Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told YouEverything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ooh, this is a good one. Ms. Reimer recommended it to me, and happily it was in our latest order of new books, so this was a no-brainer vacation read for me! A total page turner filled with suspense, superb use of parallels to describe and illuminate character, subtle and not so subtle explorations of racial identity, and finally, what it means to make and be a family. Teens should love it because the main character around whom the story revolves is Lydia, a teenaged girl who goes missing.

Lydia's disappearance introduces the previously unexamined question: "who was Lydia?" Everyone has a different idea about her identity, what happened to her and why: her brother, her mother, her father, and the police. A fascinating exploration of where our identity and others' conceptions of us begin and end, and what kind of power we have over these ideas.

The book can be read on two satisfying levels: as a page-turner and as a literary novel. It should appeal to all readers 14 and up. I'll be recommending especially to readers who enjoyed We Were Liars.

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