Wonderful story that was deep and about family. I was drawn in by the story first off and loved it. It is one of those powerful stories that once you start reading it you can't put it down. The lovely debut did a great job weaving two stories with two powerful characters.

After not visiting her mom for a year, Margot happens to have stumbled on her dead body, face down in her apartment. With no help from the police, Margot takes initiative with the help of her friend Miguel to solve the mystery of her mother’s death. Was it just a sad and unfortunate accident? Or, could Mina Lee be a victim of foul play?

This #ownvoices story took me through a Korean’s journey in America. Told in alternating past (Mina’s story) and present (Margot’s view), I learned about Mina’s hardships, her stay at an orphanage after the Korean War, her reason for immigrating from Seoul to LA, her journey to start a new life having lost her husband, her family, and having found love again. To boot, Kim intertwined Margot’s understanding of her mother and her foreignness, how difficult it was for Margot to identify with her, how her mother didn’t really try to speak English. But truly, the mystery was what kept me engaged. I wanted to know what secrets Mina hid from Margot, who her father was, and how she really died. And, you’re going to have to read it to find out!

Perfect for fans of Dominicana by Angie Cruz, this debut novel highlights Korean culture, immigration, love, family, and the sense of belonging, with a splash of mystery.

Thank you to the author, Nancy Jooyoun Kim, for this amazing debut novel and the publisher @parkrowbooks @bookclubbish for inviting me on this tour!
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This is a book that explores a lot of strong and emotional topics that immigrants endure through their journey of life in a country alien to theirs. While this book is focused on Korean-Americans, the sense of never belonging, trying to fit in, the struggle with language and identity that can be covered across immigrants in general.

Mina Lee is found dead in her apartment in Koreatown. Her daughter, Margot, who always shared a frictional relationship with her mother, decides to look into her mother’s death, which she suspects was not accidental. In the process, Margot discovers a lot of history and secrets that her mother kept to herself in order to protect Margot and their dignity.

The book alternates chapters between Mina Lee and Margot. Mina Lee’s chapters begin from 1987 when she enters the US and describes how she navigates in a new place owning next to nothing of her past self, working hard and still barely scraping by. Margot’s chapters happen during 2014 and are focused on finding answers about her mother and herself. These alternating perspectives vividly portray inter-generational conflicts and misunderstandings that is all too common among immigrants.

I think to balance out the hard topics in this book, the author cleverly introduces various Korean dishes such as jjigae, banchan and pageon (I was constantly googling for recipes!) which made me very HUNGRY and curious to try out a Korean restaurant. If you love Asian food or seafood, be prepared to experience the side-effect of hunger while reading this book!

While I have zero clue what it’s like to be Korean-American, I could still appreciate a lot of topics that resonate with me deeply as an immigrant in general. The author did a phenomenal job to highlight first-generation and second-generation immigrant experience in a debut novel and she gets full 5 stars from me! Releases Sep 1!⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Review posted on Goodreads and Instagram today August 21
Review will be posted on Amazon on pub date

This is a captivating story that showcases the reality of the immigrant experience in America, particularly in Los Angeles. Mina has always struggled with being the child of an immigrant parent with no father and with her mother's death she is having to confront those issues head on. I really love the juxtaposition of Margot's story in 2014 versus her mother, Mina's story in 1987. Often times we only see life through the lens of our own experiences and emotions and it was mesmerizing to see the two stories parallel each other. The author, Kim, does a fantastic job of bringing historical events and places to life with her wonderful and descriptive writing. I really enjoyed the "mystery" aspect of the story even though more importance was placed on Mina's life and not her death. There is so much Korean and LA culture interspersed throughout and I think that a lot of people will find a part of themselves in this book. I have been trying to find an own voices review to share since I think that will have more value than my review but sadly I couldn't find one. I highly recommend this book to everyone and I think it does an incredible job of highlighting the true American immigrant story.

What traits do we inherit from our culture’s history?

That’s something I think about on occasion. Like, how a good chunk of our personality might be determined by something that some random person in our country did decades or centuries before we were born. One action that branched into another and another, until an entire cataclysmic event sprouted and fell with a ricochet that would be felt generations later.

Maybe it’s pride that we inherited. Maybe it’s something more sinister – bitterness, fear, hate, a defensiveness that comes from trying to squash down the knee-jerk bitterness, fear, and hate. Maybe such cultural traumas are always inevitably passed down, zero chance of escape, and the best we can do is understand and navigate them.

That’s more or less the lane of thought The Last Story of Mina Lee ventures into. And when it comes to the topic of personal traumas wrapped in cultural traumas and one’s disassociative response to them, this book nails it. Does it so well, in fact, that I felt disassociated from the narrative itself.

Boredom, meet book. The only reason I didn’t scribble it down as a DNF was because I wanted to know the real reason behind Mina’s death. Surely all this slow burn was leading up to some sort of payoff? Disappointment, meet Kathy.

The prose is a head-scratcher. The writing is technically good, descriptive and occasionally florid, and yet so dry that you can scrape splinters with it. The book is meant to be a slow-paced slice-of-life story strung together by small and intimate moments, but everything felt so strangely devoid of real emotions and it was like I was seeing things happen through multiple sheets of glass. Any emotional connection I formed with these characters were annoyingly casual and brief.

I found Margot’s chapters especially trying. A lot of dull spoon-feeding of exposition and musings and an endless list of questions. That last one drove me insane. Asking rhetorical questions every other paragraph doesn’t make a scene any more poignant or mysterious, and at some point it just becomes silly and reads like a weird third-person diary.

Still, Margot does offer some memorable moments of clarity and reflections regarding immigrant life and culture (if not a better insight into her own personality beyond “young Asian-American woman who has a prickly relationship with her mom”):

“How much language itself was a home, a shelter, as well as a way of navigating the larger world. And perhaps that was why Margot never put much effort into learning Korean. She hadn’t been able to stand to be under the same roof as her mom.”

Mina’s chapters are slightly better. They follow her as she tries to adjust to a new life in L.A. Koreatown in the wake of her family’s death. It’s a look into the life of an immigrant who arrived with nothing but the clothes on her back, hoping to escape into a better future – or, at the very least, a different one. It’s utterly, distinctly unromantic, which is both a positive and a negative. Mina’s day-to-day drudgery at her supermarket job is only punctuated by the occasional conversations with her neighbour and coworker, and it’s clear that this is a woman who’s stuck in a rut, going through the motions of life.

Is it a realistic portrayal of someone who’s in her position? Whittled down by recent tragedies, compounded by her memories of the Korean War, further compounded by her struggles as an undocumented immigrant? Absolutely. Does it make for an engaging read? No. Especially not when her conclusion feels so rushed and empty, like a book with the endpages ripped out.

And, at the end of it, I’m not quite sure what audience the book is meant to satisfy. Is it a mystery? If you squint really hard, yes. Is it a mother-daughter family drama? In a very one-sided, perfunctory way, sure. Are there other Asian-American stories that handle this theme of cultural displacement with more conviction? Definitely.

See – I too can ask many questions and give not-quite-satisfying answers.

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim is about a Korean mother and daughter living in America. Margot lives out of state and does not get to spend much time with her mother, Mina. When Mina does not answer phone after several attempts, Margot decides to visit her mother. She is shocked to find her mother dead in her apartment. As Margot works her way through her mothers things to take care of them, she finds many secrets, including a clue to who her father is.

The story follows Mina’s point of view beginning when she came to America and Margot’s view after her mothers death. I love this type of writing because you uncover bits of the story at a time rather than all at once. Reading the story from different viewpoints lets you see a more complete story in my opinion.

My favorite character was Mina. She showed so much strength to immigrate to America on her own and work to build her life here. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant with Margot and becomes a single mother, she has to work even harder to create a life for her and her daughter. She also stayed true to her culture and sometimes embarrassed Margot who did not understand the Korean culture as much.

This is Nancy Jooyoun Kim’s first novel, so I wanted to learn more about her and the book. The book is will be released 01September and I hope you enjoy. It is a very interesting story about the struggles of a single women in America who did not speak English and how she created a life for herself and her daughter. It will also show you that you don’t know your parents as well as you think you do and may have you digging into your own family secrets!

Nancy’s debut novel, The Last Story of Mina Lee is expertly constructed, with characters that are so well developed that I felt like they were my actual friends by the last page. Told in an alternating character narrative, Nancy’s weaving together of Mina’s and Margot’s experiences is so artfully done that I was able to completely immerse myself in the pages.

The Last Story of Mina Lee is not a twisty, fly-through-it kind of novel, but instead it’s a gift that every reader needs to give themselves once in a while, to sit in your favorite comfortable reading spot, enjoy the feel of the book in your hand, and really contemplate the issues explored, those of immigration and the always complex mother-daughter relationship.

Title: The Last Story of Mina Lee
Author: Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Genre: Fiction
Rating:4 out of 5

Margot Lee's mother, Mina, isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother's life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.

Interwoven with Margot's present-day search is Mina's story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While she's barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a series of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.

The writing and description in this novel were compelling enough to keep me reading, despite the leisurely pace and Margot’s personality, which I didn’t care for at all. She was so hateful to her mother in her memories. Granted, Mina Lee wasn’t the most loving person, but she did manage to provide for her ungrateful daughter.

Being immersed in the culture of Koreatown was fascinating and complex, and I really enjoyed all the details. I felt so sorry for Mina Lee and everything she experienced, but Margot really made me dislike her, so it was hard to feel any sympathy for her.

Nancy Jooyoun Kim is from Los Angeles. The Last Story of Mina Lee is her debut novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin/Park Row in exchange for an honest review.)

This very sensitive story is about a woman's search for a connection to her mother, especially after she discovers her mother had been killed. Years of separation create a terrible longing for Margot now that she knows she will never see or speak to her mother again. While the drama that Margot's mother, Mina Lee, dealt with is part of the then and now narration of the story. Because of the direction that Mina's life took, and with suspicious events surrounding her death, the story has an air of suspense throughout.

As Mina's past is concerned, transplanting from Korea to Los Angeles was no easy task, and as a reader, I found this to be an introduction to a culture quite unfamiliar to me. The way that Margot used present events to sort out her mother's history - all with hopes of finding the reason behind her mother's death.

What a sensitive story! I was totally pulled in from the very beginning. Imagining Mina to be about the same age as Margot during the chapters where we read her point of view made it quite comfortable with her, able to understand her, despite our cultural differences. Also, as Margot grew up in a different world that her mother, it was easy to see how Margot began to see Mina in a new light.

While a big part of the story center's around Mina, it was easy to see how Margot had other great losses in her life, and how she had the drive to move forward. This debut story hit the mark quite well in these difficult times. Times were differences are being highlighted to a great extreme, yet reminding us all that we are more alike than many think.

Many thanks to Park Row and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

A few weeks ago I started seeing this book everywhere.
So when I snagged an arc from NetGalley, I was ECSTATIC.

The Last Story of Mina Lee is told in alternating viewpoints between Mina and her daughter, Margot. Most of Mina's story is told in the past, leading up to her death in 2014. Which is where Margot's story picks up, finding her mother face down in her apartment.

This book tackles a multitude of topics; such as immigration, depression, mortality, motherhood, friendship, and love. I originally picked this book up because I just moved back to America from Korea about a year ago. Now, I will never understand the exact nature of Mina moving to LA from Seoul. But I do understand some of the things she went through. That culture shock moving between countries is something you will never completely understand, until you're living it yourself.

All of the women in this book show such great strength. Mina left Korea for a better life in LA, she never expected to feel like such an outsider. Mrs. Baek left her abusive husband, only to be stuck in a similar situation millions of miles away. Margot moved out, ashamed of her mothers rundown apartment and small shop that was barely getting by. But in the end, she learned more about her mothers history than she could have ever expected. But she had to learn it without her mother, knowing some of these stories will never be told.

Absolutely phenomenal debut book by Nancy Jooyoun Kim!

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Park Row Books for sending me an advanced copy.

The Last Story of Mina Lee hits shelves September 1, 2020!!

A compelling dual narrative of a mother and daughter that starts out strong but, unfortunately, fizzles and falters as it moves along. It offers an excellent examination of the struggles of immigrant life and the different dynamics and iterations of grief. Chapters exploring Mina’s first year in the United States are the strongest. Will recommend to readers looking for immigrant stories or explorations of mother-daughter relationships.

Margot’s mother isn’t answering her phone. She can’t figure out what might be going on, until she shows up and finds her mother dead. Margot is determined to figure out what happened, and to put together the pieces of her mothers past. This one has a dual timeline of current day with Margot, and before Margots birth, her mother Mina’s life. Mina and Margot have always had difficulty understanding the way the other lives their life, and sadly Margot is just beginning to understand her mother after her death.

I was so excited to read this book! I wrestled between 3.5 stars and 4, but I decided to give this one 4 because I really enjoyed learning more about the culture and the struggles of Korean Americans that come to the United States and either try to gain citizenship, or live undocumented. All of that, plus Margot and Mina’s stories really did it for me in this book. What didn’t work for me was the pace. This one felt really slow at times, and certain areas dragged a bit. I loved the mystery Margot was trying to solve, but the description made it sound like it had a little more excitement around that. Overall, I do recommend everyone read this book, just expect that it’s a bit of a slower read.

This is a wonderful poignant and heart-breaking story of a mother and daughter who don't understand each other. The characters are so well-described and their feelings palpable. It's also a story about an undocumented immigrant mother and a daughter who learns how to be a first generation Korean American only after her mother's death.

"In some ways, Margot's success in this country, her independence, relied on this distance from her mother - her poverty, her foreignness, the alienation of her life, the heaviness of her thankless work, the hours and minutes, ignored and even reviled by the world."

Margot Lee stopped trying to learn Korean in her teens, so she has a hard time talking with her mother, who never learned to speak English. An undocumented immigrant who came to the United States in 1987, Mina Lee found a way to survive after losing her parents in the Korean War, being raised in an orphanage, and losing another family in South Korea. So when she unexpectedly gets pregnant with Margot, she does all she can to ensure they survive and stay together. In 2014, Margot finds her mother dead in her apartment. What happened, and why does Margot know so little about her mother's past?

This compelling mother-daughter story follows Margot and Mina as they navigate their lives in 2014 and 1987 respectively. Margot returns to her childhood home in Koreatown, LA, to find her mother on the floor, dead from an apparent fall. While trying to arrange her affairs, Margot realizes that she hardly knows anything about her mother's life before she was born. Twenty-six years earlier, Mina gets off a plane in hot LA and wonders how she's going to survive in this new country. Grief-stricken and lonely, she becomes friends with a housemate and a kind man at work. But can she really trust them and allow herself to let go of her past?

Both women struggle with issues of identity, language, and belonging. What does it mean to be an immigrant or a first-generation American? What are women's roles in a world ruled by men? How do you relate to someone who speaks another language and grew up under radically different circumstances?

I found this book incredibly engrossing and well written. Nancy Jooyoun Kim provides a window into the lives of Korean immigrants and their families, in particular how they adapt to living in the United States. I don't usually highlight quotes in books I read for pleasure, but I found myself marking many sections dealing with gender, identity, language, and the relationship between Margot and Mina. I think I benefitted from having read Cathy Park Hong's 'Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning' earlier this summer, especially in terms of some of the more particular aspects of a shared Korean American identity.  Kim combines insights into her characters' experiences with captivating storytelling.

I absolutely loved this book! As a mom of three girls I gravitate to mother/daughter story lines and this one is high on my top 5 books of the year. This book also shows the horrible realities of being an immigrant in America. It starts out with Margot headed down from the PNW on a road trip with her friend to LA on the way she contacts her Mom -Mina- who doesn’t answer. Margot decides to visit her mom while on California when she shows up she finds her mother dead and believes their is more to the story than what is being told... Margot is correct there is a ton more to the story... starting back to when Mina arrives to America this story jumps time frames to sharing Minas journey and Margots quest to find out who her mother Mina Lee was. This book I really gravitated towards due to the family secrets. There have been a few In mine and I absolutely related with Margot.

The book begins with Margot driving to LA with her friend Miguel. Margot decides to reach out to her mom, Mina Lee, who lives in LA. She hasn’t spoken to her in a couple of weeks. She arrives at her mother’s home to find she has passed away. This begins the story of Mina Lee. As with many daughters, Margot didn’t get along with Mina. There were many things Margot didn’t love or understand.

The Last Story of Mina Lee will open your eyes and enable you to see what the life of an immigrant is like in America with profound clarity that you cannot get anywhere else. The narration and descriptions let you experience Koreatown in LA with all your senses, the way Mina Lee did when she left Korea a grieving widow who lost not only her husband but her only child. Mina Lee must pick herself up and live in a world that puts challenges after challenges in her path and is mostly anything but a dream.

The other story is the one that Margot shares. Mina Lee’s daughter born in the US; she has spent her whole life rejecting everything she associates with her mother – from culture to poverty. When she finds her mother dead in her apartment, she goes on a quest to figure out what happened – if her death was an accident or if someone murdered her. This quest takes Margot on a path that not only enlightens her about what happened to her mother but also to who she is, where she comes from, and all that she has rejected. Through her mother’s story, she learns what it means to be a Korean American.

The Last Story of Mina Lee is richly descriptive, emotionally compelling, and rivetingly suspenseful - a story you will not soon forget.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review,

*Review to be posted on my blog on 8/31/20*

Thank you to Park Row and NetGalley for giving me a chance to read this eARC.

Now let’s break it down!

My Attention: it had my attention

World Building: Koreatown, Los Angeles

Writing Style: beautiful, lyrical writing

Bringing the Heat: none

Crazy in Love: not a romance story

Creativity: I don’t usually enjoy flashbacks in a story, but it worked so well in this particular story as we see both journey of mom and daughter

Mood: broken hearted

Triggers: grief, suicidal thoughts/attempts, depression, death, mentions of abuse, harassment, deportation

My Takeaway: Everyone has a past – some stories we just don’t know until we dig for the truth. Also sometimes love looks different to people.

I Liked:
*This is an introspective tale about a mother and daughter whose relationship isn’t close. It’s tense, and there are so many differences separating them. This is a painful story…you can feel the despair and loneliness that Mina Lee feels all her life from the moment she is separated from her parents. Mina has lived with trauma all her life and it has affected her and her daughter. Imagine, not having family? ☹️

*This story goes deep. It’s not a happy story at all. It is heartbreaking – it doesn’t shy away from Mina’s suicidal thoughts. Mina experiences so much loss and struggle, her story broke my heart over and over. And then her daughter Margot who just wanted to be away from her…I could feel her struggle to love her daughter and yet not know how to love her the way Margot wanted her to. There is no bridge between them while Mina is alive. It’s only after her death that Margot starts to piece things together and heal as she faces the truths about her life and her mother.

*Usually mystery stories don’t hold my attention, because it’s a slow build but in this story Mina’s life intrigued me since she was so private about her past.

*The story touches on the struggle of immigrants, documented or not, as they assimilate in America. In this instance Mina and Margot make their life in Koreatown – Los Angeles, California. I love how the author brings issues of the Korean American experience to the surface. My parents are Filipino immigrants and in that sense I could relate to the story a lot. When the author touches on the language barriers, the job opportunities, the American “dream” and what it looks like for different people, it really resonated with me and made me think of my own parents. Do immigrants truly ever feel like they belong here?

*The writing is beautiful. I was highlighting sentences like crazy.

Random Notes:
*This is a slow unfolding story – don’t go into it thinking it’s a fast paced story. The mystery of how Margot’s mom dies is why Margot starts digging yet she can only get the version the few people who knew Mina could tell her. And seriously, only one person knew Mina, Mrs. Baek and even then, she didn’t know Mina fully! Mina was secretive, because she didn’t want to love people and lose them again.

*Margot has one friend, Miguel, who helps her out in Los Angeles, but though they seem close – even that relationship seems somewhat superficial. He’s there for her but Margot doesn’t seem to let people get super close to her as well. I’m glad she wasn’t totally alone, because that would have been even more tragic.

*Mina’s lost everyone and then she dies? When the mystery is solved I felt like it was so unfair! How realistic was the conclusion though? I think that part threw me off a little. I did like Margot’s journey to the truth though, that’s the most important thing.

Final Thoughts:
This story pummeled me in the heart. I found myself agreeing with Margot so many times because I grew up with immigrant parents as well. Mina’s story is absolutely heartbreaking and I wish so much she had a happier ending but real life is not like that. At least Margot has a chance to change things in her life and to heal. This is a moving, heartbreaking, eye-opening Own Voices story about the strained relationship between a mother and daughter as well as the search for identity.

Book: The Last Story of Mina Lee
Author: Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Rating: 2 Out of 5 Stars

I would like to thank the publisher, Park Row, for providing me with an ARC.

My whole issue with this book was the lack of development. This could have been a good book for me if it had been developed a little bit more. I was fully expecting to like it and was actually very interested in the Korean aspects of the book. However, the lack of character and plot development just didn’t do it for me. It felt like everything was just happening for the sake of just happening. We got a lot of the who and what, but not a lot of the why. With this being a thriller, there needs to be a lot of the why happening.

Margot’s storyline was on the weaker side. I really didn’t care what was happening with her. Her mother had just died and, yet, I didn’t feel any emotions coming from Margot. She just seemed to be going through the motions of trying to figure out what happened. We didn’t feel any kind of grief or confusion from her-even though we were supposed to. We know that Margot is confused because the author tells us and we know that there are holes in her relationship with her mother, again because we are told this. However, it just doesn’t come across the page that way. It felt flat.

Now, I thought that Mina’s point of view was really interesting. It is her point of view that saved this book from getting a one star rating from me. I really liked getting to see the struggles of new immigrants to America. We get to learn about the cultural differences and see what is really is like to move to a new country. She has a difficult life, which comes out so well on the page. Something that really confused me about Margot’s point of view. Anyway, getting to see this part was great and I thought it really added to the overall story.

So, why is there this great imbalance? To me, it almost feels like the author was more invested in writing about Mina’s point of view than Margot’s. There is a stark contrast between the way the two point of views are written. I think that Margot needed some more fleshing out and some more emotion. Something, I don’t know what. It just really felt like something was missing and off. I just think that there has to be more than what we got.

Anyway, this book comes out on September 1, 2020.

Told through two perspectives at two different moments in time. Margot Lee is a daughter and telling her story in 2014 when she finds her mother has passed away suddenly and suspiciously. Mina is her mother and her story takes place in 1978 as she arrives in the US in Los Angeles after a tragedy hit her in Korea and she is hoping to start fresh and new and make a new life for herself.

I loved having these two perspectives and these two characters tell their sides of the story of immigration and the impacts it has on a person and those around them. Seeing the US through an immigrants eyes was so enlightening for me. To see how much Mina tried to adapt, but the things she wanted to keep from her home country as she settled in. Then to read about a daughter of an immigrant as she is born in the US and trying to integrate herself while also living with a first generation immigrant.

I would recommend this book to all readers. This is one of those great mother/daughter stories that feels familiar and out of the box all at the same time. Even if these character's experiences are not close to your own, you can hopefully relate to the simple mother/daughter relationship and learn something about how life can be a lot of tough decisions for immigrants.

What a fantastic debut! I can't wait to see more from this author.