New York Times Bestseller · A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice · Winner of the Alex Award· Winner of the APALA Award for Fiction · NEA Big Read Selection
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY:
NPR · San Francisco Chronicle · Entertainment Weekly · The Huffington Post · Buzzfeed · Amazon · Grantland · Booklist · St. Louis Post Dispatch · Shelf Awareness · Book Riot · School Library Journal · Bustle · Time Out New York · Mashable · Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Sexual Content - 1/5
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Violence - 1/5
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Language - 1/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 1/5
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Summary
Overall Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng captures you from the first sentence and doesn't stop, leaving you wanting more. It is a beautiful, heartbreaking story
about love, stereotypes, expectations, disappointments, loneliness,and of course, secrets. The story is told through multiple points of view and written with grace.The story begins as a daughter is missing and as it unfolds leaves you wondering, was it murder or suicide, all the way until the full story is told. Throughout the book
you witness the consequences of stereotypes and how parents cope with their own shortcomings as they force expectations onto their children as they want so desperately or their children to have a better life than they had. This is a fantastic discussion book as many themes exists that is relateable in some way with everyone. I would have
loved the author to write more about the marriage as the story is told through more than a decade of time but doesn't go in depth with the parents relationship. This was the only reason I wouldn't give this book 5 stars. I felt the author left out an important piece that would have enhanced the story.