Book Review: Our Missing Hearts

 

This was my first ever audio book and I thought Lucy Liu did a great job with the reading.  I have been a fan of Ng's previous books, and I just didn't think this was her best. The premise was well-timed and interesting, the characters were compelling, but the ending was so anti-climactic, it called into question whether the story preceding it had been necessary. It kind of felt like the author had painted herself into a   corner.

That said, it was well written, an enjoyable listen and full of issues worth thinking about.

For a  list of my favorite reads of 2023, check this out!

Book Review: Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng's first novel, Everything I Never Told You, blew me away. It would have been hard for Little Fires Everywhere to top it, and it didn't, but it was still enjoyable and thoughtful and impressive in so many ways.

On the Amazon site, the book has been reviewed nearly 2000 times, and the vast majority are four and five stars. Even three star reviews are respectable, in my opinion. What's shocking to me is the 4% of reviewers who felt this book deserved one star. Have they ever read a one star quality book? I have and this isn't it. The one star review should be reserved for books that never should have been published in the first place, not a book you just didn't connect with. Celeste Ng is an amazing writer who couldn't write a one star book if she tried.

Rant over.

I saw Ng at the Tucson Festival of Books this past weekend where she discussed this novel, which is being made into a TV show starring Reese Witherspoon. Having loved her HBO adaptation of Big Little Lies, I'm really looking forward to it.

Little Fires Everywhere is set in the nineties in Shaker Heights - an affluent, planned community that prides itself on its liberalism. The major conflict centers around the abandonment of a Chinese baby and her subsequent adoption by a wealthy, white couple. Ng explores issues of class and race and motherhood in a way that challenges the reader to ask questions without supplying answers.

Book Review: Everything I Never Told You

I wanted to hate this book. When it arrived, I read the acknowledgements first and the author thanked her agent for having the patience and belief in her to wait six years for the book to be completed. As a writer myself, this is the kind of thing that drives me wild with jealousy. But I'm here to tell you: her agent was right. This book is fantastic.

Ng's debut is a beautiful exploration of family dynamics and the struggle to know and be known in spite of miscommunication, secrets and silence.