From the very first line—'Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet'—I was hooked. Celeste Ng doesn’t just tell a story; she dissects a family with surgical precision, exposing every unspoken regret and buried expectation.

The Lee family felt uncomfortably real. James, the Chinese-American father desperate for his children to 'fit in,' and Marilyn, the white mother living vicariously through Lydia—their dynamic was like watching a car crash in slow motion. I caught myself holding my breath during scenes where Lydia faked phone calls to imaginary friends or hid failing grades. The weight of their expectations was suffocating, even as a reader.

What gutted me most wasn’t the mystery of Lydia’s death (though Ng masterfully dangles that thread), but the quiet moments: Hannah pocketing family trinkets like an archaeologist of neglect, or Nath’s simmering resentment as Harvard loomed. Their house felt claustrophobic, every object—a Betty Crocker cookbook, a broken locket—heavy with symbolism.

As someone from a multicultural family, I winced at scenes like James being mistaken for 'the help' at faculty parties. Ng captures microaggressions with terrifying accuracy—not grand gestures of racism, but the thousand paper cuts of exclusion.

This isn’t a book you 'enjoy.' It’s one that lingers like a bruise. Weeks later, I still hear Lydia’s voice in crowded rooms—a ghost whispering all the things we never say to those we love most.