1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything, but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.īeyond that, she describes each member of the family, in this beautiful image, and straight away, I have an idea of the dynamics.

The opening lines of the book are: Lydia is dead. WritingĬeleste Ng’s writing will pull you into this book right away, it’s undeniable. I’m going to break my review up into a few main sections including themes, plot, characters, writing, and more. For now, that wraps up my spoiler free review! Keep reading for spoilers! Spoiler Review There were a few things about the book that prevented me from giving it a full 5 stars, but I don’t want to spoil you.

Often, this kind of thing can feel heavy and amatuer, but Ng plays with this technique perfectly.Įven if you like plot driven books, I think you’ll like this because each page tells exciting stories, whether they’re dramatic flashbacks, or Hannah just observing her family as they grieve. We dot between each character, sometimes multiple in the same sentence. But she also uses the omniscient third-person incredibly. Ng gets down to the nitty gritty detail of big moments, like pencil-marked dreams and the early evening sunlight, splashing across the tablecloth like melted butter. You’re angry with them, but can understand why they’ve made the decisions they do. Although they make bad decisions, Ng conjurs up just the right amount of sympathy in her readers. Celeste Ng creates these detailed and flawed characters who you feel like you know, only a few pages in.

I loved the pace of this book, and although it moved through time at its own ambling pace, the author used literary techniques to tell a mesmerising and convincing story, even though it felt completely new. And we learn about Hannah – my favourite character – the youngest child who is often overlooked, yet she overlooks nothing. We learn about Nath and his ambition and loneliness. We learn about Lydia, and how she was the favourite child, and that might have been the fatal flaw to the whole family. We get a close analysis of the parent’s marriage and how, although built on true love, it wasn’t necessarily built on acceptance. I thought it would be more focused on the mystery of Lydia’s death, but instead, it focused on the Lee family. I didn’t realise that it was going to be as heartbreaking and beautiful as it was. Trigger Warnings: Death, suicide, racism, sexism, and affairs. Slowly, we learn of the truth of that night, the foundations the family is built on as well as how they are treated, as an Asian-American family, in 1970’s Ohio. Synopsis: Lydia’s body is found in a local lake, and her death slowly breaks her family apart. Genre: Adult, Mystery, Historical Fiction But here we are, with a book that I adored in so so many ways. I READ A BOOK I ACTUALLY LIKED? I know, I can hardly believe it either.

Everything i never told you review