yunsq's reviews
147 reviews

Re-listened to this because the second book in the series is coming out and I wanted to have my brain be reacquainted with meddy and the aunties again. 

A fun, light-hearted and absurd story, but mixed in with a healthy dose familial love and funny dialogues. A four-star re-listen! This book was definitely way way more enjoyable the second time around. Because expectations were aligned. 

what an ending! I expected it but its impact hit me harder than I thought it would. i enjoyed every page of They Never Learn, though the middle got a little too dragged out for me, the two perspectives are interwoven so seamlessly and beautifully. tis was a delicious thriller. VINDICATION!!

Fast-paced and engaging writing but a plot I cannot get behind. Many parts of this book disgusted me.

I never learn. This book is the last straw. Stop reading thrillers with mediocre plots! Know when to stop, XY! 

I enjoyed reading Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri. It immortalised my newfound melancholy and made some sense of the loss and grief I carry in me. A timely, good read. 

Very graphic sexual assault scenes. The author goes into very graphic descriptions which I’m not sure contributed to the story. Some parts were really painful to read, some parts I related to. Overall a fast-paced, gripping thriller which did what it promised to do. Not a fan of it’s ending at all - it felt too rushed, and too artificial. Everything fell into place miraculously, which was unlike how the book first started out to be. 

I can see why other people enjoyed this. Maybe quick-fix, fast-paced thrillers just aren’t for me anymore. I’ve outgrown the thrill-seeking reader I used to be. I refuse to read about pain, death and gory scenes and feel so empty after. 

My favourite quote from the book was, “To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once.”

This was a page-turning book for me. I couldn’t put it down. I loved how each character panned out in this universe. I loved the complexity and nuance in each character’s development. 

I think what this book does really well is that it refuses to provide its readers all of the answers. Rather than drawing a clear line between what’s right and wrong, each character makes decisions true to their lived experiences. This, I think, makes an even stronger case addressing the intersection between race, class and privilege because it illustrates the different perspectives a reader might have based on their socio-cultural background. 

I really loved Everything I Never Told You when I read it last year. Finishing LFE makes me want to pick up Ng’s first novel and savour it again. These stories, hurt, just like real life. 

Usually in a big book like this, intertwined with history and loaded with information, I’d get lost so quickly. But this was a very engaging read, and Lee did such a good job at connecting all the characters with a simple, and easily understandable voice and narrative. 

I feel for all the characters so, so, much. I sometimes forget that they are actually so much older than me. How did Solomon grow up so quickly! It’s an inexplicable feeling — reading about someone’s life from their birth to death. 

One (ok, two) of my favourite sentences in the book is - “Without Hansu and Isak and Noa, there wouldn’t have been this pilgrimage to this land. Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in the ajumma’s life. Even if no one knew, it was true.”

Given the current headspace I am in, this was the perfect book to keep me going.