Author: Angie Kim
# of Pages: 398 (ebook)
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Mystery
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: In rural 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,” it's also a repository of hopes and dreams: the dream of a mom that her child can be like other kids; the dream of a young doctor desperate to cure his infertility and save his marriage; the dream of the Yoos themselves, Korean immigrants who have come to the United States so their teenage daughter can have a better life. When the oxygen chamber mysteriously explodes, killing two people, all these dreams shatter with it, and the ensuing murder trial uncovers imaginable secrets and lies.
Review: It's almost cheating to write a mystery because the reader is more than likely going to have a difficult time putting the book down. Even poorly written mysteries have had a history of taking over my day, my weekend because I NEED to figure out who dunnit.
That being said, Miracle Creek somehow managed to miss this gripping quality. I didn't even mind the third person POV switching too much (the format is popular for the "peeling the onion" types of courthouse mysteries where different perspectives are necessary to build the full picture). There was something about how the character building and the story telling seemed to drag on, and the time skipping between the past and the present was annoying rather than suspenseful.
What put me off the most was how Kim chose to write hints that the SOMETHING had happened, strongly indicating that some characters knew about some critical events, but stopped short of telling from the reader what actually happened until later in the story, in the name of suspense. It made the mystery aspect feel forced rather than letting letting the narratives from the courthouse and character interactions conjure the air of mystery themselves.
A part that I did enjoy was how Miracle Creek explores parenthood of kids with likely lifelong conditions through the HBOT patients. This was the first time I've read about HBOT, and I learned a lot more than I expected about how some parents approach their children's typically "incurable" conditions.
The Yoo family's immigration experience into the US made this book stand out amongst other court house mysteries. Immigrating from the US is explored from all angles within the family (father, mother, and child) and how they all face unique challenges in adjusting to a new culture and how pursuing the American dream inevitably changes the family dynamic. In particular, Young's growth in how she views Pak and his role as a patriarch of the family makes me really appreciate her as a character.
Overall, this book was...okay - there are some good parts, and there's nothing glaringly wrong with the book. But when I finished reading, that's what I felt about the book: it's "just okay."
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