JJ wakes up from a two-year coma in a world that has changed drastically. He has to learn to re-navigate a post-Covid world where relationships and everyday life as he knew them are something completely different.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for a while and I regret not reading it sooner! And, it’s a queer story with a sweet/happy ending for all characters and features a Korean family with plenty of mentions of kimchi-jjigae so of course I ended up loving it! I enjoyed JJ and his nephew Juno’s characters. The writer nailed the dialogue for me and at times I was laughing out loud. I loved the interwoven familial stories and how it’s not just a story about one guy waking up from a coma but the entire family and its undertakings, and how everyone is affected.

JJ’s dad owns a Japanese/Korean sushi restaurant and no spoilers here, eventually JJ works there with him. A detail that really sealed the deal for me was the book’s title. I wondered the entire book what the title meant/referenced and it wasn’t until the end when I pieced things together did I get it.

8/10

I picked up this book by mistake.
It turns out I read Jinwoo’s first book, “Flux” and didn’t like it. In fact, I don’t think I even understand it. I don’t even remember the story of that book as much as the feeling that I wanted it to end.

So I didn’t have high hopes for this one.
But I read it anyway. And hot damn, I’m glad I did.

It’s like Jinwoo all of the sudden decided to write a story that is easy to follow and has characters you care about.

It’s a pretty good premise too.

Jack Jr was in a coma for 23 months. It started in 2019 and he woke up in the middle of COVID. He had lost his job, his apartment and the love of his life. He had been estranged from his family for ten years and now, lost and disoriented, being back with his family was his only choice.

The struggles and turmoil from losing your life and returning to it, weaved over the fabric of complex family dynamics, have made this into a really great read.

It’s heartwarming, insightful, and a compelling look at what life can be like when you get a second chance to do it all over again.

Great book.
Consider me a fan.

#netgalley #ileaveituptoyou

i found this funny and warm and lovely, and it also made me really hungry. there are very many characters and problems and interpersonal dynamics in this book, but i didn't mind. i enjoyed all the time i spent with all of them.

Jack Jr. is like a modern day Rip Van Winkle, awakening from a two year coma to find everything in his world different from how he left it.
While initially thinking he's lost everything great in his former life, JJ begins to realize that his awakening has given him the chance to rebuild his relationship with his estranged family, and reconsider the legacy he turned his back on a decade ago.
The author's writing style was a nice balance of kinda funny and lighthearted, while also deftly maneuvering around touchy family dynamics and other heavyish issues.
Thanks to #netgalley and #ballantinebooks for this #arc of #ileaveituptoyou by #jinwoochong in exchange for an honest review.

A wonderful read!
This novel drew me in from the very first page and kept me hooked until the end. The characters were vibrant and relatable, the writing was engaging, and the story had just the right balance of heart and humor. Highly recommend!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

"I Leave It Up to You," a family drama by Jinwoo Chong, is a pandemic novel with a new twist. Here, a gay man who had distanced himself from his Korean immigrant family wakes up from a two-year coma to find his old life is gone. His fiancé has moved on. His job as a copywriter and apartment in Manhattan? Gone. The reader is along for the ride as Jack Jr. struggles to figure out why everyone's wearing masks and what's going on with the sushi restaurant his family runs in Fort Lee, N.J. Will he find a way to rebuild his independent life or will he slide back into the one he left behind in a rebellious huff in his late teens? Jack Jr. makes a sympathetic main character, one who's open about his flaws and uncertainties as well as his wounded heart. I could see the story as the basis for a TV series, especially given Chong's evocative writing about the restaurant and the work that goes into stocking it with trips to the fish market.

Endearing, funny and irreverent, a story of forgiveness and redemption and sushi. I really loved the blunt and honest human emotion here with all the foibles of life and love. A really great read and a perfect execution by the narrator!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy. These opinions are my own.

I decided not to finish this. There was nothing wrong with the writing itself, just that I was interested to know what was going on with where he found himself, but it was stretching out the same moment for so long without revealing any details, I realized I didn't care enough for why in proportion to the pacing.

A good read with layers of potent character development and creation. The setting was a vivid landscape that catered to the authenticity of the story.

Thanks Ballantine Books for approving my first ever Netgalley copy! (This review was first posted on Goodreads on April 21,2025)

Estranged from his family Jack jr. a Korean American man wakes up from a coma after 2 years to find they are all he has left. Though at the forefront of his mind, is Ren: his longterm partner who’s noticeably absent. Getting used to all these changes while trying to regain his strength, the main character must reckon with the reasons why he left home in the first place 10 to 12 years prior.

Written in pensive prose which conjure up the image of someone trying to find their way through a confusing world filled with double meanings and the tension that exists between different languages and cultures, the writing mirrors Jack jr.’s process of relearning how to live life while wide awake. This was one of the strongest aspects of the book. The characters’ philosophical musings on life frame the novel and are frequently revisited throughout. There is a cyclical nature to the narrative that I found comforting.

Another cozy aspect of the book is the relationship that begins to bloom as the main character finds his footing in life. While their relationship felt warm, their make out scenes were spicy enough to clear my sinuses. This is definitely the book American society needs to survive our current epidemic of loneliness. Honestly I would have liked more steamy scenes between these two lovers, but considering it’s a book primarily focused on familial ties I wasn’t too upset with what I got. However, if Jinwoo Chong ever decided to write smut, I’d be the first to request that book on Netgalley.

The author is also a master at writing platonic relationships. The way that he balances the family’s issues with their love for each other felt authentic. Each family member felt like their own person. Though my favorite has to be the protagonist’s nephew Juno. The development of their relationship is one of the sweetest things I’ve read in awhile.

This genuine characterization was enhanced by the setting. Set against the back drop of his family’s failing Japanese inspired sushi restaurant, trying to recover a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the family is in a place that is at once beloved yet contentious. The building of tensions along with all the beautiful descriptions of food made this book a truly delicious read.

Though I did feel that the resolutions, while satisfying felt rushed. Furthermore, Chong’s slow meditative style of writing could have been enhanced by breaking the book into smaller chapters. This way the audience could get the illusion that the pacing was slightly faster. Although, I did ultimately appreciate that every chapter seemed to end with a bang.

Thank you to Ballantine Books and to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a review. I Leave it Up to You is a really unique story about Jack Jr., who suddenly awakes out of an almost two year coma with no memory of how he got there and is taken back to his family's house to live and work even though he had left them a decade earlier. He now finds himself back working in his father's sushi restaurant trying to piece together what happened to his old life and what his new life should be.

This is such a refreshingly honest and beautiful book about how to move on and how to grow after an immense trauma. The writing here is simple but effective in showing how Jack comes to cope with his new reality and make do with where he is now. The book is light on plot but really is a character development piece and an insight into multi-generational and dysfunctional/reunited families. As a foodie, it also made me crave sushi very badly. This beautifully written and such a unique gem of a find that I can not wait to recommend to everyone.

This is my second novel by Jinwoo Chong, and I continue to be drawn in by how he writes.

After waking from a two-year coma, Jack Jr. returns to an unrecognizable life. His job, his home, his relationship, all gone. With nowhere else to go, he heads back to Fort Lee, NJ, where his Korean American family never quite accepted that he left in the first place. What follows is a quiet, layered story about second chances...at love, family, and purpose

The writing is tender and often understated, full of melancholy and warmth. Chong beautifully captures the ache of homecoming and the complexity of forging a future when the past is still waiting for answers.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books, and NetGalley for the ARC.

While the premise of this book I intrigued me, the execution left some to be desired. I didn’t feel as connected with the main character as I would have wanted and wanted more on the family business then anything

I love a strong character driven novel, and this was just that. I Leave It Up To You is based around an interesting premise, and yet… that’s not what’s most intriguing. The familial relationships, what’s not being said, the well written characters, kept me wanting more the entire time. And while I wanted just a smidge more at the ending, it was honestly perfect.

Real Rating:4.25* of five

The Bear starring Daniel Dae Kim, only queer. Like that show, it's about the people doing the work of feeding others not the act of making and serving the food.

The lead is Jack, Junior. He has never been one to deal with anything he can run away from; waking up from a coma to find that his fiancé has moved on with his own life without a proper ending...well...it's a condign punishment. Far more unnerving is having to return home to the family he treated the way his belovèd treated him.

Being Korean, they take him in; being Korean, there's a steep emotional cost to their reintegration of the queer prodigal. Now it's all on Jack's shoulders to do the thing he ran away to escape...run the restaurant that supports them...plus make his amends for the truly terrible, and in their ancestral culture deeply dishonorable, way he abandoned them.

Their homophobia does not excuse him of feeling guilt even in his own mind. He's forced to grapple, belatedly but inescapably, with coming of age and coming out instead of running away from this existential conflict. Delaying this always complex and usually painful process does not make it one bit easier. A raft of new complications are added on top of the old, homophobic ones: what the hell is COVID? Why won't his fiancè talk to him? How can he presume to advise his nephew, son of his recovering-alcoholic brother, on life when he has royally screwed his own? Can he learn to want the legacy of restaurant-running his deeply unhappy father and super-pragmatic mother are so desperate to wish on him? How can he ask Emil, the nurse who cared for him during his coma, to be...to be...well, what exactly does he want Emil to be?

You can see how the layers and the complications bring to mind Carmie and The Bear. It's not like a mystery novel, it's more like an episodic show, in that you're expected from the get-go to invest in the people doing the stuff rather than the stuff being done. I'll always batten on any story that takes a man on the emotional journey of self-discovery, self-actualization. It's much more interesting to me than another facile-but-fun falling in lust/love/like in any order story could be.

I can't quite offer all five stars because the story can't quite offer enough of an ending. Yes, Jack is on a new road through life. He has a sense of himself as in control of more of his life than ever before, and gets that from a very realistic decision to let go of many of his self-limiting beliefs. This is done, however, by implication. No scene illuminates this decision, and that absence...likely done to avoid being smacked in the face with it...means Jack continues to *feel* to readers like his old self but inexplicably making better decisions. Umma, the mother, is short-shrifted as a person...like she would be in the culture she comes from. It felt a bit raggedy of Author Chong to give her a mysterious boyfriend and not do more with it. Chekhov's gun, anyone? And the bigly under-thought-through inclusion of COVID and its impact on the small family businesses of the US. The loving, delightful use of evocative description for sushi ingredients, preparation, and its cultural resonances for this Korean family made me wish to see more of this cursory subplot. Describing the food and leaving the business underlying its service out wasn't fully satisfying.

What was satisfying was the manner of Author Chong's incorporation of Jack, JUNIOR'S, queerness. Yes, a point of conflict; no, not a source of rage and rejection. Jack's running away was more of a problem than his sexuality.

I love this story's good parts a lot, I think the author deserves our eyeblinks and treasure. A very good story well-told is a thing we all need.

This book had me Googling things like, "how long can someone survive a coma?" (world record: 24 years!) and, "can I put myself in a four-year coma?" (answer: not easily!).

Jack Jr. just woke up from a two-year coma and now he's trying to piece his life back together. When he lost consciousness, he was happily engaged, living in New York City, and had no idea there would be a worldwide pandemic. When he awakes, it's to a completely different world, one where he's single, back in New Jersey where he grew up, and forced to reconcile with his estranged family. As he starts working again at his family's sushi restaurant, he grows closer with the family members he left behind—a brother, recovering from alcoholism, a nephew who wants to defy family expectations by going to college(!), and the parents he disappointed years before. Like a silver lining to his comatose years, he befriends and then starts to date the nurse who cared for him all that time.

This was charming and sweet, in the way you'd expect from a family drama. It balanced difficult topics like depression and loss with ample doses of humor. Chapters featured titles such as "The Fifteen Most Consequential Hours of One's Short, Irreverent Life" and "Super-Fast Flashback Interlude Concerning-Among Other Topics-the Yoke of Filial Piety Inadvertently Enacting Damning and Irreversible Consequences for All Parties Involved." If you enjoy stories that focus on the immigrant experience, second chances, or family drama, this might be for you!

This book was very well written overall. I liked the prose, I liked the characters. The story was unique and not something I have read before. It was a SLOW mover - not much action and I have to say it was relatively easy to put down. You have to be looking more for relationship development and family drama than any actual events. There were a few parts in the story that I would have very much appreciated more explanation or different choices by the author, like Jack Jr’s relationship with Ren and the family dynamic after Jack Jr left for the city. Overall, I’d say it is worth the read and I would consider more from this author in the future.


My Rating: 3.75 stars
This review is posted on my Instagram account @whaterinsreading

I ended up enjoying this more than I was expecting, especially because I wasn't particularly drawn to the main character. However, the side characters were very interesting, and I loved Jack Jr's relationship with his nephew, Juno. Together, their story explored the challenges of growing up in an immigrant family struggling to make ends meet, where the expectations on the children border on being unreasonable (they aren't, but life is hard, and everyone needs to pull their weight). I could relate to some of what they both experienced in this book. This story also took place during the pandemic, and the premise of falling into a coma before Covid-19 was a thing and waking up at the tail end of the lockdowns and the loss of many lives was an interesting set-up.

What I wasn't completely comfortable with was the family's desire to so shield him from what happened was that they wouldn't even let him contact his former fiancé. It sounds like they had a good relationship back then, and I liked the fledgling relationship he finally allowed himself to develop with Cuddy. But in some ways, I feel like it took Jack Jr way too much time to learn and appreciate what a gem Cuddy was. I understand he was going through his own thing, but I didn't feel like it gave him the excuse to treat Cuddy the way he did. Thankfully, he did realize what an idiot he was, and honestly, I really liked who Jack Jr became at the end.

Ultimately, I think I really enjoyed this because as much as Jack Jr's family may have made some mistakes, they ultimately had his best interests at heart, and I think it was both important for him to realize it as well as be willing to actually tell them how he felt. It was a matter of all sides learning that it was important to share your feelings in a respectful way. Growing up, I definitely experienced many of these challenges, so this story really did speak to me.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Interesting premise but this story moved too slowly for me. There is a somewhat enthralling rhythm being methodically created but I could not get into it. I loved the setting of the restaurant and the descriptions of the food had my mouth watering. The flow mimics Jack Jr’s gradual integration back into life after being in a coma for almost two years and it was thought-provoking but way too leisurely for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review ARC.

I was hooked after the first chapter. It is unique. You wake up one day your 2 years have disappeared. It started strong. But then it kinda turned to be more typical family drama. I wish the ending was stronger..

But the book was easy to read. I couldn’t stop reading either.