Reviews - Joan Is Okay | The StoryGraph

1.46k reviews for:

Joan Is Okay

Weike Wang

3.76 AVERAGE

dinahrachel's review against another edition

4.0

funny hopeful medium-paced

rachaelwho's review against another edition

3.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This one works some of the same themes as Chemistry but I found that to be the stronger more cohesive, more compelling work. There were some vignettes in this one that I really felt. Overall, though, it was difficult to pay attention and stick with it. Would have DNF'ed if I hadn't enjoyed Chemistry.

jessicaanduiza's review against another edition

3.5

emotional funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Some great lines throughout the book. I feel like there were some gaps in plot, and besides her father, we don’t really get any answers at the end of the book. I’m a little unfulfilled.

The story with Earl at the end breaks my heart.

wardenred's review against another edition

3.5

reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

You must always stay calm. But you must also be willing to break all the person’s ribs in order to keep her alive.

I feel like perhaps this was too litfic for my tastes, in the sense that the whole book, despite encompassing quite a long time, read like one big monologue and I was left with a distinct sense that nothing really happened over the 200+ pages. Objectively speaking, though, there were a lot of events. The MC’s father died. Her mother moved from China to America and reached out for a reconnection. An entire pandemic started. And yet the MC merely drifted through all of this, seemingly trying to stay as unaffected as possible. She pretty much only cared about doing her job in intensive care, preferably by interacting with machines and not with the human beings, and then doing her job again the next day, and didn’t even know what to do with herself on her days off. It was like life just happened her against her wishes and she would be content if life just please stopped. All the connections she builds are circumstantional and, again, just happen to her: the family she’s born into, the coworkers she happens to share her days with, the people living in the same apartment block as she. Which, combined with the overall structure and the unusual punctuation (specifically lack of quotation marks for dialogue), made it rather hard for me to get immersed.

Despite that, there were still some interesting poignant moments and engaging reflection. While I couldn’t quite connect with Joan at any point of the story, I did enjoy reading about some of her interactions with her mother, and her backstory of finding belonging in the word of medicine because it gave her a box to fit into kind of struck a chord. Some of the reminiscing about racial issues, patriarchal stereotypes, and the problems that arise on the intersection of those was quite thought-provoking. Amidst all the detachment, there were moments of actual well-depicted grief. A lot of the side characters were as fleshed out as they could be while seen through the eyes of someone who struggles to interact with them, and on an intellectual level, I actually appreciated the creative decision of witnessing events transpire through the eyes of someone who’d rather just be left alone. I just wish there was more of a… character arc? More of a narrative direction? A definite ending for all of this to build up to? But I guess this all might be just my struggles with the genre itself.