When this preordered audiobook popped up on my phone as "ready-to-read," I started right away. I've been waiting for this one!

And, great news! It's as compelling and wonderful as I thought it would be. Michelle Zauner, solo artist who performs indie-pop music as Japanese Breakfast, wrote an essay for The New Yorker in 2018 with this same title. It was so popular, she got a book deal from it and expanded the essay into a memoir detailing her complex yet powerful relationship with her Korean mother, who passed away in 2014 at 56 from cancer.

Her honesty about their connection and how it was fostered through their mutual love of Korean food--which she gets in a Korean food store called H Mart--is something many can relate to. I remember specific moments with both my grandmother and mother based on what we were eating at the time. Still, the anecdotes she shares, through the lens of a Korean-American daughter living in America with a Korean mother, are enlightening, emotional, and heartwarming. I have to say, eating octopus tentacles as they are still moving is something I won't soon forget. This memoir has it all: humor, humanity, and heart.

Michelle does her own narration, which adds even more emotion to the memoir. You can tell she's a singer based on her lovely voice!

I highly recommend this one. Such a wonderful "listen."