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    What We Kept to Ourselves: A Novel
    What We Kept to Ourselves: A Novel
    What We Kept to Ourselves: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    What We Kept to Ourselves: A Novel

    Written by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

    Narrated by Jennifer Kim

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    About this audiobook

    A “propulsive and moving story of a family torn asunder by their mother’s disappearance” (Bookreporter) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee.

    1999: At the end of the millennium, the Kim family is struggling to move on after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children than ever before. One evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of an unhoused stranger in the backyard with a letter to Sunny, leaving the family with more questions than ever.

    1977: Newly married, Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her hardworking and often-absent husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation are broken only by a fateful encounter with a veteran at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans decades and echoes into the family’s lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother but their very lives at risk.

    Both “an intricately crafted mystery and a heart-wrenching family saga” (Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author), set against the backdrop of social unrest and Y2K, What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores memory, storytelling, forgiveness, and what it means to dream in America.

    Editor's Note

    Highly anticipated…

    Sunny Kim, a Korean American woman, vanishes without a trace. Her family is still picking up the pieces when they find the body of a strange man in their yard — and there’s a note to Sunny in his pocket. What happened to Sunny, and how does the dead stranger fit into the puzzle? Kim (author of Reese’s Book Club selection, “The Last Story of Mina Lee”) takes readers back to the 1970s while the mystery unfolds, slowly revealing family secrets at the core of Sunny’s disappearance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 10, 2023
    ISBN9781797164960
    Author

    Nancy Jooyoun Kim

    Nancy Jooyoun Kim is the New York Times bestselling author of What We Kept to Ourselves and The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese’s Book Club pick. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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    Reviews for What We Kept to Ourselves

    4/5

    41 ratings3 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Very underwhelming. But maybe it’s the culture barrier/difference. Don’t know
    • 1/5
      I don't even know how I got through this book. It felt like so much happened but there was so little thrills about it all. I kept on waiting for something to excite me but it didn't.
      Sometimes I was unsure which character was talking as there were no pauses in between chapters or paragraphs.
      And I don't know how many times you can use the word Downy in one book...
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written, an intriguing story with multiple twists. An unexpected friendship woven through different cultures, backgrounds and experiences. I couldn’t put it down.