Thank you to NetGalley, Carrianne K. Y. Leung, Lisa Truong, and ECW Press Audio for the opportunity to read The Wondrous Woo in exchange for an honest review.

I used the NetGalley Shelf App to listen to an audiobook e-galley of this novel. The narrator, Lisa Truong, did a fantastic job of portraying Miramar Woo.

This is a book that shares the experience of a Chinese family moving to Canada (an interesting perspective from the usual United States portrayals). While this book is listed as young adult, I would say it is more of a new adult novel because of the setting and experiences that the main character goes through. 

Miramar Woo is the oldest of three siblings and she is eager to leave for college. Just as she is ready to leave, her father is killed in an accident. This death heavily affects Miramar and her siblings, as well as her mother. Learning to navigate through life and learning that the world doesn't stop even when death arrives is a major theme near the beginning of the novel. Miramar does end up going to university, for a time, and even has a boyfriend. Some of the usual stereotypes that accompany Asian people are portrayed through Miramar's experiences.

While these multicultural elements are touched upon, this book also has a bit of a fantasy element to it. The death of their father seems to trigger...strange powers? among the younger siblings. This part of the novel was a bit confusing to me. Miramar escapes into her mind where she explores these Kung Fu fantasies. This is also a story of identity, and even when people reach college age, they may still have a long road ahead of them when it comes to finding out who they are.

I enjoyed this book and think it would make a fun addition to book groups in the classroom. It has a lot of good themes and can be relatable to many young people, both high school and college-age alike as they go down their own roads to self-discovery.

⭐️⭐️⭐️🌗

The Wondrous Woo follows a Miramar Woo, a Chinese-Canadian girl in the 80’s, and her family in the years following her Ba’s sudden death. I enjoyed the audiobook and thought the narrator was quite good. While the story wasn’t the most gripping to me, it was still enjoyable and called some really difficult topics with a touch of magical realism.
There was a lot of mental health representation as Miramar’s mom struggles with persistent panic attacks and depression (and hallucinations potentially related to trauma). Personally, the initial description of her struggles had me leaning more towards bipolar disorder with psychotic features so the doctor’s diagnosis actually surprised me a bit when it was revealed much later in the book. Because I wasn’t sure about the time period, I actually went back and checked the DSM-III-R which would’ve been in use then... I still would lean more towards bipolar, but since we’re in a limited POV with Miramar it’s hard to say for certain. Anyway, though at times it was very frustrating to read, the struggles of the kids coming to terms with their grief and their mom’s mental illness seemed very realistic. I do wish that Miramar herself had gotten some therapy earlier in the book (and even when she did it was kind of... not actual therapy even though she was meeting with a psychologist, but it was informal and on the Dr’s lunch breaks). But Miramar definitely dealt with some pretty intense depression and isolated herself from everyone and I was just like “please! get help!”
Anyway, aside from that, I really did enjoy the rest of the book and the story was compelling I liked the friendship between Mouse and Miramar and I loved the king fu story snippets we get at the beginning of every chapter. As mentioned before, the characters were sometimes infuriating, but in realistic ways (mostly Sophia and sometimes Miramar). However, I did really like the journey that the characters took, the emphasis on family and understanding and loving each other despite flaws and mistakes was particularly poignant. There was one plot point right at the end that drives the conclusion that just makes... very little sense to me (maybe Canadian hospital security and staff in the 80’s just... was really not great? Idk), but the resolution itself I liked.
All in all I liked this coming of age story set in the midst of grief with the Chinese culture mixed throughout and some magic and kung fu! While I have a few mixed feelings, I do still think it’s worth a read.

I enjoyed this read quite a bit. This is a fun story about siblings whose dad dies suddenly. Two of the siblings develop these gifts and are thrust into the spotlight, leaving our narrator left out as the sibling who is not special. They all handle the new changes differently, and seeing this through the narrator's perspective was so fun. I also loved all the little moments of kung fu movie references.

Well deserved 2014 Toronto Book Award finalist.

There are “Kung Fu” vignettes at the beginning of each chapter; since I was listening via audiobook, it took me a while to appreciate this. (So I went from being confused at the beginning of each chapter ... to adding Kung Fu chops and hollering “haii yah!”)
My suggestion would be to make these intros a “separate chapter” for the audio.

What a great story! Mixing grief over the loss of a father and mental issues with the mother and child prodigies; there is a lot going on in this book, but it flowed seamlessly and quickly. Not a dull moment. Really like-able characters.

I wanted to finish this book before going to sleep; it’s now 1am. What a great way to head off to dreamland.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author/Carrianne Leung for the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review. The narrator Lisa Truong did an excellent job!