In a quietly powerful debut, Celeste Ng pulls readers into an American family whose lives are shaped by the smothered dreams and fears of inadequacy lurking in their hearts. When their carefully constructed illusions are fractured, the strength of willing vulnerability may be their only way back to life and to each other.
"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." One morning in 1977, 16-year-old Lydia Lee doesn't come to the breakfast table. Although the police assure the Lee family that most missing teen girls come home on their own, they find Lydia's body in the nearby lake two days later. They suspect suicide, but each member of the family has a different theory. Her father, James, believes Lydia killed herself because she had no friends. Her mother, Marilyn, is sure someone murdered her favorite child. Her brother, Nathan, suspects their neighbor, the school bad boy, of complicity. Only her little sister, quiet, insightful Hannah, knows that none of their theories can be correct as long they continue to see Lydia's motivations and fears as identical to their own.
Readers will ache as the characters break away from each other, but Ng's gentle voice keeps alive the hope that lessons may be learned, rifts mended. Ultimately filled with the promise of renewal, this delicately crafted drama destroys, only to heal. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads