Yolk - Mary H.K. Choi
- read it if you love: stories about sisters, coming of age, In Her Shoes vibes

This novel was a moving portrait of a young woman working towards self acceptance. I loved Mary H. k. Choi’s writing she pulled me right away as she created these fully drawn and beautifully complex characters.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I love this author. Everytime I read from them, I get all the feels. This author will always be an automatic buy for me.

This is a wonderfully written contemporary novel filled with anguish and sorrow. There is so much emotion and is so relatable that this novel needs more attention. You can see the writer's growth from her first novel. There are painful triggers of eating disorders, anxiety and depression. Wonderful chemistry in the romance side plot, but the real story was the growth of the two sisters.

This book is a really good read about 2 sisters relationships. Throw in all the troubles of a young adult and you’ve got a great story.

Yolk is a lovely novel, with a beautiful message. However, at times it did feel like the author was trying to appeal to the younger audience a little too much. For example; the Billie Eilish reference. It felt like they were trying too hard, and it came off as cringy rather than poignant.

Having moved to New York for fashion school, Jayne can’t help but feel like her life isn’t going the way it’s supposed to. She’s got a shitty on-again/off-again boyfriend, no real friends, a horrible apartment that doesn’t even heat properly, and an eating disorder that’s getting harder and harder to deny. She can’t help feeling resentful of her sister, June, whose successful and rich and her parents favorite. That is, until she finds out June has been diagnosed with uterine cancer.

Unable to take her apartment anymore, and spurred on by her concern for her sister, Jayne moves in with June. Now Jayne finds herself spending much more time with a sister that she barely used to talk to, despite the fact they’ve been living in the same city for years. But a cancer diagnosis isn’t the only secret June’s been keeping, and Jayne herself has a few locked away. But living together brings them closer, and uncovers more than either of them may be ready to face.

This book immediately reeled me in, and enthralled me until the very end. It’s one of the most raw, vulnerable and honest books I have ever read, and it stuck with me long after I finished it. This is by no means an “easy” book. It’s hard. The story is told from Jayne’s perspective, and Jayne has a lot going on, and not all of it healthy or positive. In fact, she spends a lot of time wallowing in the unhealthy. She’s insecure, petty, unwilling to open up to anyone, and terrible at communicating.

Choi has this incredible ability to write such rich, full characters; characters who are messy, imperfect, and flawed. Neither Jayne nor June – nor their parents, nor the estranged childhood-friend-turned-love-interest, Patrick – feel like one dimensional caricatures. They feel real. Like real people that live, eat, breath just like you and me.

Jayne and June’s relationship feels so authentic, it’s almost hard to believe it’s fabricated. They grew up together, survived their parents and their town and their childhoods together. No one else can hurt them the way that they do, but no one else understands them either. Like any real sibling relationship, there is conflict, but there is also support.

Outside of the sibling dynamic, Jayne’s journey towards self-respect is hardly bare; there’s a lot to unpack. Choi doesn’t reduce her lead down to any one commodity; she’s truly human, in all the complexity that affords. She’s not only dealing with her body dysmorphia (which is reinforced by Western beauty standards), how her life in New York isn’t working out exactly how she planned, or navigating her fraught relationship with her sister. Deeply embedded within this story is the experience of being Korean American and the child of immigrants.

Overall, this story is an incredibly raw, incredibly moving character-driven tale about two sisters trying to find their place in the world. While it’s categorized as YA, I wouldn’t recommend this novel to young audiences. But for older teens and young adults, this is a title you most certainly won’t want to miss.

Thank you to the publisher, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers/Canada, and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book. All thoughts are my own.

This is my first Mary H.K. Choi book and I know this won’t be my last. I didn’t expect this book to hit me so hard.
If you are looking for a YA contemporary REALISTIC read….CHECK THIS ONE OUT
This book had great
REPRESENTATION & MAIN CHARACTER
This book is really character oriented. You just can’t help but love the main character because we really get to see her for who she is. We are just introduced to the many layers of her life and I was all for it. I enjoyed Jayne so much. She was such a fascinating main character. She is sassy and witty. I love how she speaks her mind...however she is also reckless and impulsive...
She is flawed and I love her for it! Her description is just so real and raw...You just can’t help but connect with her and care for her.
I enjoyed seeing her overcome her inner struggles and the struggles she faces from society as a Korean-American. She is such a strong human being and I loved seeing her grow as an individual.
#ownvoices

THE FAMILY/SIBLING DYNAMIC
This book had an amazing family and sibling dynamic. I just couldn’t help but relate to it. It was messy, it was raw, IT IS JUST SO REAL.
Jayne and June are sisters that do not get along and sometimes can’t stand one another...however despite that when faced with challenges they are always there for each other. It really made me reflect on my relationship with my sister!

When reading about Jayne’s relationship with her mother...I honestly felt I was reading my life story! The parents (especially the mother) of Jayne set such high expectations. She criticizes her children and yes it just comes off as harsh and rude...Yet I come to realize and understand IT IS TOUGH LOVE! It is how she shows her love and just wants the best for the child .

Please be advised that this book does involve heavy topics. HOWEVER the author handles these sensitive topics with care. It made this book that much more powerful and insightful.

THANK YOU to the publishing company, Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for providing me an e-arc of Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi!

A great read that explore the relationship between two sisters, along with the typical young adult struggles.

Sadly, this one didn't work for me. I disliked almost every character, and that was particularly difficult given that this novel is so character-driven. Mary H.K. Choi sets out to address important issues including disordered eating, cancer, toxic family relationships, sex, and abuse. The story itself just felt randomly pasted together, and Jayne was particularly inconsistent. I think this was intentional, meant to illustrate her mental health issues, but I just found it frustrating because we only get her POV. I also didn't like the sudden ending, which left many issues unresolved after 400 pages of build-up.

I know I'm in the minority here, and this one has a ton of hype behind it. If you enjoy character studies with intensely troubled female protagonists (e.g. Ottessa Moshfegh), I think you'll like this one!

I enjoyed this read. Such a dynamic relationship between two sisters. Layered by culture, personality differences, personal struggles, health concerns and two women trying to pursue their lives in the big city, far from their original home.

I have another other book by Mary H.K. Choi before and I feel much the same about that one as I do this one. Yolk is an emotional tale following Jayne, a college student in New York City trying to navigate through life the best she can. When her sisters tells her a secret she has been keeping for a while, Jayne's life turns upside down, and she struggles to tackle these new revelations along with her already turbulent mental health.

Going into this book, I don't think I realized just how heavy it was. It has been marketed as a funny book, and although there may be some funny moments, overall this book deals with some really hard topics (such as eating disorders and cancer). Choi excels at writing realistically flawed characters and I really appreciated that about this book. Being in Jayne's head the whole book really helped me as a reader understand the struggles she was going through and just what she was thinking as she faced the obstacles presented to her. I also loved the dynamics between the characters throughout and how they interacted with each other.

Like the last Choi book I read, I thought the writing was very beautiful and I appreciated the topics that she went into throughout the story. However, I finished the book just wanting more. I wanted to dive further into Jayne and June's relationship with each other and the rest of their family. I wanted the book to delve deeper into the mental health talk and the discussion around why some people in the story didn't believe it was a real problem. I wanted to see more of Jayne's arc as a character, especially towards the end, and her relationship with Patrick. And I wanted more from the ending.

Overall, while I enjoyed the prose and the characters, I think I wanted more from the storyline and a deeper exploration of the themes brought up.

Rating: 4.25/5 stars

I read this book in a span of three days, which is pretty quick to me. However, I will say that this book has sensitive content like eating disorder, which was also mentioned in the preface of this book.

This book focuses on the perspective of Jayne and how she is navigating her life from her internal struggles to living in one of the busiest cities in the world, while coming to terms with her older sister, June. The character development was phenomenal, as it felt real and honest to what Jayne was going through. I will say Jayne is not a likeable character, but she is portrayed as someone who feels skeptical about her life and those around her, which can feel relatable to those who are figuring out their life.

Every sibling dynamic is different and the way the sibling dynamic was written felt honest for me. This book explored an imperfect sibling relationship who can’t stand each other and what happens when they need each other, despite the challenges they face. The author did not shy away from writing about the hatred the Baek sisters had for each other. Jayne and June have their flaws and appeal to different types of siblings. I relate to Jayne and June in different ways and I think that’s what made the book more intriguing to me because there were moments where I related to June (as an older sibling) and moments where I related to Jayne (as someone who is not sure what to do with their life).

Overall, it was a great book to read for the weekend and would recommend to everyone who is interested in reading about imperfect sibling dynamics and life from someone in their early 20s (but please read the content warnings before reading this book).

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for sending me this e-arc, in exchange for an honest review.

Cw: cancer, eating disorder, body dysmorphia, parental abandonment, drug-use, miscarriage, mental illness (anxiety, depression).

Wow!! There was so much to unpack in this book. From bulemia to cheating to cancer, Jayne and June face so many trials together. Mary Choi’s grounded sarcastic rhetoric perfectly addresses these in a relatable and non-glorified manner.

Content warning: disordered eating, bulimia, body dysmorphia, toxic relationships, cancer, female fertility, parental abandonment, racism, slut shaming, and mentions of bullying

I already know I’m gonna have a hard time writing this review; but here we have another raw and emotional read from Mary H.K Choi.

What I love most about her books is the lyrical writing. The way H.K Choi writes certain sentences/phrases is so beautiful I just wanna drown in them. But she also does an incredible job at writing flawed and realistic characters. And Jayne’s character arc was no exception to this.

I found myself being to able relate to Jayne a whole lot—despite never being in her shoes before. And I thought her character development from start to finish was (again) beautiful but also messy in the most genuine way possible.

Even though I appreciated the sister-sister relationship throughout, I would’ve loved to have read this book from June’s eyes as well. I believe her perspective could’ve added something more to the story.

However, I think one thing we could’ve done without altogether was the romance. I hate to say that ‘cause I actually did enjoy Jayne and Patrick, but I thought Jayne needed to focus on herself rather than draw her attention to a relationship.

Despite everything, this was still a heart-wrenching read.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me this e-galley in exchange for a honest review.

Mary H.K. Choi is one of those "instant buy" authors for me. Her storytelling and writing is just always a win. She just has a skill with weaving serious topics with witty and comedic dialogue and thought provoking scenarios.
Yolk is no different. I was engaged from the very first page.

Jayne is one of the most real characters I have read about. She is beautiful and flawed, determined, but out of control, and I just loved her. My heart hurt for her as she worked her way through her issues with her family, her sister, and herself. I loved every interaction between her and her older sister June. How they navigated, often with difficulty through their strained relationship felt so genuine. I loved how under all the sarcasm, and insults you could still tell their was a bond there.

I completely and wholly adored this book. I don't think I will forget it anytime soon.

*Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC*

Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi published by Simon & Schuster Canada. @simonschusterca
.
.
.
Yolk is a witty and thoughtful novel about family, sisterhood, emotions, and illness. Choi tells the story of Jayne and June - Korean-American sisters, raised in Texas, who each moved to NYC as young adults. They have been somewhat estranged, until June gets cancer and steals Jayne's identity to use her health insurance. Jayne is struggling with her own health - experiencing depression and disordered eating - on top of dealing with a toxic living situation. Faced with their new circumstances the sisters end up back in each others' lives - and swapping identities to commit insurance fraud.
.
This book has one of the best portrayals of the dynamics between two sisters that I've ever read. Choi handles Jayne and June's complicated sibling relationship with careful detail, nuance, and compassion. Both sisters are compelling characters - each of them are flawed and relatable (although not always likeable). The sisters might irritate each other, and bicker, and even think they hate each other sometimes, but ultimately facing life's challenges is better together.
.
.
.
Thanks to Net Galley @NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for letting me read an online ARC of this book!
.
.
.
#netgalley #maryhkchoi #simonandschuster #newadultbooks #familydrama #alwaysreading #bookpost #recommendedread #recommendedreads

There is some sort of speciality in the mundane. Choi writes stories where nothing extraordinary happens—and yet between the pages, within the real world is where brilliance lies. It's as if reality is her very canvas and she spins it to her own masterpiece. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel as it explored the heartwrenching connection between sisters, the importance of women's health, and the idea of sex with no strings attached—how stories keep unravelling all around us. A compelling narrative with a lyrical/engaging writing style—Choi is a born storyteller through and through.

I don't think I'll ever be able to properly convey how impactful and painfully relatable this book is. It tugged at my heartstring multiple times. I do recommend everyone to look up the trigger warnings since this book could potentially be triggering for some.

Every character has their own distinct personality and story that we get to delve into throughout the book. It is definitely a character-driven story and it is very well done.

I will say however that the book had an open ending, which isn't my favorite. I feel like a lot of issues weren't fully resolved and I would've liked to get another chapter, at least, to wrap it up.

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

TW: eating disorder, cancer, racism
This is my first Mary H. K. Choi book and I'm blown away. This book was just the right amount of problematic and relatable. This book is about 2 sisters who have always been at each other's necks and when something happens that inadvertently brings them together they start to see past all of their previous quarrels and form a bond. Jayne is such a realistic female character and perfectly embodies the internal struggles that SO many young people deal with. I appreciated the focus on family and how dysfunctional they can be. Overall, this book really made me think about my own life and experiences. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a hard-hitting story about sisters and real life issues.