Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

 

My thoughts

This is a somewhat hard book for me to review. The reason being that I found it infuriatingly aggravating and intensely frustrating in places. That being said it's a great story. Just getting from point A to point B seemed to take forever...

This is one of those stories that I was looking forward to reading. I had read a few reviews that talked about how beautiful the story was. How heartwarming and heartbreaking it was. All true but with other feelings also. While I did think the story was so good I found the main narrator, Mia, grating. She was so self-centered. So hardheaded. Maybe that is the right words. She would say things then contradict herself or do something then say never again only to turn around and do exactly that. It was very hard for me to like her or engage with her. She was super smart but in a way that just makes you not like her. While I do think she loved her family in this story, I'm afraid she didn't much like them. Most of them. At least that is how it came across for me.

Mia's younger brother Eugene, who is autistic and can't talk, comes home from an outing with their father. Alone. With blood stains on his clothes and under his nails. What happened. Did he get angry and accidentally hurt their dad. Or is it something deeper. Something that they may never know. 

I won't go into all that this book is about because you can read that in the synopsis for yourself. I will say that the story that is told from Mia's POV is about what this family goes through. What the detective puts Eugene through. Or tries too. The accusations and the fears. This boy can't talk but he can communicate. He knows what happened. But did it really happen the way he says. Is their father really gone or is he performing another experiment? This book is full of things that will make you wonder and make you cringe. Make you gasp. Make you question what may have happened. 

While I didn't love this book I did like it. I found parts of it annoying and uninteresting. The footnotes... I just didn't like that part and felt it took away more than it helped. I also would have loved to hear John's or their mother's POV. I would have loved hearing their father's POV also. But that is not how it's written. Yes it's good. It will hold your interest. It will keep you wanting to know what happened on that day. I adored Eugene and I liked John. Mia just got on my nerves. John and Mia are twins. This family is biracial. White and Korean. While it does not have any racial slurs or impacts going on it does have some teens making fun of Eugene and calling him names. Shame on them.

Read the Author's Notes at the ending. There is some great info there.

Thank you #NetGalley, #AngieKim, #BOTM, #RandomHousePublishing, for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

4 stars up from 3.5

About

When a father goes missing, his family's desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another--both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, race, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.