The contents of Happiness Falls matches the cover well. It was such a layered read exploring gender and racial biases, ableism and what makes a person a person, the mystery of their father's disappearance along with questions of his characters, and the linguistic and psychological aspects of biases, authority, and happiness.

This book took me two months to finish, not because it wasn't good, but because every time I read it I felt this overwhelming sense of dread. There's the element of their father's disappearance and the immediate fear we feel for Eugene, who is autistic and has Angelman syndrome, when the family realizes that he is the only person who can confirm exactly what happened to their father. We have Mia as our narrator, sharing her side of the story as a sort of retrospective, and her twin brother John, who tries to see the best in every situation and never seems to panic. Then there's their mother, trying to hold onto her sanity as the story unfolds. It all compounded into this story of fear and dread and unnerving suspense as we wait to hear the truth of how this family ended up here. It was all built up so well, with it slowly unravelling as the story went on, and when I was in the book, I was all in.

I loved the racial overtones of this book. Not simply the elements of being biracial in a mostly Caucasian neighbourhood, but looking at generational traumas, linguistic implications and connections, and the concept of shame, and how that all feeds back into the overarching story. It was such a unique way of approaching these topics and I appreciated how it all felt necessary to understanding the characters and their motivations and biases better. I especially liked how it fed into the idea of what makes a person smart - how "broken-English" is more often used to describe Asians struggling with English rather than someone from say France or Germany; how one's ability to put their ideas into words indicate intellect; how one can be two different people in two different languages; and how all this feed into Eugene's general inability to communicate and what assumptions people make about his intellect as a result. These layers all help to build up each character, but also build up the story and mystery, and again that sense of shame around assumptions.

This book left me feeling simultaneously unnerved, joyful, and very very unsure. I loved the dissonance throughout the story and how that looped back in the end, and I appreciated how it all wrapped up in a way that was almost happy, but still in a minor key (iykyk). I really enjoyed this book, and absolutely inhaled it. I will definitely be picking up Miracle Creek soon, because I need more of Angie Kim ASAP.

TW: grief, racism, microaggressions, ableism; mentions infidelity, death of a parent