For fans of Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H-Mart and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings comes a coming-of-age memoir about a daughter of immigrants discovering her Korean American identity while finding it in her heart to forgive her Tiger Mom.
In this courageous memoir of parental love, intergenerational trauma, and perseverance, Joan Sung breaks the generational silence that curses her family. By intentionally overcoming the stereotype that all Asians are quiet, Sung tells her stories of coming-of-age with a Tiger Mom who did not understand American society.
Torn between her two identities as a Korean woman and a first generation American, Sung bares her struggles in an honest and bare confessional. Sifting through her experiences with microaggressions to the over fetishization of Asian women, Sung connects the COVID pandemic with the decades of violence and racism experienced by Asian American communities.
**Kinda Korean: Stories from an American Lifecomes out February 25, 2025**
CW: sexual assault
Thank you to Sparkpoint Studio for this copy in exchange for an honest review.Note: all quotes are subject to change.
Where shall I begin? I’ve been on hiatus for a long while, barely reading anything last year. So it definitely takes a truly remarkable book to draw me back out of my non-reading shell. And Kinda Korean was the right book to come back into my life at the start of this new year.
Whenever I read a memoir, I struggle with how to rate it, let alone review it. This is someone’s story. Who am I to tell them if their story is “good” or not? Perhaps some people may think certain people’s lives are more worth chronicling, such as your favourite celebrity or a revered leader on the global stage, but don’t we also need to hear stories from the every day person? The kind of person that we can relate to?
This is what makes Joan’s story one that bowled me over in the best way possible, and I hope it’s one that does the same for many others out there. I’ll try to put all my thoughts down in a coherent way. This was not a book for my brain to simply appreciate; it was very much a book that saw into my heart.
Phoebe Dean was the most popular girl alive and dead.
For the last ten years, the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer has been struggling to understand one thing: Why did it take young Grant Dean twenty-seven minutes to call for help on the fateful night of the car accident that took the life of his beloved sister, Phoebe?
Someone knows what really happened the night Phoebe died. Someone who is ready to tell the truth.
With Phoebe’s memorial in just three days, grief, delusion, ambition, and regret tornado together with biting gossip in a town full of people obsessed with a long-gone tragedy with four people at its heart—the caretaker, the secret girlfriend, the missing bad boy, and a former football star. Just kids back then, are forever tied together the fateful rainy night Phoebe died.
Perfect for fans of Jane Harper and Celeste Ng, Tate’s literary suspense Twenty-Seven Minutes is a gripping debut about what happens when grief becomes unbearable and dark secrets are unearthed in a hometown that is all too giddy to eat it up.
Overall Recommendation:
Twenty-Seven Minutes is not for the faint hearted, or those who do not want to fall into a pit of despair. While it tried to be a super twisty thriller, it ended up being a super slow read, filled with unlikable characters you can’t root for, all while a cloud of hopelessness permeated every page. I didn’t quite see the twist at the end coming, but at that point, I couldn’t utter much emotion for it either way. If that’s what the author wanted, then it was a success. Otherwise, please be warned.
Publication Date: January 23, 2024
I’m a huge sucker for thrillers, and from the beginning of Twenty-Seven Minutes’ synopsis, I was hooked, line and sinker. But upon opening the very first pages, something immediately felt off to me. Perhaps it was the writing style, which was disjointed and flipping across 4 characters. Or maybe it was the way each character was already being portrayed. Either way, this should’ve been my warning sign.
Spanning only the course of 3 days – which felt like a lifetime while reading it – we follow mostly Grant, Becca and June who are assumedly 3 adults in their late twenties still stuck in their old town and in the trauma they all faced on the same night a decade ago. Let me be clear. All three of these individuals are badly in need of consistent therapy. Becca claimed she went when she first survived the accident that claimed Grant’s sister’s life, but it’s clear she should’ve never stopped. Frankly, her POV probably left me with the worst feeling out of all of them. And that’s saying something because they’re ALL super messed up.
There’s definitely guilt and plenty of secrets between them all. How that would play out and explode into the public sphere was probably the only thing that kept me going at times. None of these characters were likable, although June was probably the closest one I could feel a smidge of sympathy for. But every single one of them was wrapped up in layers of grief, trauma, and addiction to unhealthy, obsessive behaviours that would make someone unsettled from only one of these POVs. There is no break regardless of who we switch to as each POV had so much to unpack. They were also unreliable narrators as you know at least one or all of them are hiding something from us, the readers. The overall result of this? Just a cloud of unsettled discomfort and despair over me outside of this book. I would definitely not recommend this for anyone who struggles with grief or feelings of despair in general. This book will only compound those feelings.
When I finally came through to the other side, the ending was partly something I should’ve seen but also not what I expected. I expected something bigger, for the fact that it ruined so many lives for so long. I suppose there are some points to be given that I didn’t see the twist right away until close to the end but a part of me feels let down. It was the only thing driving me to finish. And I can’t say I wanted to finish because it was fast paced or super suspenseful. I just like knowing the answer. The only reason this rating isn’t lower is because I did manage to finish and I did push through – a part of me was too afraid to stop reading for fear I’d never be able to pick it up again. That counts for something at least.
I’ve read my fair share of mysteries and thrillers over the years. While this could’ve been an amazing read, there was too much focus on grief and trauma to give us anything else to hold onto (or anyone healthy to read from for a reprieve). With no likable characters means no one cares what happened to them all. As this is a debut that was apparently borne of grief the author suffered herself, I can empathize this may have been therapeutic for her – but not quite so for anyone else. I can only hope any more books after this one will be a little more well-rounded, emotionally.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review
When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.
Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore—she just wrote the world’s first comprehensive of encylopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Folk on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival, Wendell Bambleby.
Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, and in search of a door back to his realm. So despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage. Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and danger.
And she also has a new project to focus a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by Bambleby’s mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambley’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.
But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.
Overall Recommendation:
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands dives straight back into the beautiful and whimsical world of Emily and her dryadology discoveries in the early 1900s. It’s everything I loved about book 1 but perhaps a little less loaded in everything. In this new setting in Austria, I liked how plot points left unresolved earlier are now coming into play. Overall, a masterful storytelling that leaves me wanting book 3 immediately.
I was so so lucky to have gotten my preorder copy of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands early to read it before it came out. The journey begins several months after book 1 concludes with Emily and Wendell on the hunt for hidden faerie doors so they can find a way into Wendell’s kingdom.
This book introduces new characters I adored like Ariadne, Emily’s niece who wants to be a dryadologist just like her. It also brought some characters I’m withholding judgment on so far, such as the old-fashioned, cantankerous Professor Rose, one of Emily and Wendell’s colleagues. On this new adventure, the stakes are still high as Wendell’s being tracked by his stepmother’s assassins.
In the mountains of Austria, Heather Fawcett continues to weave more legend and lore in Emily’s new journal dedicated to her research for a map of the faerie kingdoms and secret doors into them. I still love all the footnotes but I found there were less than its predecessor. In fact, that’s probably the one reason I couldn’t give this book a full 5 star rating. Everything felt just less than the first book. There were less character building interactions with the villagers, the pacing wasn’t quite as fast, and the worldbuilding wasn’t as heavy (though I suppose that’s a good thing for those who thought book 1 was an info dump).
Emily and Wendell’s connection continues to be strong as they face looming attacks from Faerie. The tension between them isn’t as present now that they’re not quite rivals anymore, but Wendell’s proposal still hangs over their heads with Emily sorting out her feelings. I do think the romance continues to be the perfect amount balanced with the fantastical elements of the story, with this book taking their romance further.
I will say my favourite part is the way Heather brings together plot lines from earlier that were left open and have now become important in this sequel. Emily’s knowledge of faeries and her fearlessness continues to help her in the varying situations she and her companions find themselves embroiled in. I wish there was a little more action in this book but I suppose it happens when it’s only book 2. I honestly can’t wait to see where this series takes us. It’s definitely an auto-buy series for me.
Down the Rabbit Hole 