Book review: Everything I Never Told You

Title: Everything I Never Told You
Author: Celeste Ng
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary:  The Lees are an interracial Chinese American family living in small town Ohio in the 1970s.  Marilyn and James  have complicated relationships with their three children--Nathan, Lydia and the overlooked baby, Hannah.  Lydia is her parents' favorite, but with this favoritism comes incredible pressure.  When her body is found in a lake, the tenuous strings that were holding the family together begin to strain and fall apart.

Review:  The perspective shifts from everybody in the family both before and after Lydia's death as each respective family member tries to process her absence.  Marilyn pushes Lydia to be successful in school so she can have the career that Marilyn never had.  James pushes Lydia to be popular.  Lydia is neither but she doesn't have the heart to tell her parents.  Nathan is heading to Harvard in the fall and Lydia is anxious that she's about to be abandoned and will have to deal with her oppressive parents on her own.  Her hopelessness leads to her suicide.

For some reason it has taken me a long time to write this review.  I thought about downgrading this from four stars to three but ultimately decided against it.  I think the reason it took me so long to write this review is this book tackles complicated topics--family dynamics, marital strife and wanting the best for our children but being blind to the fact that our children are not mini versions of ourselves.


This book was particularly heartbreaking to read as a parent.  Every parent wants their children to be successful, smart and have friends.  I'm dreading the moments in my girls' lives when they are disappointed or hurt.  As parents we try everything we can to shield them from that and yet we know we can't.  And it can be hard to remember that our children are not us.  They will have their own experiences and their own responses to those experiences.  Hopefully we can provide a home that is slightly less dysfunctional than this one, but every family has problems.  Perhaps this is the reason why it took me so long to write this review. Not necessarily because it was a *bad* book (it wasn't), but because it was so serious and layered.  As a result, a serious and layered review.