Ahhh this book and me feeling all kinds of emotions. It was really sad but informative with the history aspect of Korea. The main character Louisa really irritated me but I could understand why she acted the way she acted I just can’t relate. Loved that we got the pov from the mom, dad, and Louisa (daughter) and how their lives continued to progress despite the tragedy. Soooo good, great storytelling.

Thank you for this advance audio copy.

I finished Flashlight a few days ago and needed time to sit with it. This novel offers a layered exploration of family dynamics, identity, and cultural dislocation.

Each character is grappling with their own inner conflicts. Louisa struggles with trust, rooted in a difficult childhood. Her father, Serk, also faces deep-seated trust issues shaped by the complexities of growing up Korean in Japan. Anne, Louisa’s mother, battles debilitating health challenges while trying to reconnect with the son she gave up for adoption years earlier.

The turning point of the story comes when Serk, Anne, and Louisa are living in a quiet seaside village in Japan. Serk and Louisa often take evening walks together along the beach—until one night, they don’t return. Louisa is eventually found further down the shoreline, but Serk is missing without a trace.

As the mystery unravels, we learn that Serk was abducted and taken to North Korea, where he was forced to teach English and Japanese to spies. Louisa, traumatized by the night’s events, has no memory of what happened to her father. This gap in memory, and the guilt it carries, deeply affects her and leads her down a path of poor decisions.

Ultimately, Flashlight is a story of loss, survival, and reconciliation. As Serk nears the end of his life, he is returned to Japan and is finally reunited with Louisa. Their reunion—and Louisa’s mending relationship with Anne—provides a poignant, redemptive close to this powerful novel.

Where it concerns immigration, nationality, and politics, Flashlight is well researched, but Choi covers these topics in a sterile manner that leaves the reader craving the more raw and interesting aspects of the narrative, which are sparse and feel like they are buried beneath many layers of passages from academic papers or textbooks.

Flashlight is mysterious, thought provoking and emotional. The characters are flawed and complex. It’s a good mix of character based and plot based. If you need your characters to be completely likable, this book is likely not for you; these characters have depth and realism and unlikable parts like real people.

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!

Susan Choi’s Flashlight is an intimate, quietly powerful story that lingers long after it ends. Told entirely through the voice of a teenage girl navigating grief, shifting identity, and the emotional minefield of adolescence, the story is spare but emotionally rich—more about tone and texture than plot.

The audiobook format truly elevates this story. The narration is perfectly cast: nuanced, vulnerable, and completely immersive. Listening feels like being let in on someone’s private inner monologue, full of small details that cut deep. The format brings out the rhythm of Choi’s prose, which is often poetic and quietly disorienting in the best way.

While it’s not for everyone—those looking for a more traditional narrative arc or resolution might find it a bit too open-ended—I found its emotional honesty refreshing and its voice incredibly real.

A beautiful, if brief, meditation on longing, growing up, and all the things we don’t know how to say.

Thank you Susan Choi, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was a bit of a slow listen for me and I had a tough time staying engaged. I agree with other reviewers that this might have been a better read than listen for me - that's not to say that the narrator wasn't good - Eunice Wong was great! I think I need my listens to move along at a faster pace than this book did and I feel I missed out on some the literary offerings of the book because I was listening while I was driving vs reading. That said - if you are interested in a historical tale that feels a bit like a slow moving family soap opera - give this a try! Big thanks to MacMillion audio, Susan Choi and Netgalley for the opportunity to listen to this ALC. Rounded up to 3.5 stars!

Spanning between decades and characters this story pulls no punches, You'll feel like a buoy stuck in the ocean, helpless to the relentless waves and whims.

I think that going into this knowing less is better!

Choi creates such dynamic, complex characters and situations. Some action, maybe seemingly inconsequential, at the beginning of the novel comes back hundreds of pages later with such consequences.

I did feel as though the narrative weighed down upon me with increasing fervor as I read. If you're looking for something upbeat, this is not for you, as the emotional toll is not light.

While I ended up not loving this book, it had nothing to do with quality. In fact, I think that it was a testament to the writing that I felt this way. It's challenging and encapsulating, but excellent in its entirety.

The audio narrator, Eunice Wong, was excellent as well

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

The book had a slow start to me, I enjoyed the storyline, but it just wasn't for me. The daughter was relatable if you have ever lost a parent.

This literary work deftly blends multiple genres, including historical fiction, mystery, and family drama, unfolding across several decades. My reading experience was somewhat slower-paced. The book's substantial length sometimes caused confusion. Nevertheless, the writing is engaging.

A professor goes missing while walking along the Japanese shore at night. His 10-year-old daughter is found washed up on the beach barely alive. The opening of Susan Choi’s “Flashlight” is gripping. As this multigenerational family saga progresses, we get the backstories of Serk, a Korean raised in Japan during WWII, who pursued an education in the USA, only to return to Japan as a visiting professor; his American wife, Anne, who seems to be a malingerer and only later is diagnosed with MS; and their recalcitrant daughter, Louisa, who doesn’t remember what happened that night on the beach.

The pros of the novel include excellent writing on the sentence level and well-developed characters. The dynamics of messy family relationships abound, which are further complicated by a mixed-race marriage and the immigrant experience. For me, the drawbacks were the book’s cumbersome length and unlikeable characters. There was no one I felt like rooting for.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Eunice Wong. She created unique voices for each character and her acting enhanced the reading experience. Nevertheless, there were times when the narration fell into a singsong rhythm, which is somewhat understandable when the audiobook comes in just shy of 18 hours.

Despite a few shortcomings, I will remember this book and these characters, and the way unsuspecting individuals become collateral damage of geopolitics.

This might be one of those books that is easier to read in print than follow along with on audio. It is a long book and the alternating viewpoints along with long timeline made it hard for me to follow what was happening at times. It starts with Serk as a Korean boy being raised in Japan, follows him into adult where he moves to the United States, meets his wife Anne, has a daughter and moves back to Japan, where he disappears one night. Then for many years afterward it follows his daughter Lousia into her adulthood searching for answers about her father. There is also the side story of Anne and her son born out of wedlock and given up for adoption when she was a child. There's a lot going on and I had a hard time following all of it. This story had potential and some good emotional moments, but I think it needed more attention from me than I was giving in on audiobook. The narrator was solid, but it may have been a story where multiple narrators would have helped me keep track of the story better.

Susan Choi is a formidable writer, who has the potential to tell a beautiful yet heart wrenching story. However, at times, I felt that the pacing of this book was dragged out, making it difficult to continue staying engaged, even when I was interested in the story! Choi did a fantastic job talking about the struggles of immigrants, family, and not truly knowing where to fit in. In the end, I still think this is worth the read, however, I think this could have been at least 100 pages shorter.

The narrator of this audio book was fantastic though, I think her voice fit the characters and story well!!

This book took me by surprise in the best possible way. At its heart is a story that spans several decades, but the narrative shines its light on different characters and different periods over the course of those decades and the reader slowly puts together the various pieces. If I’m honest, I was a little bored at the beginning, but the continuous refocusing kept me engaged…and added new insights to the overarching narrative arc. It was ingenius from a storytelling perspective. Loved it.

Flashlight by Susan Choi traces the multi-generational and rippling devastation a family experiences as a result of the consequences of the Korean War, the emergence of North Korea, immigration, displacement, political persecution and separation. Spanning from the Korean War to post 9/11, it promised strong themes you could sink your teeth into. Choi brings to life the history and culture through vivid description and characters.

With that said, despite the thematic promise, it is unnecessarily long, very slow paced, unengaging and tedious. It has a non-linear narrative, that jumps around between character perspectives- the primary set being Serk, Anne and Luisa, but also threading in Tobias and a couple other minor characters. T times this becomes labyrinthine and hard to follow. I found none of the main characters to be likable- while Choi attempts to justify her character’s personalities and treatment of each other, their unnecessary vitriol and angst against towards one another, most specifically toward Anne, is unwarranted and any justification for it falls flat. We are pushed through the novel by the hook of wanting to know what really happened to Serk. There are a few interesting chapters toward the end, after we find out Serk did not drown but was kidnapped by North Koreans and spent years as a prisoner, and we follow his escape from North Korea, but getting to those chapters is arduous. The book could have been edited better, cutting it down and streamlining it for improved pacing and engagement. Overall, I was bored, didn’t care much for the characters and found it to be a chore to get through.

I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC for Flashlight in exchange for this honest review.

4.25 stars

Ok, I loved this! Susan Choi’s Flashlight is like a family soap opera powered by espionage, identity crises, and one very suspicious beach walk.

The story kicks off in 1978, when Serk Kang—a quietly intense academic of Korean descent—takes his 10-year-old daughter Louisa for a late-night stroll along a Japanese beach. She’s found traumatized and hypothermic. He’s… well, gone. Possibly drowned, possibly abducted. World-class vanish-and-reappear material.

Flash forward decades: we meet Louisa, prickly as a cactus and rewriting her childhood, and Anne, her quietly burdened mother battling illness and silence. And then there’s Serk, a fascinating puzzle of immigrant ambition, secret histories, and hidden rage—a man living multiple lives: Hiroshi in Japan, "Serk" in America, and never comfortable in either.

I loved the emotional heft, narrative flair, and beach scenes that make me want to question every nighttime shoreline walk. ...and now every flashlight is looking ominous.

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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My first Susan Choi and it didn't disappoint. It reminded me a bit of Elif Shafak: she takes a topic of interest and then weaves an intricate plot with around it, criss-crossing continents, spanning decades, and at its heart an intriguing mystery.

'Flashlight' revolves around a dramatic event where little Luisa's father, an American immigrant of mixed Korean-Japanese descent, disappears on a beach in Japan. It is assumed he drowned but his body is never found. All kinds of subplots keep the reader guessing what on earth has happened, and in the process we learn more about Japanese-Korean post-war relations.

It works well on audio too as it is plot-based.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the early access audiobook in exchange for my honest review! I am posting this review several weeks after the book has already been released, because even though I started reading it before it came out, it took me quite a while to get through it. The book was very long, and it definitely dragged in parts, but ultimately I did enjoy it..The character development was very well done. The characters of Anne, Serk, and Louisa were really well fleshed out, and each of them felt like real (albeit flawed) people. I felt invested in finding out what truly happened to Serk on the night of his disappearance. It was fascinating to learn about ethnic Koreans in Japan, as well as the camps in North Korea..

Susan Choi is a gifted storyteller, and the audiobook was narrated gorgeously by Eunice Wong. I really enjoyed it! 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Historical fiction, family drama, and literary fiction collide in this story about a missing father, history of Japan, South & North Korea, and issues of belonging.