This was my first Celeste Ng book so I wasn’t as disappointed as most people were with this book, but I was definitely expecting more. The story is told in 3 parts, and could be very slow moving at times. I really enjoyed Part 1 but once Part 2 started I got bored, but when the short Part 3 began it picked up again. 

It’s meant to be an emotional tale, but for some reason it felt very sterile and detached, which is very sad considering this is a book centering on Asian American discrimination and one of the stereotypes we face is being “unemotional” and “robots”. It never feels like the characters are experiencing things themselves, more like the characters were telling us stories they heard from the news.

The thing that saved this book for me was Lucy Liu’s narration. It felt like I was being read a bed time story, and even when the story wasn’t gripping me and I was spacing out, I just listened to her lovely voice. I also enjoyed most of Bird’s POV in the novel, but I don’t think we needed Margaret’s POV at all.

I don’t think this was a bad book, I just think this type of storytelling is not for me. I definitely see what she was going for, and I can understand why other people would like it. I have a lot of respect for this book and the topics the author exploded, and I will definitely check out her other novels as I did enjoy the prose.