Happiness Falls

★★★★★★★★½☆ 8.5/10

417 pages

What’s it about?

When Adam goes missing the police are not called for hours. Told through the eyes of Mia (Adam’s 20-year-old daughter) we see how this Korean-American blended family handles the situation.  While trying to get to the truth, and also trying to protect their 14-year-old non-verbal brother Eugene- who was the last to see his dad.

What did it make me think about?

What does it mean to be non-verbal?

Should I read it?

This novel was both a mystery and a window into learning about people with non-verbal disabilities.  I learned so much!  Angie Kim writes with a fierce intelligence.  This could be off-putting but she manages to be informative instead of smug.  I think her first book, Miracle Creek, will be on my nightstand soon.  This a really solid layered mystery and I recommend it.

A passage I marked

“There are moments when something we’ve idealized all our lives changes and becomes something less. Not by a noticeable amount, just an infinitesimal disappointment. But it’s like going from 100 percent to 99.9 percent- imperceptible quantitatively, but dramatically different qualitatively, from flawless to flawed.  After this point, I found myself questioning Dad’s motives, doubting his perspectives, in a way I hadn’t before.”