This one is going to be very complicated, so bear with me. First and foremost, I’m just now reviewing this which, for me, means I actually read the finished product. And I have a ton of opinions.

First, the positive. I think this author has a very special gift. Like her last novel, I love the concept. And I also think NJK’s ability to write sentences is truly beautiful. I love that she explores these themes of living your truth and how we, especially as children, rarely know how our parents outside of that singular lens of a parent-child relationship.

HOWEVER, I have some serious issues with her editorial team. This author needs a lot of help in crafting her stories and she is apparently left out to dry. Reading the finished version of this book, I felt like I was reading a first-, rough draft that somehow made it to print. There were so many things that were just unacceptable to me, as a reader.

Problem 1: the level we were asked to suspend our beliefs in our we would act in similar situations is just unacceptable. For example, you find a dead body in your backyard with your a letter addressed to your spouse. You are going to open that letter. I will never believe, in a million years, that any person would tear it up and throw it away. I can believe people wouldn’t turn it over to the police. Sure! But they are going to read that letter! Want another example? If you grew up in a country, immigrated to another, then get a call from your homeland to inform you your best friend was found murdered, then you go to your homeland to visit and find your friend alive, I will never in a million years believe that you won’t ask questions.

Problem 2: the incoherence of some of the paragraphs. We may have a paragraph that starts off talking about fruit but then ends up, without any transition, reflecting on war scenes, and then concludes with talk of money. There needs to be some logical transition. Or start a new fucking paragraph.

Problem 3 and my biggest problem: the ending. I had the same problem with Mina Lee. I was convincing myself I could forgive problems 1 and 2, but I cannot handle a “Scooby doo” ending. This ending is so utterly far fetched and written for a shitty, overly sappy made-for-tv movie. I hated it.

And I also can’t not mention the book is just filled with grammatical errors, referring to a dead person in present tense in one sentence but not the next, accidentally inserting words that don’t belong “he as was dead”.

Needless to say, I am done with this author. Which is unfortunate bc there is so much potential. This editorial team should be fired.

Author of The Last Story of Mina Lee, Nancy Jooyoun Kim has gifted readers with a second character-driven novel, What We Kept to Ourselves, about the Korean American experience and the ways that the past and personal secrets reverberate and affect oneself and others throughout the years.

Written with a dual timeline and multiple points of view, What We Kept to Ourselves centers on the Kim family. Husband John and pregnant Sunny arrived in California as immigrants, eventually having two children, Ana and Ronald. Struggling to survive in an alien culture, John spends most of his time working, devoting little time to his wife, and growing children and adversely affecting family relationships.

When Sunny disappears, other family members are left to deal with the loss in their individual ways. A year after Sunny’s disappearance, just as Ana is to return home on vacation from college, a unknown man’s body appears in the Kim’s backyard. In his hand is a letter addressed to the missing Sunny. The story now has multiple mysteries. What happened to Sunny? Who is the dead man in the yard? Why was he trying to contact Sunny? Yet the novel is more a family drama than a mystery/thriller, and readers must patiently await answers and concentrate on the deeper story of family secrets, family trauma, the immigrant experience, and more as the story shifts back and forth between 1977 and 1999 as well as between John, Ana, Ronald, and Sunny.

Some readers have expressed a preference for a shorter, more action-packed mystery-thriller, but that was never Nancy Yooyuan Kim’s intention. Take your time to understand the well-developed characters, their secrets, and the ways their pasts and their environments influence their lives.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria for an advance reader copy.

This book was just “meh” for me. I felt like I was reading it because I had to finish it instead of reading it because I wanted to finish it. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was.

This was overall a good book. I liked the flashback sections the best, I didn’t always understand the character’s actions and motivations, which meant I wasn’t quite getting the character development I like to see in a story. Overall I’m glad I read it.

A masterful, slow burn. The characters were interesting, the plot kept me turning the pages, and the story showed me sides of life different from my own

It’s 1999 and John Kim, a Korean immigrant, has just found the body of a man in his backyard. It has been one year since his wife went missing and the dead man was carrying a letter addressed to her. The mystery begins. What connection does this man have with Sunny? Will the Kim family finally find out what happened to Sunny? This book was long and slow paced … too long. At 50% the same questions are still being muddled over. Unfortunately it will end up being a story that won’t last overly long in my memory. Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

What We Kept to Ourselves - by Nancy Jooyoun Kim. This book was definitely a slow burn. While I enjoyed parts, it took me a while to finish. The ending was very good and unexpected.

There's so much to appreciate here - from "vaporized by this thing called email and AOL" to the homeless encampments "harkening back to the refugee camps of his youth." I love both the mystery and social commentary, family dynamics and enduring experience of war (and I can relate to that in my own family). Nancy Jooyoun Kim is a skilled, beautiful storyteller and I can't wait to read more of her work.

What We Kept to Ourselves is a a great novel that will keep you reading into the night to find out what will happen next.

Sunny Kim disappeared a year ago, and her family is understandably struggling. When her husband John finds a dead man in their backyard, holding a letter addressed to Sunny, the family comes together to figure out what must have happened to their mother/wife and how this man is connected to her. The story jumps between 1977 (when John and a pregnant Sunny first move from Korea to California) and 1999, when everyone is worried about Y2K. I was immediately drawn into the mystery of Sunny's relationships and her disappearance. The way the author jumped between the two timelines was an effective way to tell this particular story. While I didn't really care for the ending, I was happy to have a resolution to the mystery, and I enjoyed the book overall.

I’d read a whole book focused entirely on Sunny. The plot, eh, the kids, eh, husband, eh. The best parts of the book were the Sunny parts.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review

This book was messy and ambitious with all the territory it wanted to cover. I don’t think it was done particularly well but I also do not hate it! The cast of characters were interesting and being able to see into their head was nice but also stylistically strange — some of the pronouns really tripped me up bc I couldn’t figure out who was talking about whom. I am not a fan of how everything wrapped up but I guess I can understand how that was convenient. So many convenient tie-offs. On a positive note, I did resonate with Sunhee’s feelings as a stay-at-home parent and her resentment. While reading this book, I also contemplated running away from my two kids bc it’s just so goddamn not-life-giving sometimes.

Special thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I was surprised that I didn't care much for this book. I'm struggling how to rate it. I felt no connection to the characters and didn't like the storytelling much. I didn't take anything away with me with this book as in I learned nothing, was just reading and found myself skimming.

It wasn't horrible or bad, just wasn't my cup of tea, I guess.

In 1977, John & Sunny Kim arrive in Los Angeles, expecting their first child. To get by, John works all the time leaving Sunny feeling isolated at home. As she’s waiting for the bus, she goes into labor early. Luckily, a man who is also there waiting calls her husband and stays with her until he arrives. This is the start of a beautiful but secret friendship between the two. In 1999, after Sunny has been missing for a year, a man is found dead in their yard. A letter is found with him, addressed to Sunny. Ana and Ronald are want to know who he is and why he was trying to contact their mother. They then slowly begin to realize that all of their lives are now at risk.

Although I really loved this dual timeline story and the twists and turns throughout, I found the end to be kind of frustrating and anticlimactic. But, nonetheless, everything is revealed without much being unanswered so I can’t really complain much just because the ending is unsatisfying. I would still recommend this book & look forward reading more from Nancy Jooyoun Kim.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Book for providing me with a copy of this book.

What We Kept to Ourselves follows a Korean-American family in the 1980s and 1990s. When we meet the family, there is a dead stranger in their yard and their mother, Sunny, has been gone for a year. The chapters move back and forth from present-day (1999) and the history of husband and wife, John and Sunny, from the 1980s to present. We eventually learn the deceased man is connected to Sunny.

Though there is a mystery surrounding what happened to Sunny and what happened to the man and why he was in their yard, the novel largely focuses on the character's lives. Each character is richly drawn. I felt especially connected with Sunny and could understand John's actions despite seeming so outwardly callous. John and Sunny were in Korea during the Civil War and US invasion. We see how they have processed or tried to escape their trauma and how its affected their families. Though very successful in Korea, they had to rebuild their lives from the ground up in Los Angeles. This is largely a story about the expectations we try to live up to in our roles as spouses and parents and how the experiences of those who immigrate can be so different from that of their US-born children. This was such a well-written and insightful novel

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

The premise of the novel caught my attention but the writing style and execution didn't work for me. Dual time lines and very slow pacing. The story needed to be a bit more dynamic to move the plot along.

Too much going on. There are multiple story lines and none are fleshed out well. Every issue from the Korean War to the present makes its way into this novel which is mostly set in the 90's. The parents are say and do things that seem to be wholly out of character. And the end? Ugh. This was a disappointment.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I have loved all of Kim's past novels but I just couldn't get into this story. It was so sad and I felt like there were a lot of unanswered questions.

A vivid and original story about a family whose mother is missing. A true page turner that you don’t want to miss
Many thanks to Atria and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I am struggling with everything about this book - reading it, how to rate it. Did I like it? Did I not like it? Even now, 6 weeks later, I still don't know what to think of it. Overall, I'm just apathetic. It wasn't bad, it wasn't good. It was just 400+ pages of story that I read but didn't and won't stick with me. I felt nothing for the characters. The writing was simply words. I skimmed a number of sections of the book because I simply couldn't be bothered to care enough to pay attention. Again, I'm wondering if I read the same book as everyone else.

3 stars feels like a generous rating, but I can't think of any solid reason to rate it lower. It simply wasn't my thing.