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A review by violentdelights
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
3.0
Honestly not sure how I feel about this book - maybe it works better as a literary novel about happiness and communication than it does as a thriller. As literary fiction, I was moved to tears by Eugene being able to communicate with his family for the first time. Especially on audiobook, those parts - and the character of Eugene as a whole - stuck to me in a very meaningful way. As a thriller, however, none of the false leads worked for me - and I’m not a particularly bright reader. I will usually believe a narrator just because I can, but the unreliability of this narrator wasn’t sinister, just stupid - I saw the holes in her story chapters before she reached the same conclusion.
The first half of the book felt stronger than the second, which is a bit ironic considering the discussions around low happiness baselines and the like had in this book. The first half of the book raised my expectations, making me believe it was going to be a clever and twisty thriller, but up until the very last page I was waiting for a twist that never showed. Everything seemed to just be the most obvious answer. There are a few unanswered questions, which can intrigue me, but here I feel like answering them would have almost strengthened the story.
In the end, I finished this book in about half a day so it was an engrossing but I’m not still quite sure how to feel. I guess upon immediately finishing it I feel…disappointed. But maybe that’ll change.
The first half of the book felt stronger than the second, which is a bit ironic considering the discussions around low happiness baselines and the like had in this book. The first half of the book raised my expectations, making me believe it was going to be a clever and twisty thriller, but up until the very last page I was waiting for a twist that never showed. Everything seemed to just be the most obvious answer. There are a few unanswered questions, which can intrigue me, but here I feel like answering them would have almost strengthened the story.
In the end, I finished this book in about half a day so it was an engrossing but I’m not still quite sure how to feel. I guess upon immediately finishing it I feel…disappointed. But maybe that’ll change.