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Everything I Never Told You

by Celeste Ng (Goodreads Author)

3.77 · Rating Details · 116,846 Ratings · 13,346 Reviews

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 bee ...more

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published June 26th 2014 by Penguin Press

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Lists with This Book

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

2015: What Women Born In The 1970s Read In 2015

6,221 books — 1,448 voters

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

2015 Tournament of Books Short List

17 books — 155 voters

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Community Reviews

(showing 1-30)

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Sep 13, 2015 Emily May rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015, modern-lit

“Before that she hadn’t realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it.”

This book is a fantastic character portrait. I don't read these kinds of stories too often - family dramas with a focus on the everyday - but when I do I'm usually pleasantly surprised. As much as I'm a lover of amazing story arcs with problems and terrifying consequences, there really is something so fascinating about... people.

A book that focuses on the dynamics between the members of an American family in the 1970s should be slow, and yet I finished this book in a single sitting. Probably because the characters are so rich and well-drawn. Celeste Ng has portrayed the intricate details of these people, of their relationships, of their complex web of contradictory emotions.

Ng opens with the statement "Lydia is dead". Then she delves into the lives of the Lee family as they learn of her disappearance and eventually have to deal with the loss of their beloved daughter and sister. The timeline of the novel skips from past to present, weaving in a history of the characters, gradually revealing the subtle ways this seemingly close-knit family do not know each other at all.

It is subtle, which actually makes it more dramatic, in my opinion. It incorporates sexism, racism and miscegenation, without becoming a story about any of them. This quiet book is so powerful and haunting in the complexity of its simple moments and interactions.

The central story of the book - Lydia's death - is a platform on which the author explores this family, because it is really about the lives of people. The way Marilyn and James fulfill a need for each other that goes beyond love - it's also a sense of belonging and understanding they can't find elsewhere. The layers of love, jealousy and quiet resentment between people. I don't know how an author manages to make the mundane so vivid and so fascinating.

I felt so emotionally pulled into this book that it seems weird to emerge into the real world and find that these characters are not real. I'm left with a lingering sadness and a need to read whatever Celeste Ng writes next.

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube | Pinterest ...more

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Dec 01, 2014 karen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-that-made-me-cry, sshh-family-secrets, favorites, free-from-work

this book is absolutely perfect.

it's easily one of the best contemporary family dramas i have ever read, and i have read more than a few.

ng's prose is outstanding, and her characters are vibrant, completely three-dimensional, and the way their stories knot up in each other is superb.

it opens with the death of sixteen-year-old lydia, the beloved middle child of marilyn and james lee. marilyn and james are a mixed-race chinese/caucasian couple living in a small town in ohio in the seventies, where ...more

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Apr 05, 2016 Regan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, books-owned-read

I received this book for review from Penguin

Boy oh boy was I impressed by this book. Before I started reading it I was expecting something Lovely Bones esc. No. So much better.

This story is kicks off with the reader finding out about the death of the "favorite child" Lydia, with this I assumed it would just be an emotional book about finding the cause of death ect ect. Nope. But also yes. This book's scope is beyond what I was first expecting and branches off in so many directions as we follow ...more

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Jul 08, 2014 Colette Fehr rated it liked it

Hmmmm.... Quintessential MFA graduate writing, which is to say lyrical creative prose that captures emotion in the details, following the MFA formula of "show; don't tell," to provide character exposition. The author shows us the interiority of her characters brilliantly- and then goes on to slam us over the head with explicit "telling" as if we're complete morons who can't figure it out for ourselves. Furthermore the themes that guide the relationships in this family are so over the top and one ...more

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Mar 28, 2016 Carmen rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: No One

Shelves: fiction, traditionally-published

"Ability to swim is preservation of life."

These aren't the book's words, they're my sister's words. And they are true words, words I think of every time I swim. I am always reminded a tiny bit of my sister when I swim. You need to know how to swim, it is vital to survival. My grandmother was terrified of swimming, of open water, of pools. She never learned how to swim. But she made all of her six children learn how to swim, she carted them to swimming lessons every week during the summer, and al ...more

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Dec 23, 2014 Roxane rated it it was amazing

Gorgeously written. Really subtle storytelling but the tension built in a really excruciating, smart way that kept me holding my breath. I also love how Ng approached writing the challenges of identity and difference for both women and people of color, as well as how much the burden of expectations can truly weigh.

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Dec 22, 2014 Angela M rated it really liked it

I did not enjoy reading this book. The story of this broken family was just so sad and I found that the more I read, the harder it was to read. I felt a constant knot in my stomach .Yet I gave it four stars.

It’s the 1970's and James of Chinese descent, born in the U.S has since he was a young boy, just wanted to fit in. The racism he experiences through his life follows to present day and to his mixed race children. He focuses his need and desire to fit in on his middle daughter, Lydia. He wants I did not enjoy reading this book. The story of this broken family was just so sad and I found that the more I read, the harder it was to read. I felt a constant knot in my stomach .Yet I gave it four stars.

It’s the 1970's and James of Chinese descent, born in the U.S has since he was a young boy, just wanted to fit in. The racism he experiences through his life follows to present day and to his mixed race children. He focuses his need and desire to fit in on his middle daughter, Lydia. He wants her to be popular and have friends.

His wife Marilyn wants to stand out. She wanted to become a Doctor at a time when it was a man’s world and not easy for women to move into that world. She doesn't succeed and now is transferring her hopes and dreams and expectations on Lydia. Marilyn's lost dream seems like an obsession – she has now made it Lydia's dream, pushing her so hard, reading science books to a little girl instead of bedtime stories. Lydia did what her mother wanted because she didn’t want her mother to leave again as she once did in search of her dream.

What was so difficult was seeing James and Marilyn focus their attentions and their aspirations on their middle daughter Lydia while their oldest son Nath and youngest daughter Hannah suffer in silence - to say nothing of the impact of this attention on Lydia. It is through flashbacks that we learn about James’ and Marilyn’s pasts and how it has affected their children when the story returns to the present day.

While I felt for the parents and what they had gone through, my heart was broken for these children, as they transferred their hopes and dreams on their daughter and hurt all of them. My heart was broken for all of them but especially the youngest child, Hannah who is almost invisible to her family.

But yet, I gave it four stars because Ng has masterfully developed these characters and the story. We learn everything about them - inside and out. We know what they look like and we know how much they hurt, the pain they bear. I gave it four stars also because while I didn’t like the parents very much, I loved the children, and in the end felt that there might be some hope for Nath and Hannah in spite of the tragedy that befalls this family.
...more

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Jun 16, 2014 Greg rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, girls-girls-girls

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet.

The blue-eyed 16 year old daughter of an Asian father and a Caucasian has died in the spring of 1977, the year that the summer will be punctuated with gun shots from the Son of Sam.

Lydia goes to bed the night before she dies like it's any other night. In the morning she is gone. A couple of days later her body is found in the middle of a lake.

This book is about how and why she died. But more than that it's about the lives of herself, her parents, her Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet.

The blue-eyed 16 year old daughter of an Asian father and a Caucasian has died in the spring of 1977, the year that the summer will be punctuated with gun shots from the Son of Sam.

Lydia goes to bed the night before she dies like it's any other night. In the morning she is gone. A couple of days later her body is found in the middle of a lake.

This book is about how and why she died. But more than that it's about the lives of herself, her parents, her older brother and younger sister. Five people who make up a family and live together and all of that stuff, but which as the story begins to slowly move forward and fold back repeatedly onto itself the reader discovers don't really know one another at all. And it's not a series of shocking revelations but the small day to day details that go unnoticed by people close to one another, all the little details that really make up who and what a person is.

At first this seemed like a fairly straight forward family drama. There's a dead kid, a shattered family. People trying to come to terms with what happened and wanting answers.

It's a fairly common story line in books, right? About a third of the way through though I started to notice the subtle ways that Ng was deftly weaving the stories of these five people, shifting focus fairly often but in a non-jarring and seemingly natural way. Instead of this being a chapter on one character, putting a hard break between paragraphs to show the reader a shift in perspective was coming she's weave in and out of the characters stories and perspective to create a fairly substantial whole out of what is ultimately five related pieces that should be all part of the same puzzle but don't fit together as neatly as they should or look to at first glance.

I kind of loved this book. It's a little understated and I think it might be easy to miss some of what I really enjoyed about it. It's not the most ground breaking book story-wise and the big reveals you kind of realize aren't really that big of reveals but are already being partially said by characters not realizing that they are important at the time they say or see things.

Someone I know who read this made a comment that it was like The Secret Life of Bees (which I never read, or really have any idea what it's about), but unsatisfying because while SLOB brings the orbits of the various characters together, and this book never does this. Maybe this is true, not having read SLOB, but this book does feel like a reality, where in life sometimes the most important things are never said to one another, where you never get to really know the people who you take for granted even though they are closest to you. Where there are no big reveals or climatic moments where everything comes to a satisfying end. Which isn't to say this book doesn't have a satisfying end, it does, but it's the necessarily the kind that someone would say has created any sense of closure.

4.5 Stars. ...more

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Apr 21, 2016 Dem rated it really liked it

Shelves: recommended

Everything I never told you is the debut novel by Celeste Ng and tells a powerful and yet quiet stroy about the Lee family who are coming to terms with losing their teenage daughter.

The story is beautifully told and the prose has an eloquence to it that you only come across once in awhile in novels.
This is not only the story of a Chinese-American family losing a teenage daughter, it is a story of racism, of a family trying to fit into a community and a community that fails to see a family in cr ...more

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Sep 24, 2016 ˗ˏˋmaggieˎˊ˗ rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, 1-star, mystery-thriller, 2016-reads

❝People decide what you're like before they even get to know you.❞

Pretty sure I'm the bad guy here and I'm probably the only one who did not enjoy one thing about this story. And boy what a bummer and shame it is to write a negative review about a novel that literally won literary awards. Of course it's a shame skimming through the whole novel and not caring about what's about to happen. Maybe because I kind of already knew what was gonna happen, what the answer was, and who the answer to the ...more

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Jul 10, 2015 Kelly (and the Book Boar) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2015, liburrrrrry-book, denied-the-arc

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

“They will dissect this last evening for years to come. What had they missed that they should have seen? What small gesture, forgotten, might have changed everything? They will pick it down to the bones, wondering how this had all gone so wrong, and they will never be sure.”

Hrrrrrrrrm. Good news is, I don’t think it’s necessarily only me this time.

The problem for me with Everything I Never Told You was with the characters. I don’t ...more

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Jul 09, 2014 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

From the opening sentence, I could tell this was going to be a somewhat difficult read. In the fifties, mixed marriages were frowned on, not just black and white, but in this case Chinese and white. Marilyn had long wanted to be a doctor at a time when woman were expect4d to marry, keep house, have children and not much else. Then she meets James, A Chinese professor and finds out she is having his child, her plans change and they marry.

A story about expectations, about fitting in or not, being ...more

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Mar 07, 2015 Thomas rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2nd-favorites, read-for-college, realistic-fiction, adult-fiction, historical-fiction

4.5 stars

Let me tell you: Everything I Never Told You belongs on my imaginary "omg-omg-omg" shelf. Some books spin me into a hazy trance, while others wrap up my attention with such ferocity that I have no choice but to whisper-scream "omg-omg-omg" as I read them. Celeste Ng's sharp storytelling, three-dimensional characters, and incisive writing all made me say "omg-omg-omg" over and over throughout her debut novel, something I have not done for at least a month.

Lydia is dead, but her family do 4.5 stars

Let me tell you: Everything I Never Told You belongs on my imaginary "omg-omg-omg" shelf. Some books spin me into a hazy trance, while others wrap up my attention with such ferocity that I have no choice but to whisper-scream "omg-omg-omg" as I read them. Celeste Ng's sharp storytelling, three-dimensional characters, and incisive writing all made me say "omg-omg-omg" over and over throughout her debut novel, something I have not done for at least a month.

Lydia is dead, but her family does not know that yet. Lydia, the brightest and whitest of the mixed race Lee children, faces the brunt of her parents' expectations: her mother dreams that she will fulfill her own lost ambition of going to medical school, while her father wants her to have all the popularity he could never possess. Nathan, Lydia's Harvard-bound, space-obsessed older brother, and Hannah, Lydia's ghost-like younger sister, both get ignored by their parents while Lydia takes center stage. But when Lydia is found at the bottom of a lake in their small Ohio town, the Lee family gets thrown into chaos, where they will learn about all the secrets they each have ever kept, or they will lose the ties that had bonded them forever.

The characters in this book pulsated through its pages. Marilyn, James, Lydia, Nath, and Hannah all had believable, fleshed-out backstories that drew my interest and broke my heart. We see Marilyn and James project their unfulfilled desires onto their children; we view Lydia, Nath, and Hannah struggle to bear the weight of their parents' standards; we watch as Lydia's death tears them all asunder. Ng delves into each character's perspective with precision and style, and she pulls their stories together to make a heart-wrenching whole.

I appreciated how Ng tackled issues of race, womanhood, and identity in Everything I Never Told You. She gives Marilyn all the ambition and intellect in the world, then thwarts her without blinking an eye. She supplies James with enough insecurity to sink a ship, then provdes him with an attractive, Asian graduate student to sublimate his grief. Ng shows the intergenerational effects of Asian-American assimilation and the inherent struggles of fitting in and standing out at the same time.

Overall, a wonderful, emotion-filled contemporary drama packed with powerful relationships and an intriguing, sorrowful mystery. I would recommend it to fans of adult fiction focused on familial relationships, as well as to fans of Jodi Picoult and Amy Tan. Everything I Never Told You made me whisper-scream "omg-omg-omg" without stop, and I hope it does the same to you, too. ...more

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May 12, 2014 switterbug (Betsey) rated it liked it

The first two lines of the novel:

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know that yet.”

Is this the beginning of a great story, or just a gimmicky hook? If you are looking for a suspense or crime thriller, you will be largely disappointed. This is a domestic drama about a Chinese-American man (born in the US), James Lee, his blonde, Caucasian wife, Marilyn, and their three children. Lydia, just sixteen, is the middle child, the one that they have projected their dreams onto, although James and Marilyn ha The first two lines of the novel:

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know that yet.”

Is this the beginning of a great story, or just a gimmicky hook? If you are looking for a suspense or crime thriller, you will be largely disappointed. This is a domestic drama about a Chinese-American man (born in the US), James Lee, his blonde, Caucasian wife, Marilyn, and their three children. Lydia, just sixteen, is the middle child, the one that they have projected their dreams onto, although James and Marilyn have different approaches and aspirations for her—which is a problem for Lydia, one she doesn’t share with them. I felt that Ng's overall result was a mixed bag.

I was on board with Ng’s type of story and style—the family dynamics that make unhappy families what they are, but there were inherent problems in the author’s assertions, and some heavy-handed pronouncements. The most bothersome of these was the premise of almost draconian racism that was supposedly present in the mid-seventies America. I remember the late 60’s junior high, and the most popular girl in our school (and head cheerleader) was a Chinese-American girl (the only one in the school). I did not see any evidence of her being ostracized. In Ng’s book, all three of the children were severely blackballed by their peers, and even the newspaper made some statements that read as if out of 1920. I lived in small town New England, the Lees lived in small-town Iowa. Perhaps Iowa IS different, but it overreached, and became ham-handed after a while, with the author constantly (repetitively) returning to this issue. And, James, who was a graduate of Harvard in the 60’s, apparently suffered from the same thing.

Marilyn’s hang-up was that she never went to medical school; her plans were jettisoned when she got pregnant, and then she and James married. Her mother implied disapproval of James, so she never spoke to her mother again for the rest of her mother’s life. Marilyn decided that her daughter was going to pick up where Marilyn left off, and started buying her stacks of books oriented toward the math and science she would need to accomplish in order to get into medical school. James was determined that Lydia would have the social life that he had been barred from all his life due to discrimination.

The other two children, Nath and Hannah, are not as special to James and Marilyn. Although Nath is graduating high school, and was accepted at Harvard, his parents’ delight is peripheral to the centrality of their especial child, Lydia. The core of their lives is Lydia, and the core of this novel seems to be how the impact of racism affected this family and created disharmony and dysfunction. Yet, towards the end, the author tacked on a new issue, one I won’t reveal except to say that it didn’t feel organic, and the authorial intrusion intensified for this reader.

Ng writes lovely passages, and for that alone I would be open to reading her next novel. It was evident that she was illuminating the contrasts between external feelings of marginalization and the internal struggles that we all have regarding our differences. Regardless of the outward and pointed distinctions, it is a universal problem to feel alienated, and that came across well. However, Ng's approach periodically felt like a disquisition on cultural diversity, which pulled me out of the story of these specific characters. She fell into a few debut-novel traps, but I suspect that she will mature as a writer. ...more

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May 25, 2016 Cathrine ☯ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, read-for-a-challenge

5★

There is an empty boat loosed from it's mooring and Lydia Lee is missing.

“People decide what you’re like before they even get to know you. They think they know all about you. Except you’re never who they think you are.”

Oh my, such exquisite writing and storytelling.
Each paragraph like a knot on a silken cord leading you in the darkness of a maze twisting with family secrets, lies, and heartbreak. I started reading and could not stop. It’s difficult to describe how the reader can be so in love ...more

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Aug 22, 2014 Dianne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: best-of-2014

Gorgeous, tenderly rendered story about a family tragedy with deep roots.

The book’s opening is austere: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.” From the bare bones of that terrible fact, the story blooms, tendril after tendril, the past entwining the present and reaching into the future.

James Lee is an American-born Chinese professor of history, teaching at Middlewood Colleg Gorgeous, tenderly rendered story about a family tragedy with deep roots.

The book’s opening is austere: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.” From the bare bones of that terrible fact, the story blooms, tendril after tendril, the past entwining the present and reaching into the future.

James Lee is an American-born Chinese professor of history, teaching at Middlewood College in Ohio. He is married to blonde, blue-eyed Marilyn, who he met when he was a teaching assistant at Harvard and she was a physics major at Radcliffe with dreams of medical school. Marilyn became pregnant and dropped out of school to raise a family with James – Nath, Lydia and Hannah. Lydia is the golden child – carrying the heavy burden of her parents’ failed dreams, past humiliations, and lofty expectations. What happens to Lydia in the end is not what you may expect, and it has its origins in her parents’ relationship with their parents and in all the ways we misunderstand each other, the secrets we keep, and all of the things we never tell each other.

I am in awe of the craftsmanship of this author in her debut novel. Ms. Ng pulls together the threads of this story masterfully and creates characters that are poignant, memorable and real. The writing is sublime. One of my favorite characters is the quietly observant and neglected youngest child, Hannah:

“And what about Hannah? They set up her nursery in the bedroom is the attic, where things that were not wanted were kept, and even when she got older, now and then each of them would forget, fleetingly, that she existed – as when Marilyn, setting four plates for dinner one night, did not realize her omission until Hannah reached the table. Hannah, as if she understood her place in the cosmos, grew from quiet infant to watchful child: a child fond of nooks and corners, who curled up in closets, behind sofas, under dangling tablecloths, staying out of sight as well as out of mind, to ensure the terrain of the family did not change.”

A first rate novel, especially for a debut. Highly recommend.

On a side note, I found it interesting that Ng was an MFA student at University of Michigan with Jessmyn Ward, author of “Men We Reaped,” another 5-star read for me from this year. It seems like my favorite writers lately are coming from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Michigan MFA program. Kudos to them!
...more

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Aug 13, 2015 Justin rated it did not like it

The first chapter was great. I was expecting an exciting mystery/thriller. I was anxious to find out how Lydia disappeared.

Then, the rest of the book happened.

I hated all of the characters. I hated the perfectly executed sentences. I hated the story. I hated the ending.

Oh, and I really hated how half of the book was written in italics. I would usually insert something sarcastic or witty here about the use of italics in the book, but I just can't do it. But, man, I hated her overuse of slanting ...more

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Dec 11, 2016 Chantal (Every Word A Doorway) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourite-books, listened-on-audio, contemporary, read-in-2016, best-reads-of-2016

You can also read my full review here!

This book opens with the line: Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.

Everything I Never Told You is a story about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. At the beginning of the book, the favourite daughter of the Lee family, Lydia, goes missing and turns up dead in a lake. From this synopsis it may sound like a mystery suspense or an investigative novel but that really isn’t the case. The book is not plot-driven at all but is a very ...more

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Aug 05, 2016 Eve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, read-2015

“How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia’s mother and father, because of her mother’s and father’s mothers and fathers.”

Wow! Days after finishing this novel, I can't stop thinking about the Lee family. I had no idea what it would be about except that it had received a lot of positive nods in a range of reading circles. I also find it hard to believe that this is Ms. Ng's debut novel. She has a lovely way of writing about thoughts and feelings, and I especi ...more

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Jan 31, 2017 Lotte rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-favourites, adult-fiction, adult-contemporary, 2015-priority, read-in-2015, diverse-reads

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet.
...and the award for best first sentence goes to... (you guessed it) Everything I Never Told You!
This sentence had me hooked. Honestly, I think it's absolutely brilliant. And yeah, the rest of the book didn't disappoint either :D
Everything I Never Told You is a story about the repercussions of the death of Lydia, the middle child in the Lee family, whose story unfolds in flashbacks and in the present day. Told in third person omniscient narrator (which ...more

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Nov 12, 2014 Debbie "DJ" rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, cultural, audio-book

Well, what to say. I liked where the book was going. The experience of a Chinese American who marries a white woman in the 70's. There were a lot of interesting issues brought to the surface, such as the children's bi-racial experience, the wife who had dreams outside the home, and put those dreams on to her oldest daughter. The husband who has always felt different, and takes out his frustration in unexpected ways. When tragedy strikes, so many more issues come to the surface, but then the book ...more

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Jul 04, 2014 Yasmin rated it did not like it

Lovely beginning, with a few memorable quotes.
And then... I am not sure what happened?!
It turned out to have some terribly unconvincing developments to the characters and to the events with a really silly twist towards the ending.

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Aug 11, 2016 Joce (squibblesreads) rated it it was amazing

Full video review here! I read this book twice back-to-back. Books like Everything I Never Told You are why I read. I saw myself multiple times in the characters' struggles and beliefs. Celeste Ng has changed my life with this novel, and I'm so happy that it exists.

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Jan 17, 2015 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, arc-egalley, favorites

The “family dealing with the loss of a child” story has been done before. It’s been done from the parents’ perspective, from the surviving sibling’s perspective, from heaven. It’s been done in modern day, and all decades of near and distant past. It's been done across dozens of different cultural settings. Families have stayed together, they’ve broken up, they’ve lashed out, and they've disintegrated.

So I initially came to Celeste Ng’s debut, Everything I Never Told You wondering how many ways The “family dealing with the loss of a child” story has been done before. It’s been done from the parents’ perspective, from the surviving sibling’s perspective, from heaven. It’s been done in modern day, and all decades of near and distant past. It's been done across dozens of different cultural settings. Families have stayed together, they’ve broken up, they’ve lashed out, and they've disintegrated.

So I initially came to Celeste Ng’s debut, Everything I Never Told You wondering how many ways can there possibly be to tell this kind of story? Honestly, the thing that attracted me to it the most is that I’ll read just about anything that’s set in Ohio.

But I was blown away by this book from the very opening pages. Ng begins by telling us, "Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." She then slowly unravels Lydia’s family history and gently probes the events that have culminated in the fifteen-year-old’s disappearance and death. Her family’s response to the loss is actually only a small fraction of the overall narrative, and I think that is ultimately what made this book stand out so much for me.

Lydia is the daughter of James Lee, a Chinese-American history professor, and Marilyn, a white Virginian whose dreams of becoming a doctor were steamrolled by marriage and family. The two met while at school in Boston, but end up in Ohio after James fails to get a job at Harvard. Lydia is the middle of three children – Nathan is approaching his high school graduation, and Hannah is eight. For much of the first half of the book, the reader actually knows very little about Lydia other than that she was found drowned in the lake shortly after she disappeared from home one night in May of 1977. Her parents assume that some nefarious stranger must’ve taken her and harmed her, Nathan suspects a classmate with an ugly reputation may know more than he lets on, and Hannah is afraid to tell anyone that she saw Lydia sneaking out of the house late that night.

Ng unravels the layers of Lydia’s psychology by first delving into her parents’. She shines a light on the sometimes conflicting reasons her parents fell in love – James had grown up an outsider and was looking to fit in somewhere: "This was the first reason he came to love her: because she had blended in so perfectly, because she had seemed so completely and utterly at home." Meanwhile, Marilyn wanted to break out of the mold that her home-ec teacher mother expected her to fit into. She intended to become a doctor until she met James and became pregnant. The fact that she was marrying a man who wasn’t white – which was still illegal in Virginia at that time – alienated Marilyn from her mother even though she ultimately did become a housewife.

Understanding where her parents are coming from helps you understand their parenting styles and how this has affected Lydia and her siblings as they’ve grown up. Each parent has placed a different kind of pressure onto Lydia to, essentially, turn out a different way based on his or her own experience and dissatisfaction, and each is relatively oblivious to the effect that this pressure has on the teen. So when she goes missing, James and Marilyn are at a loss as to what may have happened.

Ng also threads in the perspective of Lydia’s siblings – how they’ve been affected by their parents’ styles and the attention Lydia’s received. Nath and Hannah have both taken a backseat to their sister, and this has caused them each to develop in very different, distinct ways. There are elements of Lydia that Nath and Hannah understand more than their parents do, but they are missing pieces of the puzzle in their own way. It’s fascinating to look at the four surviving Lees and understand how little they’ve really truly known each other, how little they communicate on a deeper level, and how this has impacted their family as a whole and Lydia in particular. As Ng builds her exploration of just how Lydia came to be at the lake that night, I felt like I truly got to know Lydia as a fully fleshed out, complex, and real girl. Her story broke my heart to pieces.

Even though the ending felt a bit rushed, I was so stunned by this book that I literally read it, cover-to-cover, in a single day. There are some elements of the story that had the potential to feel like a huge cliché, but Ng managed to explore these ideas in a way that felt completely fresh and compelling. It doesn’t hurt that almost every single sentence that Ng wrote was beautiful. She can WRITE, and I cannot wait to read what else she has to offer. I loved this book and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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Sep 16, 2015 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Shelves: stand-alone-novel, read-2015, reviewed-on-amazon, reviewed-on-barnesandnoble, literary-fiction

★★★
While reading this book, many others came to mind, primarily Reconstructing Amelia and Accidents of Marriage. But despite the initial similarities, Celeste Ng has created a story that is hers alone. This is her debut novel, and she is a name to keep an eye out for.

In Everything I Never Told You, readers are told up front what has happened to daughter/sister/student/friend: Lydia Lee, and Ms. Ng continues to present information as the story progresses. This isn't a gasp-intended mystery. The ...more

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Sep 28, 2016 Navidad Thelamour rated it it was amazing

Shelves: multicultural-fiction, historical-fiction, contemporary-fiction, oh-where-have-you-been-all-my-life, coming-of-age, read-2016, reviewed-on-amazon, reviewed-on-barnesandnoble, lit-fic, full-review, author-liked-review-on-twitter

"How suffocating it is to be loved that much."

Everything I Never Told You centers around the Lee family: James, the Chinese-American professor who lectures on the epitome of what was never attainable for him—true Americanism, Marilyn, the blond wife who’d always dreamed of being a doctor when female doctors were a rare phenomenon only to turn out just what her mother had hoped and what Marilyn had always wished to avoid, and their three children, Nathan, Lydia and Hannah. James and Marilyn foc "How suffocating it is to be loved that much."

Everything I Never Told You centers around the Lee family: James, the Chinese-American professor who lectures on the epitome of what was never attainable for him—true Americanism, Marilyn, the blond wife who’d always dreamed of being a doctor when female doctors were a rare phenomenon only to turn out just what her mother had hoped and what Marilyn had always wished to avoid, and their three children, Nathan, Lydia and Hannah. James and Marilyn focus all of their attention on Lydia who they are determined to mold into everything that they were never able to achieve themselves, creating a crushing pressure for her that comes from both sides. When she dies unexpectedly, the glue that holds them all together is no longer able to hold. As they try to learn what happened to her—and why—they come to realize that she was not the girl they thought she was. The reader is allowed to learn this before the family does, which creates a beautiful inside glimpse of a family crumbling.

Everything I Never Told You is about just that: the subtle nuances and emotions that go unsaid, the familial tension behind closed doors that goes unnoticed, unexplored, and the way that our lineage and upbringing shape our lives, for better or for worse. Gripping in its portrayal of dreams deferred and hopes crushed, of coming of age in the 60s and 70s, of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) cruelties of the world and of the ignorance of those who would rather mock than understand, Everything was an exploration of the overwhelming pressure of a family’s love and expectations—both for themselves and for their children. Despite the fact that this one had a few moments of lethargy at the start, it all came together beautifully, and the last half or so of the novel I finished in one sitting. This novel, all told, was a bold and shattering glimpse into reality for all of the characters involved. It was the historical and ancestral short-fallings, misgivings and dreams unrealized that brought this one to a head in the most lovely way. It was chilling in its honest and straight-forward depiction of challenges with fitting in, with being oneself, all wrapped into beautiful little metaphors that were easy to hold…and easy to crush: a Betty Crocker cookbook, a white doctor’s coat, cowboys, a silver locket.

“Different” was the connective tissue here. The characters’ differences from those of the outside world and in the incongruousness of their perception of themselves versus what others saw were so well developed that the feeling of discomfort (both in their lives and in their minds) was palpable, creating a need to continue turning the pages. Ng portrayed their longing here brilliantly—longing to be someone else, to be free.

“Sometimes you almost forgot: that you didn’t look like everyone else…you saw it in the little boys on the playground, stretching their eyes to slits with their fingers—Chinese—Japanese—look at these—and in the older boys who muttered ching chong ching chong ching as they passed you on the street, just loud enough for you to hear…and tried to forget about it. And you did, until it happened again.”

Ng was not forceful with her hand, but allowed those things unsaid, undone, unnoticed, to tell the story in its way of delicate nuances. The snatching off of a locket here, the touching of ones finger to tongue there. It was those subtleties that the reader had to catch, or they’d miss something integral. Characterized by lovely narrative prose, Ng’s MFA background stood out and was on full display in a way that showed spirit and depth. Mellifluous, introspective and refined, it dug into the very soul of what it means, what it must feel like, to be different. 5 stars. *****

See other reviews at The Navi Review (www.thenavireview.com) and follow the blog on Twitter @thenavireview ...more

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Jul 08, 2015 Sophia rated it liked it

:-(

this book has received so much buzz and consequently, my expectations were extremely high. so i guess it makes sense that i was underwhelmed? i went into this expecting to be so completely blown away, but i was just unimpressed. it's NOT a bad book--at all. not even a little bit. it's extremely thoughtful and calculated and it tackles several extremely important (but uncomfortable) issues--but when you're expecting something glorious, anything less than that is v disappointing.

i just couldn ...more

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Dec 16, 2014 Maxwell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, 2014

Absolutely stunning debut novel. I am amazed by her ability to craft sentences as well as weave a story with little action but so much heart. It's emotional and poignant and really, really good. A new favorite, for sure.

5/5- would recommend! One of the best books I've read this year.

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Dec 15, 2016 eKa (THe ShALLoWbiRd) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: a-reread-perhaps, misleading-cover-or-title, thanks-for-telling-me, my-soul-searching, engaging-characters, brilliant-twist

"People decide what you're like before they even get to know you. They think they know all about you. Except you're never who they think you are."

Seriously, I didn't know I would be reading a story so deep and gloomy like this one. I thought it was just a common YA with a little touch of mystery in it. Really, I myself forgot how I came up with such supposition. In fact, it's not a YA. Not pure YA, at least. It's the story about a family. A fragile one. It happened in 1977, and that just added ...more

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Aug 12, 2016 Leanne rated it liked it

Shelves: my-heart-hurts, read-in-2015, own, family-secrets

Jeez, this book was sad. Not tragic love story sad or bawl your eyes out sad, but the uncomfortable, gut-aching sadness that comes with unfulfilled dreams and miscommunications and endlessly complicated family dynamics. Everything I Never Told You is certainly not a murder mystery - and I knew that going in, but I still expected a little more plot and suspense surrounding Lydia's death and the subsequent investigation. But no, this is a straight character study, and a very skilled one at that. T ...more

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About Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng is the author of the novel Everything I Never Told You, which was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the ALA’s Alex Award, and the ...more

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