The mother who was desperate to stand out.
The father who was desperate to fit in.
The son who just wanted to be seen.
The youngest daughter who was invisible.
And finally,
the perfect daughter who was found at the bottom on the lake Thursday morning.
After Lydia is found at the bottom of the lake, the Lee family is left wondering what happened. Each person is left to deal with their grief in their own way.
Marilyn is convinced of foul play. After all, her Lydia would never go out to the lake knowing she couldn’t swim. Nath is fixated on his nemesis since childhood, Jack, who had quite a reputation and had suddenly been spending a lot of time with Lydia. James, incapable of dealing with the guilt of how he may have failed his daughter, chooses to distract himself instead. And little Hannah, always the observant one, puts together the clues that no one else seems to notice but her. Slowly, the story of Lydia’s life and her death comes together.
Ng does an incredible job of writing from each character’s unique perspective and weaving together memories from the past and the experiences of the present to lead the reader to what happened. We get to read about Marilyn and James as a young couple dealing with racism, sexism, and strained family relationships as a result of those issues. We see how the obstacles they’ve dealt with and their individual experiences not only affect them, but their children as well. James and Marliyn deal with their own shortcomings by focusing all of their attention on their oldest child Lydia, while leaving Nath and Hannah to pick up any tiny scraps of parental affection they can find.
“When you get to the end of a book, what happens should feel both surprising and inevitable.”
The ending is like rewatching that episode of your favorite show where a character you love is going to die. You just want to yell at the tv to warn them, but you also know that there's nothing you can do.
This book will break your heart, but it’ll be so worth it.
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