Flashlight is written in a really thoughtful and emotional way. The story feels quiet but intense, and the writing creates a strong mood that sticks with you. It shows a confusing moment in a young person’s life with honesty.

However, I found it hard to really connect with the characters. The story is very subtle and leaves a lot unsaid, which can be interesting—but sometimes I just wanted more detail or explanation. I finished the book feeling like I didn’t fully understand everything that happened.

Overall, the writing is lovely and the story has depth, but it didn’t fully pull me in. I'm glad I read it, but it wasn’t a favorite.

Great storyline and great characters but very slow moving. I haven't read much historical fiction from this particular point of view and I found it quite informative! I did find the writing to be a bit tedious though with too many details that didn't add to the story. It's a worthwhile listen, but not a quick one by any means.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance review copy!

One star seems harsh considering the writing itself is decent, but I can’t in good conscience rate a book that I spend the whole time wanting to quit reading a higher rating than this.

I think this novel could’ve benefitted from a lot more editing, as it commits a lot of what I generally consider to be writing sins - things that bothers me:

- Long passages for the sake of being long. I’m all for meandering, descriptive prose but it has to contribute to the atmosphere, characterization, or plot in some way or make you feel something. This books feels like the words are just languishing on the pages. It also doesn’t help that the subject matter is rather depressing, with the main character grieving the loss of her father. Maybe this could be the right read for someone in a specific mindset, but in general, I thought that it was a little too indulgent. This is the type of book in which I’m afraid a casual reader would pick up and then conclude that reading is boring. It’s really evident that the author put a lot of thought into this work, but it just didn’t work for me as a reader.
- Lots of exposition right off the bat to explore the different characters’ backgrounds. Most of the book is written in past tense, so it feels like the events already happened and the characters don’t have any agency in the story’s events. It’s also composed of a lot of flashbacks and non-linear events, which doesn’t help with the story’s progression.
- A lot of contemporary novels have alternating characters’ perspectives. However, for this one, it’s written in third person and the writing style does not vary from character to character. I think any story with multiple perspectives is similar to an actor playing multiple parts in a show/movie - it takes an incredible amount of skill to showcase the different characters’ importance and perspectives and to give them an equal (or equitable) weight to the story.
- The plot doesn’t really go anywhere. I think this is meant to be more of a character study, but it doesn’t bring a lot of new ideas to the table.

Special thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.

I really wanted to love this one — the premise grabbed me right away: a father’s disappearance, family secrets, history stretching across countries and decades. But I’m over a quarter of the way in, part two of six, and I just can’t seem to connect. The story jumps around so much that I never feel grounded, and at 450 pages, it’s starting to feel like a slog instead of something I’m looking forward to picking up.

Susan Choi’s writing is ambitious and I can see why it would work for readers who love layered, nonlinear storytelling — it’s just not clicking for me right now. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday, but for now I’m calling it.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

It's easy to see why Susan Choi is an award winning author. Her book, Trust Exercise, published in 2019, won the National Book Award for Fiction. Trust Exercise is also why I was so interested in reading her latest release, Flashlight.

Flashlight is based on Choi's short story published in The New Yorker, which focuses on a 10-year old Louisa and her father, Serk, who are on a late night walk on a beach in Japan from which they do not return. He cannot swim, and she is later found soaked on the beach, while he is missing. The novel delves into the lives of Louisa, her mother Anne, and the complexities of their relationships, particularly after Serk's disappearance.

Beautifully written and deeply character-driven, this 450-page family saga explores themes of identity, secrets, and nationality. Told from alternating POV chapters of Louisa, her Korean Japanese father, Serk, her American mother Anne and her half brother Tobias, each perspective reveals their own secrets and truths. There is so much raw emotion running through the story as it cycles through anger, love, longing, and grief.

The story starts with Louisa and her father walking along the beach, with her father's trusted flashlight so no one will be scared of the dark. They are in her father Serk's home country of Japan, where he was raised despite actually being of Korean descent. Louisa washes up on the beach unconscious and her missing father is presumed dead. Louisa's mother, Anne, suffering from an undiagnosed crippling nerve disease, takes Louisa back to America in the aftermath.

Grief striken and furious, Louisa lashes out at those around her, unable to find closure or make sense of her loss. At times I was frustrated with how Louisa took her anger out on her mother and the strained relationship that primarily fell on Louisa's treatment of her mother. Drifting in and out of her life is Tobias, her mother’s illegitimate son and a restless wanderer in search of his life's meaning, whose presence brings both disruption and unexpected connection.

While the narrative is engaging and impactful, at times the book dragged especially the last third, which felt a bit sluggish. There was a twist towards the end that I didn't see coming that touches upon the historical tensions between Korea and Japan post WWII. I can see how the book wouldn't hold everyone's attention. Still, the journey is absolutely worth it. This is a beautiful novel about family dynamics, explorations of identity and the toll of unresolved grief.

I loved this book. It took me a while to get into it, but once I did, I tried to savor it for as long as I could. It’s a long book and half the time I had no idea where we were headed, but the journey was an epic one.

I laughed, I cried - it was an emotional rollercoaster.

Each chapter is from each character’s point of view, which I appreciated. The characters are messy and I couldn’t always relate to them, but by the end I had a special place in my heart for each one of them.

Many thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to receive an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Oh, my heart. This book really stabbed it and then dragged the knife around. This book starts with the central premise of this book: 10 year old Louisa goes for an evening walk along the beach in Japan with her father, Serk. By morning, Louisa is found nearly drowned and her father’s body is never found. From there, the novel goes back and forth in time, exploring Serk’s childhood as a Korean boy in wartime Japan; his white American wife Anne’s life before and after meeting Serk; and Louisa’s life growing up in the aftermath of the tragedy. Even with so much that happens (and trust me, Things Happen!), this is quite a character-driven novel and you have to be in the mood for it. And oh, the title. The flashlight is a frequent image in the novel, while none of the characters are able to shine it on themselves and open themselves up to anyone.

I would have liked to see more of the mother-daughter relationship between Anne and Louisa; Anne’s disability - and Louisa’s inability to believe it - was one of the best parts of the novel and I wanted to see more of that as Louisa grew up and became an adult. (I didn’t really care about her Euro travels, sorry.)

I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in slow burning, character driven novels that teach you something about history and human nature. This will end up on my favorite books of the year list for sure.

I really enjoyed this novel. It jumps back and forth in time and place, which can be a bit disorienting at first, but I love how Choi gives the reader the space to figure out what’s happening. It explores such an interesting, scary part of Korea’s history.

Flashlight is a beautifully written story that follows a family throughout their lifetimes. While it is super character driven it manages to deliver some very interesting plot twists that keep the reader engaged despite the length. This was my first book by the author and I look forward to going back to read her previous novels.

Susan Choi’s Flashlight begins with a girl and a sea. Ten-year-old Louisa Kang is found alone and near-death, washed up on a beach near her home in Japan. Her father, Serk, — who cannot swim but took his daughter on a walk on the jetty — has vanished into the waves, presumed drowned. It’s a quiet yet devastating opening, setting the tone for a novel less concerned with answers than it is with the lingering presence of absence itself. From there, Choi takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning multiple timelines and perspectives as we witness the introspective unraveling of the Kang family through their grief and memories. The voices of Louisa, her estranged mother, Anne, her half-brother, Tobias, and Serk himself carry the story forward and backward, ebbing and flowing through history while floating over the same family tragedy in search of not resolution, but resonance. Understanding in the ruins of everything they have lost.

Choi’s prose is sharp and vivid, emotionally layered and complex. She writes with the eyes of a documentarian, yet with the heart of a poet. Her characters are intimate and nuanced, so much so that at times, you feel like you’re trespassing on real lives rather than fiction. It’s through these lives Flashlight explores themes like cultural displacement and the experience of an immigrant, the identities we forge for ourselves, Korean War history, and everything families fail to say aloud. Choi is ambitious in the way she conveys how trauma lingers, no matter how long ago the original tragedy occurred.

Still — while the story and narration were beautifully crafted, Flashlight wasn’t a book I could rush through, motivated by my immersion and excitement to learn more. It took me several months to get through, and I think a lot of this had to do with how expository the novel read. There were chapters with strong moments like when Louisa, Anne, and Tobias went strawberry picking, or when Anne discovered her husband and child were missing. These scenes baited me, made me turn the page in sheer emotion and anticipation of what would come next. Then there were other scenes, particularly those in Serk’s chapters, where I struggled to find a connection. The nonlinear narrative structure mirrored shining a flashlight on different fragments of the past, but it also created space between reader and character, making it difficult for me to stay grounded and fully invested.

There’s so much I admired about Flashlight — its ambition, its intelligence, its refusal to wrap the Kang family’s story into a neat bow. And yet, for all its precision and intention, I found myself moved more by the idea of the novel rather than my experience reading it. I respected this novel so deeply — but I needed to feel it more in the way I hoped I would.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an advanced reading copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

This is the epic American tale of post–World War II Asian diaspora that you never knew you needed. A child's amnesiac trauma after her father's disappearance and her own narrow escape from death, the complexities of her multinational identity as she comes of age, the chaotic and impenetrable social and political forces that seem to conspire against her ever becoming whole, are all richly—and appallingly—laid bare in this epic by Susan Choi. I consider it a rare instant classic in representing one family's American and Asian American experience with unflinching honesty and tenderness.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy of Flashlight by Susan Choi.

You can’t win them all, folks. I’m having a hard time deciding how I want to write this review because I have so many mixed emotions. The summation of which is, I thought this book was ok. This statement shocks even me given the author, hype, length of the book, and expectations I had going into the reading of Flashlight.

From page 1 to about 50 I thought I was in for a BANGER. Unfortunately, after that point the book lost momentum for me and never fully picked it back up. I still finished the book as the mystery was enough to maintain my interest and I’m a sucker for historical fiction. I just found that there were too many points in which the book veered off course without a viable reason for said veer.

I think there’s a brilliant book in here, but it’s a bit lost in the shuffle. I will continue to read this author because I still think she’s absolutely brilliant and again want to thank #NetGalley and #Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advanced copy of Flashlight by Susan Choi.

Flashlight is a powerful, multi-generational novel exploring the legacy of North Korea’s abductions and the impact on a Korean-Japanese-American family. When academic Serk Kang vanishes, leaving only his daughter Louisa behind, the story unfolds through shifting timelines and perspectives—tracing Serk’s life from Japan to the U.S., and the family he builds with his American wife Anne.

Choi weaves complex characters—Anne, battling MS; Tobias, her poetic, enigmatic son; and Louisa, caught between past and present—into a layered narrative that blends history, politics, and emotional depth. Though more conventional than Trust Exercise, it’s equally absorbing, offering a sharp portrait of identity, trauma, and diaspora. A thoughtful, suspenseful novel that deserves attention.

Thank you FSG and NetGalley for the ARC of this novel.

“Have events that are forgotten by all the participants, or that weren’t admitted to cognition in the first place, something other than events, or are they nothing? Do the witnesses make the event?” ⁣
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From: 𝘍𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 by Susan Choi⁣
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My first Choi and it did not disappoint!⁣
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This started off slow, maybe even too slow for my taste. There were times that I actually thought: “Why is this so long?! This could be so much shorter!” and I was struggling a bit. But so many people seemed to love it (plus I am a completist at heart) that I pushed through. I was rewarded for my perseverance, because this could end up in my top 10 of the year. When it picks up, boy does it pick up. It was riveting and I ended up reading the last 200 pages in one day!⁣
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It starts with Louisa, a ten year old girl, who convinced her father, who can’t swim, to take a walk on the beach from their rented vacation home in Japan, and later she is found washed up on shore. Then follows the history of this unconventional family of her father Seok, an ethnic Korean born, raised and educated in Japan, and her mother Anne, an American. The story moves between the US, Japan and the DPRK and it cleverly weaves in the connections between these places post WWII.⁣
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Flashlight is full of mystery. Like the title’s object, as a reader you feel in the dark and only small fragments are illuminated at a time. You get information, but later this information get morphed, either by someone else’s perspective or by evolving memories. This is fueled by the characters secrets and unwillingness to share much about themselves to others and the political climate of the time. And it works, because despite the slow start, I was thoroughly intrigued from start to finish. ⁣
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Choi’s writing is incredible. It is steady, intelligent and well constructed. I can’t believe I haven’t read Trust Exercise yet, but you better believe it has been moved up my TBR. ⁣
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Have you read this yet? I would love to hear what you think!⁣
📚 📖💙

Raising my hand here, standing up for myself. I did not like this book! The author is definitely a talented writer, but this was one of the most tedious books I have ever had to get through. You don't know how many times I almost DNF it. So proud of myself for finishing it. Very tedious, drawn out, and mostly the unnecessary details. Also, I did not like most of the characters. Was a har done to get through!

This is a tough one to review. At nearly 500 pages it is meaty, weighty, intense, gorgeously written, and wonderfully plotted. At the same time, it can be ponderous and a little confusing. There is no doubt that this book will reward readers of intelligent historical literary fiction and I know I will be thinking about this one for a long time to come. The story takes us through what appears to be the unexplained and horrific drowning of a young Japanese-born ethnic Korean man while he is walking on a Japanese beach with his 10-year-old daughter while his American disabled wife waits at home. That synopsis does little to encompass this sweeping historical narrative that Choi tells about what happened to stateless ethnic Koreans in Japan after the war; how memory tricks us and confuses us into believing things that weren’t there or are not true; and how decades pass while family come in and out of each other’s lives. Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the DRC.

Told from alternating POV chapters of Louisa, her Korean Japanese father, Serk, and her American mother Anne. Multi timelines add to the dramatic telling of a tragic and engrossing tale that leads to the tearful ending.

As much as I loved the writing and the story, it was a little bogged down at parts. I try to extend my pallette by reading books outside of my white person scope.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the arc.

Flashlight by Susan Choi is a beautifully layered family saga that pulled me in from the very first page. Told through shifting perspectives, it explores memory, identity, and the lingering impact of one evening that changed everything. I found the characters deeply realistic, the writing strikingly introspective, and the emotional resonance stayed with me long after I closed the book. A profound, thoughtful read—thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this early copy.

Flashlight is a compilation of family mysteries, notes on growing up with grief, and finding purpose. From multiple perspectives, we follow a dysfunctional and deeply traumatized interracial family in the aftermath of the father’s death. Serk, the father, had always felt out of place as he grew up as ethnically Korean in Japan, and paved his way in the States. Anne, the mother, has always sought direction, but finds herself aimless and misunderstood in her diagnosis. Louisa, the deeply clever and perceptive daughter, copes with family secrets, immigration, and a deep-seated anger in her grief. The way that Choi weaves these stories and perspectives together is fascinating, and she writes each character’s motivations and inner turmoil so intimately. I found the book to be fascinating, fresh and unique, but felt the story could have been greatly condensed in order to better establish its themes and meaning. There was a lot of extraneous information and details that I felt stilted the plot and pacing, and with such a complex plot line and complex characters.
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC! Posted on goodreads

Flashlight by Susan Choi is slow burning family saga, spanning across multiple decades. Covering themes of generational trauma, race, the impact of war, immigration and displacement, it is set Korea, Japan and the US, and takes us through the Serk and Louisa's journey of loss and search for identity.

This novel spends a significant amount of time setting time and place for us, and while it is done very well providing great info, it feels very disjointed since it is not seamlessly woven into the story.

The narration by Eunice Wong was good, but not great. And because I had the audiobook and eBook, I found myself going back to the audio because it made it easier to get through those parts that seemed superfluous. I do recommend this to readers who enjoyed the writing styles in The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei and A Place in the Wind by Ai Jiang.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC and listen to this ALC. All opinions are my own.

Rating: 4 Stars
Pub Date: Jun 03 20205

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