A review by missbear
Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

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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