Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars | 83,927 ratings

Price: 1.99

Last update: 12-20-2024


About this item

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Winner of the Alex Award and the Massachusetts Book Award • Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Grantland Booklist, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, School Library Journal, Bustle, and Time Our New York

The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts

“A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense.” —O, the Oprah Magazine

“Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

From the Publisher

Read all three novels from #1 New York Times bestselling author Celeste Ng
Amazon's Best Novel of 2014, 2017, and one of Amazon's top ten books of 2022
Our Missing Hearts Little Fires Everywhere
Customer Reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
22,470
4.4 out of 5 stars
182,479
Price $9.12 $9.35
Other titles by Celeste Ng A deeply suspenseful and heartrending novel about the unbreakable love between a mother and child in a society consumed by fear. Set in the placid, progressive suburb of Shaker Heights, Little Fires Everywhere traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

Top reviews from the United States

  • kmurph31
    5.0 out of 5 stars STILL A FIVE STAR READ! MY FAVE OF NG!
    Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2022
    EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU
    BY: CELESTE NG

    I first read, "Everything I Never Told You," when it was first published in 2014. I wanted to re-read it to see if it still was worthy of the five stars that I had rated it back then and it was. I have read "Little Fires Everywhere," and watched its miniseries produced by Hulu. In both novels Celeste Ng captures beautifully dysfunctional family dynamics. I loved both books and I would encourage you to watch the miniseries of "Little Fires Everywhere," because it is excellent and varies a little from the book. The acting is incredible. In both novels Celeste Ng explores how parents expectations of their children is the catalyst for a tragic outcome that they never expected. Also, in both novels that unexpected heartbreak is told to the reader in the very beginning. Since this is a review for "Everything I Never Told You," I will focus on that one.

    The setting is during the 1970's which makes, "Everything I Never Told You," a historical novel, but I still think that the themes within that are so expertly explored are still relevant today. Celeste Ng crafted a realistic depiction of the discrimination that Asian Americans still face today. This novel in my humble opinion is even more heartbreaking because the beginning lines tell the story of every parents' worst nightmare. The title is pitch perfect for what ensues during flashbacks of how the Chinese American family of the Lee's ended up in the incredibly sad position that they now face.

    It is not a spoiler to say that the beginning sentence tells that the middle child of three in this family is dead. The reason why I have included it in this review is because it is stated in the synopsis of this novel. Over the course of reading you will discover how this happened. Was it murder? By reading you will easily figure out what happened to Lydia. This one remains my favorite perhaps because of how it does a great job of the character development and the question of what if? You will not be disappointed in this deep dive of how it examines the cost of weighing what can result if you want a better life for your child and you pick a favorite child who you want to do and have all of the things that you didn't have. Is being the favorite more helpful or harmful to the child who you as a parent pin all of your hopes and dreams that you in your own life didn't achieve? If only? It is a question that will haunt you as you read this UNFORGETTABLE, but realistic story that centers on one family's struggles to reconcile one of life's toughest consequences. It did affect me just as powerfully as the first time I read it and I would rate it Five sparkling and bright stars and it is absolutely perfectly written. I wouldn't change a thing. Highly, Highly Recommended!
  • P. Giorgio
    4.0 out of 5 stars Familial dysfunction but ...
    Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2024
    Yes, it's a lot of detailed misery of a dysfunctional family. Yes, the time shifts from one decade to another. Yes, there are some tiresome passages.

    However, between the lines of the obvious, what is implied but not stated, is the kernel of this wonderful story. The biracial issue controls the entire story, stated clearly and often. The ineffectual father is who he is because he too was bruised by his ethnic identity. He thought he knew best how to save his children from the same prejudice. Alas, his children were just like he was. Cowed, afraid, ashamed, and reluctant. Their mother was a disappointment to her mother. Her mother was also a lost soul. Her father left home, and Marilyn was raised by her striving, disappointed mother. In turn, Marilyn, James' wife and mother to the three children in this book, followed her mother's recipes for disaster by insisting that her daughter, Marilyn be something she could never be. She even brought the dreaded Betty Crocker from her mother's home to her home. All these losses and social alienation went from generation to generation, intentionally promulgated by each generation of parenting.

    I found the father's actions, James's, perfectly logical regarding Louisa Chen. James could not undo his offspring's DNA or appearance, and could not reconcile society's proclamations of their status. But with Louisa Chen, he entertained a "do-over" -- a possible future reversal.

    The most interesting aspect of the text and each child's subsequent actions is the pecking order of the kids to their parents. Lydia's blue eyes apparently endeared her to her brown-eyed father; the other children also had brown eyes. Lydia was capable of scholarship, but as a pariah in her all-white community, she would never have the social support to reach for academic success. The son, Nath, was expected to go to Harvard like his father, but he wanted to study the cosmos and would have preferred MIT.

    All these things are nothing compared to what each child wanted most... a family who accepted them for who they were. Lydia was the preferred child, Nath and Hannah were simply extras on Lydia's stage, forgotten children; so unusual that the girl (Lydia) took precedence over the boy (Nath).

    The beauty of this text is the actual text itself. Sentences flow like honey from suggestion to action. Similies abound, the imagery is impeccable and the inevitability is profound.

    There is a point quite near the end, where it felt like something very big was about to be exposed, but Ms. Ng did not drop in any surprises. The revelations were parceled out in the right time and in the right amounts, so that when something becomes known to the reader, we already expected it. This last little red herring had the potential to be an unexpected explosion that would wreck the continuum, but it did not. This brief, almost alarming potential turn extinguished itself in an unimportant detail, but lets us, as readers know that it's the little stuff, the tiniest of observations, a slip of the tongue, a misperceived gesture that make the interpretation of people's actions (in life and fiction) unpredictable.

    It bothered me that so many people panned this wonderful book. It is a rich, multilayered, multigenerational story that as in life, we don't rely only on actions to be affected and changed.

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