thrilling departure into the paranormal.  

Despite the supernatural shift, Ribay's signature focus on family dynamics remains at the heart of the story. His protagonists are once again young adult males, but with a twist: Caleb and his older sister Lily (whom he calls ate, or older sister in Tagalog) are typical teenagers by day and manananggal by night. They are closest to vampires, but they are one kind of TaʻLi. There are others in hiding, like the kapres. 

Caleb, Lily, their mom and their Lola are manananggal, which is unusual for Caleb because in Filipino mythology, these creatures were always female. Their family escaped the Philippines and live in California, but none of their high school friends know that Caleb and Lily are able to separate from their legs, sprout wings and fangs, and fly around to hunt for wild animals in the mountains of California for their blood. What the community also doesn't know is that there are different kinds of TaʻLi in the community just trying to live their life.

The first chapter starts with a bang when the two teens find a murdered manananggal on the roof of Seafood City, branded with a tattoo calling her aswang, the human slur for TaʻLi. This reveals the presence of a bayani -- a monster hunter -- in their community.

Note for Educators: Ribay masterfully uses Filipino terms (like manananggal, aswang, bunso, and bayani) without immediate translation. This is a fantastic resource for teaching students how to use context clues or encouraging independent research into cultural folklore. 

From the Publisher:

As Filipino vampires known as manananggal, Lily and her brother Caleb understand the value of a secret. After all, to hide is to survive. To lie is to live. They’d never harm another person—but people only believe their worst fears around creatures of myth. So the siblings stay quiet. They follow their community’s rules.

Until a monster hunter turns up and kills a fellow manananggal, anyway.

Until Caleb is marked as the hunter’s next prey.

Suddenly, he and Lily realize there’s always been more at stake than the lives of their people. Because when doing everything "right" is still a death sentence, what can they take as truth? As the hunter nears, the siblings must decide if they’ll be driven from the only home they’ve ever known . . . or fight to protect a community that may already be lost.

Publication Information:

• Author: Randy Ribay
• Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
• Publication Date: August 11, 2026
• Print length: 384 pages
• Reading Age:  14 and up