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

#MacmillanAudio
#FarrarStrausandGiroux
#SusanChoi
#EuniceWong
#Flashlight
#HistoricalFiction
#GenerationalSaga
#yarisbooknook
#netgalley

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.

I was not a huge fan of Trust Exercise and so was a little reluctant to pick this up, but I loved it so much. Family drama, historical details, geopolitics—there's a lot here and it all works together beautifully. I flew through it like it was half the length but could happily have spent even longer with these characters.

Wow.
𝑭𝑳𝑨𝑺𝑯𝑳𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻 𝒃𝒚 𝑺𝒖𝒔𝒂𝒏 𝑪𝒉𝒐𝒊 is a literary wonder in which I was completely and devastatingly absorbed.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I was thrilled to be able to listen to Eunice Wong read me this epic tale out today from @macmillan.audio for @fsgbooks via @netgalley. I love @eunicewongnarration and she was able to capture time and memory and loss in way that honored the words on the page.

This book starts with Louisa, a girl of 10, as a precocious kid in therapy after the disappearance of her Korean father and she found drenched on a beach. Her dad had a flashlight. The therapist has a flashlight.

This moves on to capture moments as Louisa and her American mother, Anne both move forward and cannot help but remember the past, or is it? Enter Tobias, a previous son of Anne in her own precocious years who brings another layer of complexity with him.

A family drama, sure, but this is so much deeper of a story that pulls in Korean history in a way that, as the title suggests, highlights a darker piece in which many countries would likely rather forget. This tale gave very human consequences to policies rooted in racism, classism, and the deep rooted beliefs that pit one human against another based on birth. It also told of the deep love of family and the chasms which will be crossed to find answers. Sometimes with a little help or luck.

This is a longer one, and I won't say I was able to catch all the nuances of messages the author was surely communicating, but by the end I was gutted and bereft. The best feeling upon ending a superb story.

3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I feel like the reason for 3/5 stars has more to do with the historical fiction (HF) backdrop of the story as HF is generally not my favorite genre. However, recommendations from readers I trust brought me into contact with some amazing HF books- so I went into Choi's novel with an open mind and the desire to be pleasantly surprised as I've been with some of the other HF recommendations.

Let me be clear- I don't believe the book is poorly written. I was unaware of the historical subject matter but, unlike other HF I've read, the way Choi wrote about the history didn't excite me enough to want to learn more. Current cultural contexts much different from the US are already difficult enough to understand as an outsider. However, Choi's attempt at teaching the reader about the lasting impact of North Korean abductions of South Koreans, while relevant to what is happening in the US today, didn't capture the same kinds of intense emotion other stories of displaced people do. For me, the shifting POVs and timelines muddied the story. Finally, the book was FAR too long (audio coming in around 15 hours) and, in my opinion, without enough of a pay off for the average reader. Certainly, there wasn't enough of a pay off for this tentative HF reader.

Even though multiple POVs may have muddied the story for me, Choi's writing of multiple, quite different, POVs was itself well done. She knows how to inhabit different characters is a believable. Perhaps she chose too many on which to focus? Choi highlights the human cost of war and political conflict. Relative to other books I've read, I feel like she could have gone much further with this content, while cutting out some of the other parts of the book that didn't do as well in terms of advancing the plot. Eunice Wong, as audiobook narrator, was excellent. I believe this is my first time listening to her and she will definitely be someone for whom I keep an eye out for future audiobooks.

This was a really interesting novel. I liked the different perspectives it was told from and I admired the way Choi had the story jump through time, trusting the readers to fill in the gaps of events that aren’t explicitly described.

“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?”

Massive thanks you’s to FSG Books and Macmillan Audio for the advanced readers copies via NetGalley! 3.75 rounded up to 4.

So, I actually had not read Choi prior to this one so I didn’t know what to expect in terms of writing style but regardless it very easily made its way high up on my anticipation list, especially when others started reading and reviewing and raving!

We are given a multi-layered, character-driven story with a handful of POVs that unravel across timelines and continents the lives of a mixed race family. It’s lengthier, well over 450 pages and nearly 17 hours via audio, so if you’re expecting something quick and clean cut you won’t find that here. The flow was different for me, not bad but sometimes felt abrupt as we bounced back and forth between long POVs and timelines. It doesn’t unfold as linear as I expected and for a large chunk we jump forward beyond the disappearance of Serk and Louisa’s near-drowning, which for me drew me away from that mystery, but fortunately we do revisit it before the book concludes.

This is a hard one to give a review for as I know I’ll have to reread to catch all the details, connections, parallels, allusions, and more. I had done the audio but should I reread I’ll do a physical/ebook. Is it longer than it could have been? Probably, but there’s also something stunning, even haunting, about it. Perhaps it’s because it is inspired by real life events. If you enjoy character-driven, multiple POVs, multicultural family drama, then this is one you should pick up. Content includes racism, some profanity, references to domestic disputes, chronic illness, and a brief, invasive examination.

I recently listened to the audiobook of Flashlight by Susan Choi, courtesy of NetGalley. While I was excited to dive into this novel, I found myself struggling to stay engaged throughout.

First, the positives: the narration was excellent. The narrator brought the characters to life and made the listening experience much more enjoyable than it might have been otherwise. Their pacing and tone were spot-on, and I appreciated the professionalism they brought to the audiobook.

However, the story itself didn’t quite work for me. The book felt waaay too long, with stretches that dragged and didn’t seem to add much to the overall narrative. Additionally, the structure was confusing at times, especially in the beginning. The frequent jumps in time and perspective made it hard to follow what was going on, and I found myself having to rewind just to keep track.

Overall, while the narration was a highlight, the story’s pacing and structure left me bored and frustrated. If you’re a fan of Susan Choi’s previous works, you might still want to give this a try, but for me, it was a miss.

Thank you to #netgalley and #macmillanaudio (in conjunction with #FarrarStrausGiroux) for the #audiobook copy of #FLASHLIGHT by #SusanChoi which was just released on 6/3/2025. And the audiobook is EXPERTLY NARRATED by Eunice Wong who is a favorite of mine!

This novel deserves nothing less than a 5-star rating for its expansiveness: the sweeping historical plot and finely detailed main characters. It is expansive yet concisely written. The multi-POV proved to be the perfect vehicle for delivering all of those aspects. This is an epic novel about so much more than what happens to the main characters (which I realized about a quarter way into the book). It's difficult to expand upon that beyond saying that the novel served as a sweeping flashlight into the dark histories of many humans who were at the mercy of powerful leaders. People at the mercy of regimes and geopolitical events in the 1940s and beyond (especially poignant once again for so many of us).

Serk. Anne, Louisa, and Tobias are the primary characters, but Serk and Louisa (father and daughter) bookend the saga of the novel's contents.

As mentioned in the synopsis of the book, the novel opens with the disappearance of Serk (presumed drowned because he cannot swim) on a dark beach and the discovery of a severely depleted young girl who appears to have barely survived some ordeal and has no memory of what happened.

Moving back and forth through space and time, across families and ever-changing relationships, Choi creates a wonder of a story.

The power of the title -- metaphorically and literally -- holds brilliantly from start to finish. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves excellent writing and beautifully incorporated historical content. In that sense, I received far more than expected in that sense and learned about a part of history that had remained, to use the title, dark and unlit until now. I have a feeling that will be the case for many readers and this book, especially for that reason, is even more important. Amazing!

Susan Choi can write caustic and cutting children and young adults like few other authors. Her characters cut each other with scalpels, leaving bleeding wounds behind.

I think this book is best read without knowing much about the plot or the details of the story. That way, the reader unfolds the layers in the way the author intends--slowly, revealed only a little at a time, and piecemeal. This mirrors the way that the characters learn their own stories--through their limited perspectives that only sometimes recross paths and only sometimes reveal the full picture. Like the flashlight from the title, the reader gets a beam of light then a new focused beam, but not a fully lit picture until the end of the novel.

There were places where the novel dragged a bit, particularly where the author seemed to want to put in a lot of research and politics. But I was willing to forgive these moments because the structure of the book was so well done and the writing so superb.

The narrator for the audiobook does an excellent job narrating the different character sections with smooth transitions between each. Her soothing voice kept the distance from the characters that the author's writing seems to intend. While the book translates reasonably well to audio format, it does require careful listening to keep straight the different perspectives and somewhat overlapping time periods and memories.

This is a slow paced family saga full of intrigue and real feelings. The characters are so well developed, with no missing details. I enjoyed this author's writing style through this novel.

Flashlight by Susan Choi - DNF for me unfortunately. I listened to about half of this book before giving up on it. I just found it very slow and a bit boring.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an ALC of this novel.

This book was an interesting one. For the first about 30% I struggled to get invested in the story and even thought about not finishing it, which is rare for me. But then, slowly, I got fully absorbed in the life of these characters. To see how this event shapes so many people’s lives was really touching, and unraveling the mystery of what happened to Serk had me reaching back over and over.

[4.5 stars rounded down]

Flashlight is a novel that explores the ways that global political strife tears apart a single American nuclear family. We follow the four members of the family through decades of their life, starting with the father’s childhood in WWII Japan and meeting each character at some pivotal moments in their life. With each chapter rotating POV and consisting often of several years, we see and learn the thoughts and beliefs of these characters and their relationships to one another. Other characters filter in and out of their lives, some coming back and many not, through the decades of struggle and life of this family.

Serk is the father: ethnically Korean but born and raised in Japan and later moved to the US after realizing that there will never be a place for him there. Anne is the mother: a white American woman from a poor, large family who has recently developed multiple sclerosis (MS). Louisa is their daughter: a half-Korean troubled, petulant child who grows into a still troubled woman. Tobias is Anne’s son: raised by his bio-father who was a former fling of Anne before she met Serk and grew up no contact with Anne until his late teens who has developed a love of Japan and the nomadic life. Because this novel takes place over decades, it is hard to capture the growth and varied nature of these characters. Just note that they are all believable, flawed, frustrating at points (in a good way, I promise), and just real.

The different points of views are each individualized to a great extent. We know immediately who is narrating at any point in the chapters without any blurring. The biggest peeve I have with books is when different character’s narration and voices are interchangeable. This is not the case for this book. The depths of their individual and complex thoughts, values, and relationships to one another is so diverse and well-displayed. There are multiple points where we get the narrative of one character as an event happens and then chapters later we get the recollection of another character of the same event, often years later. The gaps in memory as well as what sticks out to each character is always extremely interesting and realistic. Of the POV’s Louisa’s childhood point of view (which the novel opens with in the introduction) is the standout. Maybe I just relate so much to her, her childhood behavioral issues, her “wrong” thoughts and beliefs, and the white-mother-asian-father-ness of it all, but these early chapters from her point of view are some of my favorite character writing ever. Though I knew it was necessary for time to move on, I was mourning the loss of this narration as she went off to college.

There is a not so major (very unrelated and reported to Western audiences) series of events/tragedies in Japanese history that is a major twist plot point in this novel that is revealed around the two-thirds mark. I cannot reveal what it is at all without spoiling this twist. It was a shock when it happened, but in immediate retrospect it was alluded to and established well. The further building up of this in the rest of the plot, and the connections to past comments by characters in earlier chapters, only strengthens this twist.

The ending has us throwing other characters to the sidelines and just narrowing into Louisa's POV. It's less like an overlooking of our other family members and more like the focus of a camera lens on a single target. After all, this has been a story about a girl who was separated from her father since the introduction.

I think that the few things keeping me from rounding this to the five stars comes from me not enjoying every side character. Walt is one I did not enjoy very much, for instance (though I did not despise him). Alongside this, some chapters are definitely stronger than others, especially in the second half (I did not enjoy the chapter of Louisa in college very much). Other than these things, I adored this novel and intend to check out some of Choi’s other works. Louisa is one of my favorite and more relatable characters that I have encountered in a while. The original short-story by Choi, also titled Flashlight that makes up the introduction of the novel is published publicly online on The New Yorker. It is an incredible piece of fiction on its own and if you are on the fence about picking up this novel, check that one out first.

There’s something mesmerizing about this transnational novel following Serk, an ethnic Korean raised in Japan, his American wife Anna, and their daughter Louisa, who struggles to find her place in the world.

The story undulates, at times crushing over the reader, then drawing the sand out from beneath your feet. Character development is interwoven with geopolitics in a steady interplay. While I struggled to connect with the characters and some of their choices, I was certainly absorbed in the story and found myself on several occasions needing to step away and process.

I found Anna’s storyline to be excruciatingly poignant. The portrayal of the psychological unraveling of unacknowledged illness, and later the stark detail in how she copes with a condition, left me ravaged. It was frank and gutting, and I wasn’t expecting it. Actually, this whole book was frank and gutting and unexpected.

With gratitude to MacMillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the advanced listener copy (ALC) of Flashlight by Susan Choi, narrated by Eunice Wong.

Flashlight is one of those rare audiobooks that stays with you long after it ends. It’s a long, layered, and emotionally honest story filled with deeply human characters—imperfect, frustrating at times, but so well-developed that I found myself caring for them even at times I didn’t like them so much. Choi masterfully reveals how their pasts shape their present day, and that insight made me more sympathetic than I expected.

The book touches on themes of ideology, history, family, and personal reckoning with boldness and nuance. It doesn’t shy away from painting socialism and communism in a harsh light—a perspective that may challenge some modern readers, but one that feels honest, earned, and thought-provoking. It made me want to read more about the historical backdrop behind the story.

Choi’s writing is absolutely stunning. There were lines so vivid and original they stopped me in my tracks—images that are still stuck in my head.

Eunice Wong’s narration is pitch-perfect. She delivers the emotional complexity of the story with subtlety and care, drawing you in and guiding you through the characters’ inner worlds without ever distracting from the prose. Her voice is a perfect match for the tone and weight of the novel.

At times tragic, always thoughtful, Flashlight is the kind of novel that changes the way you see people—and maybe even yourself. A powerful, unforgettable experience. And the ending. Ugh. So subtle and simple but packed with meaning. My heart.

#Flashlight #SusanChoi #NetGalley #MacmillanAudio

Flashlight is an ambitious family drama wrapped around a historical mystery. Louisa is an American child living abroad in Japan when her father mysteriously disappears one night after taking her for a walk on the beach. Each chapter in this book focuses on each of the main characters during different pivotal moments in their life, either providing context for how they ended up in Japan or how the disappearance subsequently impacted them.

I think it says something to listen to a 16-hour audiobook and feel absolutely bereft when it ends. I loved following the lives of each of these prickly and unique characters and would have happily listened to tens of more hours of their life stories. There's a satisfying conclusion to the central mystery that highlighted a chapter in history I wasn't even aware of.

I can't recommend this one enough! The audiobook production is fantastic, and the narrator did an excellent job.