A review by katiesbookmarks
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I mostly enjoyed this. I've read some of Ng's other works and enjoy the prose and her style of writing, though in this type of setting, I found it a little lacking and really craving more. 

I sympathized with Bird throughout, and admired his journey to find his mother in a world he knows nothing about. However, I felt the book really dragged, especially when we switched to Margaret's point of view. There was so much telling and not enough showing for me, even when we got to the descriptions of the Crisis and what that meant. I'm still not even entirely sure. She mentions America going into a financial crisis and slowly Americans blaming the Chinese, and there being protests, but we don't see any other systematic changes other than PACT being created and what it means.

I wanted much more world building. I wanted to learn much more about why Margaret was doing what she was doing, and how she had become a symbol for the resistance. I admit I was also disappointed to discover that she wasn't REALLY a resistance fighter until the end. 

Overall, I enjoyed this, but not as much as I was expecting to.