Another great book by Nicole Chung! The stuff that she writes about is so relatable and so true. Love that she’s able to articulate and write it down so that we (as readers) can relate.

I received an advance readers' copy of a ‘A Living Remedy’ last year and read the book in two sittings. I knew from reading Nicole Chung’s first memoir ‘All You Can Ever Know’, which details her story as a transracial adoptee, to expect a flood of emotions. I knew to expect that something in me might shift and open up to interrogate a deeply personal belief I might be carrying. Typically, I’m not aware of these beliefs. My son was born two weeks after I had the chance to interview Nicole about her first memoir and I was unconsciously aware of the pressure I was holding onto wondering if I would be a *good* enough mother for him not sharing a biological connection.

Though Nicole’s newest memoir isn’t a continuation or sequel to her first, it spoke to me in a similar voice, revealing things I didn’t know I needed to hear. It’s Nicole’s ability to write with nuance that most speaks to me as a reader. The way she navigates exploring truths and her lived experiences with the people she loves, without speaking for them. In ‘A Living Remedy’, Nicole recalls the ways in which her parents struggled to access healthcare and treatment for illnesses by exposing a broken healthcare system that favors only those that can afford care. Parents she loses. Throughout the book, she writes about the many phases that exist when one is grieving, the questioning of what could have been done differently, the anger, and the pain. It’s through this exploration that she excavates the true meaning of family connection and legacy. I loved every page of this book but my favorite part of the book was when she talked about her parent's faith and what it meant to them and how it walked them through the difficult moments. And I know I’m sure everyone is wondering if there were tears reading this book, the answer is of course, but the tears were both of sadness and joy. I HOPE EVERYONE READS THIS BOOK! EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ IT.

It took me ages to read this because it just kept breaking my heart, and for the time being, i'm putting it down around 60%. Love Nicole forever, though.

This was a highly anticipated memoir for me this year and it delivered!
I am completely drawn to Nicole’s complex family-driven stories and impeccable writing. Her emotional & gifted storytelling truly makes readers feel like they are part of her journey. Her writing is so heartfelt and she has such a way of bringing readers into her life. Amazing. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. It was deeply moving and I felt like I understood the characters' pain and feelings without ever having a lived experience like that of my own. I highly recommend this book to anyone with empathy.

𝗔 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗥𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗗𝗬 is Nicole Chung’s second memoir. Her first, dealt with searching out her birth family balanced with not wanting to hurt the parents who adopted her. I liked it very much. This second, is about her love and devotion to her parents, the couple who adopted her as a tiny preemie. I can’t say this is a happy book, but I again liked it very much. ⁣
⁣
Nicole’s parents lived a hard life, often short on cash, not in the best of health and frequently struggling to have medical insurance. But, they loved each other and Nicole unconditionally and their faith always seemed to keep them afloat. 𝘈 𝘓𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘙𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘺 deals with the last years of their lives and Nicole’s relationships with them both.⁣
⁣
Sadly, Nicole lost her parents only a couple years apart; her mother in the Spring of 2020. This book is a love letter to them and I’m guessing a step in the healing of Nicole’s heart. I lost my own mother in the Spring of 2021, so this was an especially meaningful reflection for me. I can’t say it was easy, but it’s a memoir I’m very glad I read. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣
⁣
𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘵𝘰 @𝘦𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 #𝘨𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬.

A beautifully written memoir that will resonate with anyone who has experienced pronounced loss and grief over the past few years, which became heightened for many, due to the pandemic. After loosing both her parents within a short period of time, the author found strength and comfort in her writing, reflections, and the sharing of her own experiences and observations of a broken health care system that fails many (or most, actually) who can not afford to pay when they need the healthcare the most. It's a story that many will be able to relate to in some form or another and that will remain with readers for a long time after the last page has been read.

I thank Netgalley, the publisher and author for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I decided last year that I will not rate memoirs because they are so personal. I cannot getaway with not giving a star rating on the NetGalley platform so I will rate it a 5 for simplicity’s sake. I loved Chung’s first book and the 2nd did not disappoint. I was very moved by Chung’s description of guilt and wanting to do more for her own family but feeling torn when her own kids needed her — I could relate now that I’m a mother to my own kids. Book was poignant (especially with grieving parents) and I could tell there’s a lot of anger under the grief. With all this said, there’s something about Chung’s writing that feels reserved.

After her brilliant and powerfull first memoir All You Can Ever Know, author Nicole Chung is back with a second powerfull and moving memoir. This time about the broken healthcare system in the USA, and how this affected her adoptive parents, both suffering from serious illnesses.
In her first memoir, Nicole Chung described how she grew up in a small Oregon town, where she was the only Korean. In this memoir we read about after she left her hometown, to study at a private university on the East Coast on a scholarship, where she finally no longer was the only Korean. But there are also many difficulties. She always thought she lived a middle class life with her husband, but at university she sees a whole other kind of middle class, with big homes, college funds and expensive vacations. Something very different then how she lived with her parents, where health insurance and financial safety nets are almost nonexistent because they lived from paycheck to paycheck that they had to stretch to the end of every week, while they where working very hard.

When diabetes and kidney disease makes her father dies at only sixty seven, Nicole is in deep grief and rage. A better financial acces to healthcare could have prevented his early death. And just in the middle of all her grief, a year later her mother is diagnosed with an agressive type of cancer, and seeing her mother is becoming more difficult because they are living in different states amidst the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. And Nicole didn't have the chance to see her mom one last time.

A Living Remedy is a moving follow up to Nicole Chung's previous memoir. I loved her first memoir so I was very curious for this new one. Altough the tragic of illness and the failing American healthcare system is a red line of the story, Nicole Chung tells it in a beautiful way, she doesn't sugarcoat anything, she tells it like it truly happened and in a very clear, understandable way that makes this a very accessible read for many readers. My heart truly broke for what happened to her parents, and it didn't left me for a few weeks after reading the book, because everyone knows someone close to them affected by a kidney illness or cancer. I truly recommend reading this second memoir by Nicole Chung, just as much as her first memoir, because they are truly something different then usual in a good way, and very touching and moving!!

Nicole Chung wrote one of my favorite memoirs. Her first, which I read with a book group in 2019, moved me and provoked an incredible discussion amongst my bookish friends and I. She is an incredibly thoughtful story of her adoptive parents and her birth parents. I was thrilled to receive this ARC. There was heaviness and sadness in this book, but it was also an incredible read. Again, Nicole Chung's writing is thoughtful and full of depth. I'm glad she shared more of her story here.

A Living Memory will rip your heart out for multiple reasons - Nicole’s back-to-back loss of her parents when she’s in her 30s, the grief of losing a parent during the pandemic, and the inequity in America’s healthcare system. Her grief is palpable throughout her memoir, as is her justified frustration and anger with the (lack of) healthcare available in America.

it was somewhat hard to get into this book as I did not realize what the story inserts were to the story. but once I figured it out, turned out to be an interesting story. liked the line about a story is just pages between the front and back covers of a book. like a happy ending and this one was satisfying in that it covered it in just a few paragraphs at the end of the book. feel sorry for Claire having had to spend all that unacknowledged time with Ward. Isabelle as thwarted in her life in that she wanted to be adored as the public worshipped her dad. this was a good read from a debut author

One of my very first #ReadWithToni books...⁣
⁣
Nicole Chung's first book All You Can Ever Know one one of the very first books I hosted and we absolutely loved it. So, when I heard she was writing another book I immediately requested it from Netgalley.⁣
⁣
Where her first centered around her adoption, A Living Remedy centers around the loss of her parents. ⁣
⁣
Summary⁣
An intimate account of losing her two parents, author Nicole Chung has once again shared the most challenging hardships of her life in a masterfully written memoir that will forever stay with you. While A Living Remedy is a deeply personal story of love and family, striking observations about race, class, the American healthcare system, and grieving in the time of COVID, make this book a timely and important read.⁣
⁣
I am in such awe of Chung's writing - it is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Prepare to reach for the tissues when you read this immersive memoir 💜⁣
⁣
Thank you @netgalley for this free copy. A Living Remedy is out now!

Nicole Chung’s second memoir, "A Living Remedy: A Memoir" (Ecco, 2023), beautifully and tragically elucidates the human cost of inaccessible and bankruptcy-inducing health care, unaffordable and unattainable prescription medications, and the snowball effect when combined with Covid-19. During Chung’s “sandwich generation” life (caring for her own child while caring for her parents was pending or ongoing), her father’s health began to fail. Navigating the health care system from a long distance while working, raising a family, and writing layered stressors upon stressors before COVID-19 restrictions occurred.

Chung’s ability to engage the reader in her story of grief, guilt, and frustration is a highlight of "A Living Remedy," particularly with her poignant, narrative lyricism.

This book is available now. Before I dive into the review, I want to disclose here that I haven’t yet read Nicole Chung’s previous memoir, All You Can Ever Know. This new memoir can stand alone though I now definitely want to read her first book. A Living Remedy is a daughter’s beautiful and heartbreaking tribute of her love for her parents.

This story tells of how Nicole loses both of her parents at too young ages in a span of not that many years. It is a story of her deep love for them while also an indictment of the healthcare system that left them not always seeking needed care for chronic conditions. Her parents mostly lived paycheck-to-paycheck and didn’t always have stable health insurance. In this story, we see how this struggle affected them in their medical treatment.

In some ways, this book also becomes a pandemic story, as much of Nicole’s illness progresses once COVID restrictions began in 2020. Unfortunately, this left Nicole unable to visit her mother in her last months for fear of passing the virus on to her. She also writes briefly of the other side of pandemic schooling. I was on the teacher side of that, while she was on the parent side.

This is beautifully written and heart wrenching. It is a powerful memoir. If you’ve read this, let me know your thoughts!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for gifting me a digital ARC of this touching memoir by Nicole Chung - 5 stars!

Nicole is Korean and was adopted as a newborn to white parents. They eventually settled in Oregon, where she was always the only Korean person in school. Her parents sometimes struggled with jobs and money was never plentiful or medical insurance available. She was anxious to leave and went east to college on a scholarship. She got married young and began to raise a family. She realized that her middle class existence was different than what she lived in growing up. When her parents had health problems, money and insurance were always an issue. Then both parents die within a relatively short time period and Nicole is left to deal with loss, guilt and regret.

This was a beautifully written story, and one that is so relatable. Losing a parent is so difficult no matter what, but Nicole had to face the somewhat sudden loss of her father and then her mother died during Covid. She was present for neither death. This is also the story of our medical system - when people work so hard but don't have access to health insurance. As a caregiver for my elderly mother, the cost of services we may need in the future, such as home health care or a memory facility, is out of reach. As we age, we find ourselves weighing decisions between what's best for our parents or our own families - nothing is easy. Wonderful book!

Nicole Chung is a fantastic memoirist. Reading A Living Remedy, it feels as though grief is turned object. Her experiences with her mother are very similar to mine - breast cancer, remission, overabundant care packages, financial stress, and anxiety. It was a really lovely read, leaving me quite wistful and melancholy. The inventory chapters, listing items that were significant in their relationship.. It structured the book into acts in a really satisfying way.

A LIVING REMEDY by Nicole Chung (All You Can Ever Know) is a heartfelt memoir that readers will not want to miss. Chung essentially eulogizes both of her parents while exploring her relationship with them and her feelings about their illnesses and death. Yes, this is heavy reading at places, but it is beautifully written. Although especially relevant to mixed race adoptees and children of immigrant parents, Chung succeeds in portraying universal experiences in a way which will not be easily forgotten. She is unflinching in writing about the impact of Covid resulting in her "attention and energies divided between the family I was raising and the one that raised me." And there is consolation, too, when reflecting on her mother: "I know that some part of her isn't gone, because I feel her love and experience her care like a living thing. I hear her voice speaking to me. And though my father felt so far from me after he died, he no longer feels so distant, lost beyond my reach – it's as if she has given a part of him back to me now that they are wherever they are ..." A LIVING REMEDY received a starred review from Booklist. Highly recommended.

Nicole Chung’s searing memoir, A Living Remedy (Ecco), documents the grief she feels after losing both her parents in two years—and her anger towards the healthcare system that failed to treat them. With nearly 60 percent of Americans reporting they can’t afford a $1,000 emergency expense, it’s a poignant book that’s sure to resonate widely.

I started this months ago (as an ARC from NetGalley) and almost immediately put it down for a good long while. I knew it would be great, but, having lost my own dad very recently, I just wasn't in a place to read it. When I picked it back up, it still was a hard read for me, because Chung does such a good job sharing her grief.

More than the exploration of grief, Chung's discussion of class in America -- the difference between middle class and working class (which calls itself middle class), the precarity so many families live in, the disastrous effects of our broken health care system -- is impressive. This is an important perspective.