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A review by bookber
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
4.0
This book was beautifully written. I loved the omniscient/omnipresent narrative style in this book, I feel like it was the perfect writing style for this kind of story. It reminded me a lot of the writing style of The Lovely Bones which is one of my all time favourite books.
I loved how Celeste Ng portrayed loss and grief in a very real way, and depicted family life in one of the most relatable ways I’ve ever read about. There’s a lot of discussion about parental pressures, sibling arguments, and how comments and attitudes from other family members can really shape you as a person. I also really appreciated how even when certain characters did or thought something I disagreed with, I felt like all the characters were so fully realised that you could always understand where they were coming from or why they acted in those ways.
There’s also a great portrayal of the issues that come with being mixed-race, such as racism and fitting in, being seen as an “other” and fighting against cultural differences both outside and inside the family. As a white person, I don’t know a lot about the experience of being mixed-race but I think this book did an excellent job at exploring these issues.
This book has so many great themes and discussions all packed into a relatively short book, so I would definitely recommend this if you want a book that is very thought-provoking and has a lot of substance.
I loved how Celeste Ng portrayed loss and grief in a very real way, and depicted family life in one of the most relatable ways I’ve ever read about. There’s a lot of discussion about parental pressures, sibling arguments, and how comments and attitudes from other family members can really shape you as a person. I also really appreciated how even when certain characters did or thought something I disagreed with, I felt like all the characters were so fully realised that you could always understand where they were coming from or why they acted in those ways.
There’s also a great portrayal of the issues that come with being mixed-race, such as racism and fitting in, being seen as an “other” and fighting against cultural differences both outside and inside the family. As a white person, I don’t know a lot about the experience of being mixed-race but I think this book did an excellent job at exploring these issues.
This book has so many great themes and discussions all packed into a relatively short book, so I would definitely recommend this if you want a book that is very thought-provoking and has a lot of substance.