Everything I Never Told You

😊😊1/2

by: Celeste Ng

Description:

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party. When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.

James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest of the family-Hannah-who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another”–

My Review:

I struggled with how I felt about this book and what I would say about it pretty much the whole time I read it. In my own words, I would say that it is about how different members of a family perceive their family dynamic. It touches on some big issue. Most of them very briefly and I wouldn’t say it is actually “about” any of them at all. As a mother, I found the characters- especially the parents, unrelatable. I disagree with most of the description above which makes it sound like they were an “ordinary family” and an “ordinary home”.

There were a lot of loose ends and I felt like it ended with no closure or clear outcome. Or maybe I lost interest a little and was not paying full attention towards the end. Either way I have a lot of questions. I have seen a lot of great reviews about this book, so maybe it just wasn’t the right time for me to read it. I wouldn’t NOT recommend it, but if you are expecting a thriller or to fall in love with the characters of a book, this probably isn’t the book for you.

Buy it on Amazon: https://a.co/d/8OJIrLt

See more of my reviews: https://happyaccidents.heathernealphotography.com/category/book-reviews/