<b>Miracle Creek</b> is set up as a court room drama, with added mystery and quite a few families under Angie Kim's literary microscope. Central to the story are the Yoos, a Korean immigrant family. Pak, Young and their daughter Mary run Miracle Submarine - a hyperbaric oxygen tank used to treat different diseases. Most of their patients are young children suffering from autism. The only adult is Matt Thompson who is being treated for infertility. One evening there is a terrible explosion at Miracle Submarine that leaves two dead and many more injured. Pak is paralyzed. Matt loses the use of his hand. Mary's face is permanently disfigured. These physical burdens are nothing compared to the emotional scars of the victims or the secrets and lies that threaten the fabric of their families.

On trial is the mother of the young boy who died that day. What would possess a mother to kill her only son? Was her motive attention or freedom? Elizabeth's suspicions of the protesters may be well founded but are they correct? Did Pak commit this heinous act in an attempt to defraud his insurance company? Kim keeps you guessing and questioning until the bitter end. Usually this is a recipe for a very good mystery. But what makes <b>Miracle Creek</b> exceptional is that Kim manages to give depth to a host of characters exposing their flaws and revealing their secrets so that at the end no one is blameless and all bear some of the guilt of this tragic event.

I was pleasantly surprised by this debut.
I understand why <b>Miracle Creek</b> is garnering so much critical acclaim and media attention and look forward to reading more works by Angie Kim.

<i>Special thanks to NetGalley, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux Sarah Crighton Books and Angie Kim for advanced access to this book.</i>

I received an e-ARC from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars.

This was so-so for me. I didn't really get into it and figure out who was who till about 30/40% in, there are a few people to try and keep straight. I was able to figure out the who (so that was a bummer) but not the why so that was good. I loved the courtroom setting!

Miracles are the stuff people dream about, for love, money, freedom, and often cures for serious illness.
A Korean family were dreamers, for a better life in America and they made it happen. Young and Pak Yoo worked hard to get to the USA, and their dream was for their daughter, Meh-hee-yah, to attend a good college and live a good life. Meh-hee-yah changed her name to Mary early on to fit into her school. The family worked tirelessly to succeed.

Eventually, Young and Pak opened an alternative treatment center known as the HBOT, a vessel that delivered hyperbaric oxygen therapy. People desperate for solutions to conditions not responding to traditional scientific methods like autism and infertility turned to oxygen therapy for help. Some people thought it was working, and others did not.

On a hot summer night in August 2008, the chamber caught fire and blew up, killing two patients and severely injuring others. The novel describes the court trial that followed. The story with background on each person involved is a heartfelt story of disappointment and loss. Beware of miracles; they could become nightmares. Nina Kim has succeeded in bringing me into a complex courtroom drama.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.

Miracle Creek checks a lot of boxes for me - family drama, a whodunnit, court room proceedings, great characters and excellent writing. The family featured is a Korean immigrant family who runs an experimental medical business that people seek "treatments" for who have autism, infertility and other life altering "ailments". This course of treatment is highly controversial for some and when a fire is responsible for killing two people during a treatment, a murder investigation begins and fingers are pointing everywhere.

It took me about 100 pages to get into the rhythm, but once I found my footing I couldn't tear my eyes away (unless I was forced to since I can't read all day and night 😉). The court room scenes were <b>riveting</b> and I felt like I was there. Picture your favorite court room drama on TV - this was just as good. When the reader wasn't in the court room, we were treated to flashbacks that delved into each characters side of the story, which gave new information to what we already knew. Angie Kim was very clever in her writing, which made it difficult to figure out who started the fire.

If court rooms scenes, or criminal investigations don't quite pique your interest, there is plenty here in the likes of literary fiction, where we go behind the scenes to parents who are literally a slave to their children's lives. There are plenty of discussion pieces here, which make this a perfect book club choice. I highly recommend this and can't wait for Ms. Kim to write her next book.

Thanks to Netgalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Angie Kim for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review of this book.

Review Date: 4/7/19
Publication Date: 4/16/19

Three stars for Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. There’s plenty of twists and turns in this book to keep you guessing until the end. Each of the characters has a piece of the story, and most are withholding the truth for their own personal benefit. Where I struggled with this story was the obvious gimmick of withholding the truth from the reader specifically to litter “aha” moments throughout the story - it felt less organic to the narrative and more like the book was being written for shock value. I started and stopped reading this for months before finally finishing, and ultimately I felt a bit unfulfilled.

What an impressive debut! This legal drama gripped me immediately and kept my attention throughout many twists and turns. It's told from the perspective of a variety of characters connected to the fire and explosion at Miracle Submarine, an alternative therapy that involves breathing in pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber. Elizabeth Ward, whose son died in the fire, is charged with setting it, but as we follow the other characters during her trial, it becomes clear that everyone is keeping secrets. Besides the mystery, this book addresses a number of heavy issues, and is full of feels, especially near the end. Highly recommended!

Move over John Grisham and William Landay, there is a new girl in town, her name is Angie Kim and she can write a court room drama just as good or possibly better than you, plus I haven’t read a mystery who dun-it as good as this one since Cormoran Strike hit the stands by Robert Galbraith and we all know who Robert Galbraith is.
I was absolutely blown away by this new author, read this book in just a couple days cause I couldn’t wait to get back to it and didn’t want to put it down when I did. Pak, Young, Mary, Matt, Janine, Elizabeth, Teresa, Henry, TJ and all the others. Wow oh Wow. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
This is just about as close to a perfect story as it could be, we follow along on a cat and mouse chase with just a few little tidbits to make us think we are on the right trail, and then she changes the game and we are off on another tangent. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, read this novel, it will be well worth your while and you could learn a whole lot about the emotional roller coasters of parents with autistic or mentally challenged children and the lengths they may go to for help. Plus the ramifications of what can happen with just a little white lie.
Do we ever take the time to sit back, look at our lives and think about those pivotal moments that changed the course of our destiny, was it a missed turn in the road, or was it really supposed to happen all along unbeknownst to us.
Highly recommend!!! I was given an advanced copy from Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Sarah Crichton Books through Net Galley for my honest review, this one gets a HIGH 5*****’s.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim is a clever courtroom drama that goes between past and present with each chapter a different perspective. When a "miracle submarine" that is supposed to be an oxygen therapy tank to cure everything from infertility to autism starts on fire two people are killed. The fire is confirmed arson but who set the fire and why is the story that unravels throughout the book.

It has been awhile since I read a good courtroom thriller so I was excited to read this book. I felt like the story was complex and interesting. I wouldn't say this was a quick read for me but I enjoyed how all the pieces slowly came together throughout the book and I didn't mind that it took me a little longer to read it. I liked how the characters seemed realistic and how the author explored how parents of children with special needs feel during day to day therapies exhaustion that goes along with their care. I would recommend this book to people who like complicated family relationships, mysteries, and courtroom dramas.

“Miracle Creek” by Angie Kim is a literary thriller set in VA around the mysterious fire of the Miracle Submarine that kills two people. The story follows the murder trial a year later.
The novel alternates between the point of view of all the major characters and has lots of twists and turns along in the way. This book was a quick read for me and the ending unpredictable. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

“Nothing will happen,...Tragedies don’t inoculate you against further tragedies and misfortune doesn’t get sprinkled out in fair proportions; bad things get hurled at you in clumps and batches, unmanageable and messy.”

If you have the courage to continue after hitting that thought you will read a gripping account of a day that went horribly wrong. Told from the perspectives of those involved, all trying to justify their thoughts and actions, you are shown a myriad of truths, half-truths, and shreds of the truth. You will become involved in a hand wringing courtroom trial that weaves around the truth, the lies, the fabrications and the best and worst intentions of so many that break into a million pieces.

Everyone should have come forward with the truth but the participants learn that their lies demand commitment. “Once you lied, you had to stick to your story”; even if it means creating irreparable harm and destroying innocent people. Angie Kim has plumbed the depths of her characters and made them so real. She has touched on so many different issues creating a believable scenario that heightens the tension, drama, emotion and ending.

Great Book. Great writing. Greater than great.

Thank you Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a copy.

Everyone is keeping secrets in the small town of Miracle Creek...

Have you ever watched a episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent? That is what this book reminds me of. It felt like a sensational case that was ripped from the headlines and that keeps you flipping through the pages to find out what happens. All the courtroom drama. All the behind the scenes interviews, thoughts of the suspects and the re-enactment of the crime. I was hooked from the beginning and completely shocked at the end. Bravo!

Thank you NetGalley and Sarah Crichton books for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book. I was so excited when I received the approval to download this book as I was hear so much buzz about this book. The hype is real on this one. The book centers around a murder trial and how it affects this community. This felt a lot like Celeste Ng to me which is probably whyI loved it as much I did.

A wonderful debut novel that had me hooked from the very start. It was a moving story full of drama and suspense until the very end. This is mainly the story of a struggling immigrant family trying to live the american dream of supporting themselves and their daughter going to college. Intertwined with their story are the stories of families struggling with autism, cerebral palsy, infertility and losing a child. It brings to light many struggles that families face every day. Throughout the book there's also a question how a fire started that changed these people's lives forever. Suspenseful and devastating this novel will keep you engaged from beginning to end.
I'm grateful that I received an ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I suggest you run to the nearest bookstore and purchase it when it comes out in 2019!

WOW! Courtroom drama at its best with great characters and thought-provoking questions
Young and Pak Yoo are Korean immigrants who run a hyperbaric chamber medical facility in a rural section of northern Virginia where they treat patients with a variety of conditions, including autism. Protesters threaten to shut down the facility, and one day a fire and a resulting explosion destroys the facility and kills a child patient and a patient’s mother. Elizabeth, the mother of the boy who died in the fire, is arrested for murder and brought to trial, but as the trial progresses we find that a number of people had various combinations of means, motive, and opportunity. The protesters had apparently left before the fire began, but Pak Yoo was not at his normal place in the facility; one of the patients’ mothers had said she felt unwell and was sitting on a nearby creek bank instead of being inside with her son; the Yoo’s teen-aged daughter Mary was sneaking cigarettes in the area, and so on. And who called the Yoo’s insurance company not long before the fire asking about coverage in case of arson?
Most of Miracle Creek takes place during the four days of Elizabeth’s trial. This is courtroom drama at its best, as the story unfolds through witness testimony and the reactions of seven primary affected parties. In addition to the Yoo family and Elizabeth, there is also Matthew, a doctor taking hyperbaric treatment for infertility at the insistence of his wife Janine, and Teresa, a mother who was inside the chamber with her son when it exploded. The structure of the story shifts between the perspectives of all of these characters. This type of structure is hard to pull off well, but Kim uses the unifying element of the trial to achieve a coherent story while at the same time letting us get to know her very human characters. We see the Yoos facing the uncertainties common to most immigrants settling into a new country, and their daughter struggling additionally with being a teen-ager in a new society. Matthew is a doctor who is skeptical of any beneficial effects of oxygen treatment on his sperm motility and is hiding a secret. Elizabeth, the mother of an autistic boy, and Teresa, whose son is severely handicapped from cerebral palsy, face motherhood challenges beyond anything they could have expected. They are all very believable people and sympathetic.
The opening lines of Miracle Creek are “My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first.” This is only the first of many ethical and philosophical problems our seven characters face. There is lying, but there is also simply hiding the truth. When is it okay to do this? How should justice be served? Where should our loyalties be strongest? In addition, in Elizabeth, Teresa, and Kitt, the mother who dies in the explosion, Kim powerfully and convincingly portrays the anguish experienced by these mothers, who love their children dearly but sometimes wish they were dead. Kim raises these ethical questions in very thought-provoking ways.
Miracle Creek is much more than a legal thriller, but it IS a great legal thriller. The reader is kept guessing whodunit, as it becomes increasingly possible that there are many suspects in addition to Elizabeth. The ending is a real shocker and presents one final ethical quandary whose resolution I cannot wait to debate with my friends.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance review copy of Miracle Creek and my thanks to Angie Kim for writing such a super book.

Thank to netgalley and the author/publisher for the Arc for my honest review.

I can’t tell you how excited I was to be approved for this arc. I’ve been eyeing this book for awhile. The medical topic, the mystery / thrill aspect. Autism. It all drew me in and intrigued me.
I had high hopes for this book, and I can truly say I wasn’t let down.
It’s a great book, some rare slow moments; But such an interesting book!

"Tragedies don't inoculate you against further tragedies, and misfortune doesn't get sprinkled out in fair proportions; bad things get hurled at you in clumps and batches, unmanageable and messy."

As I close my Kindle after reading the last few pages, I'm absolutely and totally satisfied with the beautiful and moving story I just finished. This type of book is a bit outside my usual genre, but I picked it up because it had several key elements that made it sound appealing: medical stuff (hyperbaric oxygen therapy), autistic children, death (accident, murder, arson?) courtroom drama and family saga. It's a complicated and heartbreaking novel with beautiful writing and well-drawn characters that I could completely relate to and empathize with. There are so many great quotes I could share from the novel, but I'll leave this here: "We all have thoughts that shame us. Hubris. The worst sin."

On a hot summer night, the Miracle Creek Submarine hyperbaric oxygen treatment center is up and running its last dive of the day. Inside are 3 disabled kids and 3 adults -- hooked up with astronaut-like helmets to tubing that connects to the tanks outside. A fire. An explosion. Death and disability. Who is to blame - was it an accident or something worse?

The owners are Korean immigrants trying to give their teenaged daughter a better life in America by setting up this therapy. The mothers who were there were just trying to help their children. The protesters were angry that the mothers wouldn't accept that HBOT was dangerous and experimental. An infertile couple desperate to try anything to conceive. "That was both the best and worst part, that all that happened was the unintended consequence of a good person's mistakes." NO SPOILERS.

Just read this. It would make a great book club selection as there are so many universal truths within to debate and discuss. I can even see this as a fantastic movie. Thank you to NetGalley and Sarah Crichton Books for this e-book ARC to read and review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book! It’s out April 16, 2019 (but FYI, it’s also an April Book of the Month selection!).

Miracle Creek was a great read. An intriguing whodunnit with so many layers to the crime and to the entire cast of characters, it kept me guessing — suspecting, but not knowing — all the way up until the end. And it also broke my heart and showed real humanity throughout.

The story begins on the day of the explosion. Young Yoo is helping her husband, Pak, at the Miracle Submarine — a pressurized oxygen tank that delivers pure oxygen to those inside for a “dive.” This is supposed to help the cells heal more quickly than they would on their own, and the Yoos’ patients include those with autism, cerebral palsy, infertility, etc. But that day, everything spirals out of control, and the barn housing the Miracle Submarine explodes.

Fast forward to a year later, and the mother of one of the children who’d been inside at the time of the explosion is on trial. He and another child’s mother had been killed, and the police believe his mother was tired of caring for a special-needs child, wanted her life back, and strategically placed a lit cigarette on top of a pile of kindling under the oxygen tube so that her child would die.

But as the trial begins, we see that it’s probably not that simple. So many others — the doctor who’d been in the dive to cure his infertility and who’d had a secret friendship (half a wink wink here) with the Yoos’ daughter Mary, the doctor’s wife, another mother who’d been inside the tank, Young, Mary, Pak — all weave their narrative together until nobody (whether inside the story or just reading it) is sure of anything anymore. Who lit the fire? And why?

What emerges from this tangled web of information are a few themes:

- Motherhood, in all its forms. Whether it’s Young and Mary’s complicated relationship, or the demand, competition, stress, guilt, and joy that comes with parenting a special-needs child, it’s all in there.

- Immigration. Mary and Young immigrated to the US from Korea when Mary was young, and Pak stayed behind. This splintered their family in more ways than one.

- Racism. Everyone who either is or is related/married to someone from Korea is touched by racism in their experiences.

- Honesty. With each other and ourselves.

- The fact that every action has consequences, and every word you say affects the people around you in ways that you will never know. That everyone has an untold story, untold experiences. And that if any teeny, tiny thing happened in a different way, everything could be different.

This was really well done, a fantastic debut. Read it — and then let me know so we can talk through it.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and to NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A year after a fire burns down a medical facility at Miracle Creek, leaving two dead and several severely injured, this book takes us through the court case that follows. With each chapter, a different person's POV was given, and then picked up again in later chapters. And with each person involved in the case, the story takes another turn. Was what happened really an accident? Each person has their dirty secrets, and their fears about those coming out, and each has issues with what happened and how they influenced it.

It took me a while to get into this book, as the many ttwists and turns, the white lies and also the in-depth background stories on all characters involved made it hard to keep up with. After a certain point though, I was hooked and could not put it down, and the questions on morality, trust and value of life stayed with me after I finished.

Overall, this is a beautifully written, intense, well-crafted courtroom drama that I would very much recommend.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for sharing Angie Kim’s upcoming novel. It was wonderful and so much more than I was anticipating. This is a well-plotted courtroom drama but more than that. There are many stories revealed through the multiple characters and the themes touched on include immigration and marriage but mostly on the love and sacrifices of parents for their children. The descriptions of the mothers’ feelings towards their children were so well-done and amazingly and bravely true to life. This is a great title if you liked Defending Jacob, but I will be recommending this to everyone.

This is an excellent story and not easily categorized - it's a courtroom drama, a mystery, an immigrant story, and an analysis of motherhood and marriage, among many other issues. This story takes place through multiple POVs, and even when the particular character is a distasteful person I was intrigued to see what terrible choice they'd make next.
Kim's writing is excellent, you wouldn't even think this is a debut. I read this book over the course of a day, intrigued to see how the consequences of each choice made that fateful day led to the deaths the trial is focused on. Miracle Creek will make an excellent book club choice; it's a fast paced read with a great deal of nuance to discuss. I look forward to everyone having the chance to read this book for themselves on release day.

Thank you to the publisher via NetGalley for providing me with an arc for review. This in no way influenced my opinion.