Reviews - Pachinko | The StoryGraph

25.1k reviews for:

Pachinko

Min Jin Lee

4.36 AVERAGE

miriamcolligan's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

One of my fav books this year!! My eyes were truly opened to how Koreans were treated in Japan, when simply trying to keep their families safe and fed. One of my favorite parts of this book was how food/cooking food was so beautifully written. 🤤I could practically smell the hot barley rice!! I want to eat pumpkin taffy! The vulnerability of the kimchi business (and Noa getting teased about his lunch) ripped my heart out.😭 I wanted to take Sunja and give her the biggest hug and tell her what an amazing, amazing job she was doing. She made that shit work, raised a beautiful family, stayed true to her values, opened a business, and stayed kind!! What really stuck with me through this book was how hard the women worked, up until their death. AND THEN EVEN THO THEY SAVED THEIR FAMILIES TIME AND TIME AGAIN AND PAID OFF DEBTS AND KEPT EVERYONE FED THEY GOT TALKED DOWN TO BY MEN. I’m gonna need Hansu to stfu and leave our girl alone. 😡 exception for Esak, who was a literal angel man and good communicator and understanding soul. 🫶 I loved Chonghee and Sunja’s sister relationship, and I just wanted someone to tell Sunja it wasn’t her fault. 😭 I also loved Mozasu and Solomon’s relationship (very Esak coded ❤️)

sofleo's review against another edition

5.0

In the conversation of six star books, I think this would be a six star read for me. I can’t breathe because the ending made me cry so hard. While this book is long, I was completely enveloped in it the entire time and thought about it constantly. I think it’ll be in my mind for a long time to come. I’m still working through my thoughts on it, but I absolutely adored this book.

olivia_russell's review against another edition

4.5

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Content Warnings

madiruiz's review against another edition

4.0

i finally finished!!! I really liked this one! i’m not usually a historical fiction person, and as a very slow reader it was a challenge to get through the length. but with how VAST this story is, it felt appropriate. fitting an 80 year long story of four generations of a family in one book is crazy impressive to me.

there are so many smaller characters introduced (lots towards the end) that touch the family who are incredibly interesting, but at times it was hard for me to get attached to them because they’re present in the story for such a (relatively) short amount of time.

overall i would recommend it!! i’m in love with sunja’s story, and I was in tears at the end <3