Title: Miracle creek.
Author: Angie Kim.
Format: E-arc.
Publisher: Sarah Crichten Books.
Page count: 326.
Release day: April 16th 2019.
Genre: Adult, contemporary, mystery.
Rating: 4 stars.
*Thanks to NetGalley for providing this arc*
What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)
A literary courtroom
drama about a Korean immigrant family and a young, single mother accused of
murdering her eight-year-old autistic son
My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He
probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first . . .
In the small town of Miracle Creek, Virginia,
Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the
Miracle Submarine—a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for
therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility.
But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a
dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community.
Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the
mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking
down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a
big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial
uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night—trysts in the woods, mysterious
notes, child-abuse charges—as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a
group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.
My thoughts:
Mystery is not my normal genre, but I can really enjoy one once in a while, so I was really happy to be approved for this arc by NetGalley.
This story is being told a year after the events, so first the actual day is being ‘relived’ in court. After that we follow the story of found evidence being discussed, and flashback of the different characters related to this evidence. I really enjoyed this was of telling. Since really soon in the story we know what happened, and you can really start to figure things out yourself!
Within the first 2/3 chapters there were like 10 characters introduced, who all had a play in the story. So in the beginning I struggled a bit with figuring out who was who, and what their connection was with each other. And since we didn’t know the characters really well the flashbacks are a bit hard to follow in the first 100 pages or something.
But even though the beginning was confusing, the story really grabbed my attention. I really wanted to know who did it with what reason. In the beginning there are definitely a certain amount of people possible suspects, all with good reasons, so that made it a bit difficult to figure out. And that was nice, I don’t like it if the offender is found really quickly.
I do think that some of the flashback were a bit too much. Like it was important for the story that Janine and Matt had fertility problems, but I didn’t need a 4 page description of what they all tried to get pregnant. Also Theresa described how happy she was having no ‘duties’ for the first time in forever, but again I didn’t need 3 pages..
But overall I really enjoyed the story. I liked the Korean aspect as well, seeing how it was for them to move to America! I’m not going to day more, since for mysteries it is better if you don’t know too much!