With POOL HOUSE, Mary H.K. Choi becomes the latest YA author to make the leap to adult fiction. Here, her focus on characters and their interactions with one another feels almost claustrophobic in the intensity of her narrative scrutiny.

Stevie, who is in her early 20s, works at a chain burrito restaurant. She has grown up on the periphery of Hollywood, knowing that her mother, Moon, once had a semi-successful film and television career, but enduring a childhood and adolescence characterized primarily from the fallout of Moon's prior fame. A recovering alcoholic, Moon also carried on a long-term affair with Mac, who played her much older white husband on the sitcom “Wabi-Sabi.” Stevie has never possessed Moon's sexual allure and finds the ways she wields her attractiveness both perplexing and infuriating.

"[W]hat makes the book interesting is the intensity and subtlety with which Choi explores her characters' relationships, the shifting balances of power, and how they wield that power, often through illicit sexual encounters."

However, those days are long gone. Moon is now too old to play the sexy women of mystery roles that once paid the bills, so she's biding her time until she's old enough to play someone's mother. She calculates whether or not to sell off her designer gowns for some quick cash, and she has moved out of her luxurious main house, renting it out to rich strangers online while living in the home's pool house with Stevie. It's far from luxurious --- an “unwholesome cottage” that's described as “cold and brutal. Still. Hostile,” which also could characterize the relationship of the two women who live there, uneasily, together.

As the novel opens, Moon learns that Mac has died, apparently by suicide after jumping from a bridge. The news rattles her and Stevie, and things get even more complicated when Adam, Stevie's formative crush who played Moon's stepson on “Wabi-Sabi,” comes to stay with them after Mac's funeral. His presence further ramps up the tension in the household, reviving conflicts and longings that have existed for years but never have been resolved.

On the surface, not much happens in POOL HOUSE, especially early on. The narrative does shift perspectives and incorporates background information, often in short chapters with witty titles. But what makes the book interesting is the intensity and subtlety with which Choi explores her characters' relationships, the shifting balances of power, and how they wield that power, often through illicit sexual encounters. This is a side of Hollywood that doesn't get portrayed all that often --- hardly glamorous but still focused on image, striving for a different version of oneself, and acting the part even if you don't get it. 

The novel's simmering interiority won't be for everyone, but readers who enjoy character-driven fiction will be motivated by Choi's quietly compelling new direction.