If you don’t have Shelter by Jung Yun on your reading list yet, add it now because it’s going to be big (plus she’s a #30Authors contributor!). I’d like to say you heard it here first, but Sarah at Sarah’s Bookshelves and the New York Times beat me to it. It’s a harrowing novel that explores the difficulties in escaping a heartbreaking past, the hidden resentments lurking beneath the surface of a complicated family, and what desperation can drive a person to do.

Shelter is many stories within a story. It’s about Kyung Cho, a Korean-American who grew up in a family that was affluent but lacked any type of affection or emotional support. Desperate to provide his son with a different life but unable to let go of his resentments, Kyung struggles in his role as husband, father, and son and to reconcile his past with his present.

It’s also the story of the Cho family, as a whole. When a brutally violent act is perpetrated against Kyung’s parents, his sense of duty requires that he take them in. In doing so, he comes face-to-face with the life he tried so hard to escape. 

Lastly, it’s the story of a marriage and how one person’s past can affect another’s future. 

It is, at times, a really difficult book to read. The violent act that sets the story in motion is horrific, but it’s the family dynamic that drives the story forward. It also left me with warring emotions. There were times when I had empathy for characters I should have hated and times I hated characters I should have had empathy for. It wasn’t until I was finished the book that I was able to sort through it all, but the fact that I had any sorting to do is proof that it's a book worth reading.

Suffice to say, Shelter took me on an emotional roller coaster. Yun’s ability to paint a family as complex and nuanced as the Cho’s is masterful. Many authors choose to tackle one major theme in a book, such as marriage, or to skim the surface of several themes without diving too deeply into any of them. Yun does neither – she boldly jumps headfirst into several major themes, including marriage, racism, and family, and wraps them so tightly together that it’s impossible to pull them apart. She also draws out the very real ways in which racism, fear, duty, and desperation impact both an individual and an entire family for decades.

So, like I said in the beginning - you should add this one to your list.

Sad, real, and at times very depressing. But this book is so well written and I enjoyed every page.

This book says so much about the financial crisis in America and the collapse of the middle class, domestic violence, the realities of immigration and child abuse but not as loudly as you'd imagine. It's a reflection on the consequences and legacies of violence and is incredibly powerful. The protagonist behaves in ways that are infuriating but understandable given events. This is one hell of a debut novel.

Shelter is so good and so much more intense than the description lets on. Any Asian child will relate to the differences in growing up with Asian vs. American-born parents. Recommended.

This was a great readable book. It’s not really a thriller, but the tension sometimes makes it feel that way. Much of the book was so uncomfortable, but I couldn’t look away.

There’s some serious stuff about the legacy of trauma and the immigrant experience, both first and second generations. All of the characters are flawed, so I wouldn’t say you’re rooting for anyone. That also makes it an uncomfortable read.

I felt that the ending veered into over explaining. Too much was made explicit. I wanted less tidy introspection from Kyung. I like how the scene played out, I just wish Kyung wasn’t quite so lucid about it all internally because that was hard to buy.

Yeeesh, heavy book that typically isn’t my cup of tea. Kyung’s point of view can be shakey at times but from the greater perspective one that was understandable. Connecting the dots from beginning to end must have been difficult for the author as every experience portrayed in her book was more layered than the next. Would recommend

A compelling, if depressing, novel. At times it reads like a suspense novel, which it isn't, really, although it contains some horrific crimes. Nor is it really a literary novel that seeks to dazzle the reader in its masterful sentences, depth of psychology, or experimentation with structure. In the end, it's a story. A straightforward, compulsively readable story about a family with problems, and the struggle to stop the cycle that visits these problems on each successive generation.

...I need some time to gather my thoughts