Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - Miracle Creek

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Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

66 reviews

savvyrosereads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

First read in 2019; review based on my April ’22 reread!

Rating: 4/5 stars (boosted 0.5 stars from my original rating)

Told through the frame of a murder trial, Miracle Creek is a literary courtroom mystery centered on the fallout from an explosion and fire at “Miracle Submarine,” a hyperbaric oxygen treatment center owned by a Korean immigrant family and primarily catering to children with special needs. The mother of one of the patients stands accused of murdering her son…but everyone has secrets, and the trial just may reveal them all.

I generally shy away from courtroom thrillers because, frankly, they’re rarely well-done or realistic, and, as a lawyer, they can be downright painful to read. Fortunately, Miracle Creek is written by a former trial attorney, and the courtroom scenes are realistic, riveting, and the absolute best I’ve come across in a book to date. This second read managed to impress me even more, because the many heartbreaking but beautiful moments of the narrative really shone through on a reread, including insights into the immigrant experience, parenthood, and surviving trauma.

I want to flag that this is by no means an easy read, and you should absolutely check content warnings before diving in. But it is memorable and beautifully written, and I’m so glad I read it twice.

Recommended to anyone, but especially if you like: courtroom dramas; first generation immigrant stories; literary thrillers.

CW: Ableism; child abuse; child death; murder; fire/fire injury; sexual assault, suicide.

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pamshenanigans's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really loved the writing. The story is told in various POVs that will make you question who to really side with. But the beauty of it is how it plays with your emotions and elicits really strong feelings towards every character and the things they’re going through.

I think my favorite thing about Miracle Creek is the characters and how their flaws and ugly truths are presented as just them being humans. Humans who would do anything to protect themselves and their loved ones. Humans who get frustrated, hateful, envious, and do really shitty things.

In the end, i found the book satisfying and conclusive. There are just other people that I hope were held accountable, but it’s a great book overall. An enraging and gripping story about the beauty and the ugly in us humans and how unfair the world really is.

Trigger/Content Warnings: arson, murder, sexual assault, suicide

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missbear's review

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mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I'll preface this by saying that this kind of courtroom thriller is not my preferred genre - it's not that I don't enjoy them at all, but that I rarely find them memorable enough or personally appealing enough to rate them more than 3 stars. So essentially, by my standards for this genre, Miracle Creek was a quite enjoyable example for me.

I found Miracle Creek to be pretty compulsively readable (and I was reading it alongside Man's Search for Meaning, which though short, is a bit dense, so it was an enjoyable diversion.) I read a bit more about Angie Kim after reading this book and I learned that she had firsthand experience with many of the elements of this story (the HBOT treatment, being a parent to a child suffering from a longterm illness, being an immigrant to America). I think her experience, passion, and familiarity with the topics really did come through in her writing to good effect.

My main issue is that I am not particularly fond of a particular trope seemingly common in mystery/thriller novels, where the story is told from the perspective of characters who "keep secrets" from the reader. I don't mean unreliable narrators, exactly, because in this case the characters are not narrators - it's just that we're in their heads, being told their feelings and thoughts, except for certain key feelings and thoughts that would reveal the mystery. It just bothers me, though I will happily concede that this was not as egregious a problem in Miracle Creek as it has been in some other similar books I've read (like Jodi Picoult's novels).

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emeraldelephant's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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habertoes's review against another edition

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The book did not address satisfactorily the inherent ableism in the plot. The MC owns a hyperbaric chamber company and multiple mothers bring their autistic children to 'treat' their autism. The children are young and not given any voice by the author. There is a group of protestors who see the problem and false promises with this hyperbaric treatment, but they are not given any credence and are treated like the villains. Unfortunately, this was enough to turn me off the story despite the quality writing and own voices depiction of a family of Korean immigrants.

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suzyh5317's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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peeshpish's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Differing POVs & unreliable narrators help keep the mystery going until the end without completely misleading readers or being too obviously a misdirection.

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