A thrilling debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng about how far we'll go to protect our families - and our deepest secrets. In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine - a pressurised oxygen chamber that patients enter for "dives", used as an alternative therapy for conditions including autism and 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.
Angie Kim's Miracle Creek is a thoroughly contemporary take on the courtroom drama, drawing on the author's own life as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of a real-life "submarine" patient. Both a compelling page-turner and an excavation of identity and the desire for connection, Miracle Creek is a brilliant, empathetic debut from an exciting new voice.
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[MY HUSBAND ASKED ME TO LIE]***
(@HodderBooks, 25 July 2019, 349 pages, ebook, ARC from @HodderBooks via # NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed)
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I had high hopes for this book and they were exceeded time and again. I love reading thriller and mysteries but have mixed feelings about courtroom dramas and have found them to be a hit or a miss. Miracle Creek brilliantly combines all three of these. The characters in this book are quite dark at times but not because they are monsters but simply utterly real, flawed human beings. One of the main threads of this story is what can happen to immigrants seeking a new life in America. This book completely tore me apart. I cried a lot reading it but as much as it hurt I couldn't bear to stop reading because I'd fallen so deeply in love with the world and characters. This is the sort of book where you don't really know the truth and have about fifteen different theories before discovering they're all wrong.
