Bookrate

’Suspenseful and deeply felt...raises questions about the reality of the American dream and illuminates stories that often go untold, in life as well as fiction’ Chloe Benjamin, bestselling author of The Immortalists Reminiscent of Celeste Ng’s page-turning meditations on identity, this searing mother-daughter story explores the diverse and unsettling realities of being an immigrant in America. Margot Lee’s mother is ignoring her calls. Margot cannot understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA. What she finds there makes her realise how little she knows about her mother, Mina. Thirty years earlier, Mina Lee steps off a plane to take a chance on a new life in America. Stacking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing she expects is to fall in love. But that moment will have shattering consequences for Mina, and everything she left behind in Seoul. Through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, Margot and Mina’s story unravels the unspoken secrets that can drive two people apart - or perhaps bind them closer together. ’Carefully illuminates the two sides of the silence between a Korean immigrant mother and her Korean American daughter, a silence only too familiar to many of us - and emerges with a stunningly powerful and original novel’ Alexander Chee, bestselling author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel