Hi everyone. I'm Rincey and this is Rincey
Reads. Today I'm going to be doing a review
on EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by Celeste
Ng. This story follows a Chinese American
family in the 1970s. One of the daughters,
Lydia, her body is found dead on the lake nearby
their house. And so the story basically just
follows the family as they try to figure out
what actually happened. Was it suicide or
was there was someone behind this murder?
And they basically just deal with the consequences
and just their own emotions and dealing with
Lydia's death. This is a book that I had kind
of been anticipating coming out because there
are a lot in the bookish community who read
this and were talking about how much they
enjoyed it. I have to say, I liked it, but
I didn't love it the way that I was kind of
hoping to. I think part of the reason why
is because this book was weirdly talked about.
Or by "weirdly" I mean, the way people were
talking about this book, I feel like I read
a completely different book [laughs] than
the way they were talking about it. A lot
of people were talking about this book as
if it's a mystery. And while there is a mysterious
element to it because you don't know why Lydia
dies or how she dies or what happened to her
at the beginning of this story and you do
eventually find out what does happen, it's
not like you're following people trying to
solve a crime. What you're really doing in
this book is you're following this family
and the story goes from present day and also
has a lot of flashback scenes. So you are
building up a history of this family and their
relationship with each other. And then all
of that leads to the death and then you find
out what actually happened. Some of the things
that I did like about this book is the fact
that this is a bi-racial family. The father,
James, is Chinese and the mother, Marilyn,
is a white woman. And so there is a lot discussed
in here about race and just race relations
and being in a bi-racial family. This book
is told from multiple perspectives. You follow
various people in the family, uh, throughout
various points. There's no real order, it's
not like, chapter by chapter you're switching
perspectives. It kind of flows back and forth
between different characters. As many of you
know if you've been watching my reviews for
a while, I am getting kind of sick of the
multi-perspective tool being used in stories.
I feel like every piece of literary fiction
I've been reading lately uses multiple perspectives
and I kind of just want a story that's told
from one perspective. And one of the reasons
why is because I feel like when stories are
told from multiple perspectives you don't
really get to know any of the characters.
That is 100% the case with this book. I feel
like you don't really get to know the characters
in this story very well. You see them doing
things and you see them reacting to things,
but you don't understand why they're reacting
the way that they're reacting. Or you don't
understand the choices that they're making
and it's really bothersome. This story is
pretty short, I believe it's less than 300
pages. Yeah it's just under 300 pages, like
290 pages. And so with a story this short
and you're following around multiple perspectives,
you get even less time than you might with
some of the other books I've read where the
books are like 500 pages and there's multiple
perspectives. At least then you get to dig
a little bit deeper. But I feel like outside
of say maybe the mom, you don't really know
much about any of these characters, which
is not something I enjoy. Because my favorite
part about any story is getting to know the
characters. Like my biggest gripe with this
book is that I wish it was either longer or
I wish it was just told from one character's
perspective. Honestly, I wanted to just keep
reading about Lydia most of the time because
her life, while I wouldn't say it was good,
I would say it was the most interesting to
me. I think Lydia and Marilyn probably had
the most developed stories in this book, which
just might be why I was the most drawn to
them. But if the story was told from either
of their perspectives, but preferably Lydia,
I probably would have enjoyed this like a
million times more. I feel like this story
is like the start of something really good
and had potential to go even farther and it
just didn't go far enough for me and that's
why I was left a little bit disappointed.
That being said, I didn't hate this book whatsoever.
I gave it a 3 out of 5 stars. I liked it,
I didn't love it. And I think part of that
might have just had to do with like the hype
machine or just bad marketing for me. I feel
like if I had known a little bit better what
this story was about going into it, I could've
managed my expectations better. And I feel
bad faulting a book for my own expectations
but that's just the way I felt at the end
of it. So it's hard to give it a higher rating
if I didn't feel the way that I feel when
I normally give books a higher rating. There
are other aspects of this book that I could
easily talk about. The title comes from the
fact that the characters are really bad at
communicating with the other characters in
the book. So there's a lot of situations where
they could have just been solved by just communicating
better, by being open and honest and just
talking about their feelings. All of the characters
in this book seem to just internalize everything
and not really talk about their feelings,
which causes a lot of anxiety on the reader,
but I think it's purposeful. But I do know
that that that might be frustrating for some
people, so some people might not like the
book for that. So yeah, those are my quick
thoughts on EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by
Celeste Ng. If you've read this book, feel
free to leave your comments down below letting
me know what you've thought. I've seen a couple
of reviews on BookTube of other people who
have read this book and I've seen mostly positive
reviews. So I'd like to hear other people's
thoughts. So yeah, that's all I have for now and thanks for watching.
and thanks for watching.
