From my blog: Always With A Book

I had attended William Morrow’s Fall Preview and this book was one of the ones presented and as soon as I heard about it, I requested it. I knew it was something I had to read and I’m so glad I did because I was blown away by this story. It is definitely one that I will be thinking about for some time to come.

I was completely gripped by this story – a debut nonetheless! At its core, it’s a mystery about what happened to young Denny Tran – why he was killed and by who. But underneath all this there is so much more to it’s a very layered story and the author deftly takes her time unpacking it all, giving us a story that is full of trauma and heartache, delving into the struggles that the Vietnamese refugees have had as they try to assimilate to life in Australia. And we also see how bad the opioid epidemic has hit Cabramatta and the effects it has had on the Tran family.

This book is not an easy one to read, yet it is one that once you start, you become fully engaged and invested in. I needed to find out what had happened to Denny Tran as much as I needed to know how the family would react once they got their answers. The book is mostly narrated by Denny’s sister, Ky, but there are also some chapters told by witnesses that were there the night of the murder.

This book makes you think. It puts you in the characters’ shoes many times, wondering how you would react, which makes it the perfect bookclub pick as there is so much to discuss and unpack. So many themes woven into this story really make it one that hits hard, yet tells a story that just begs to be discussed. This is the type of book that would probably benefit from multiple readings as so much is packed into it – little details and big ones that make the book what it is. While I had an e-copy and the audio, I think I will be buying a hard copy for my shelf because it is just that good and I do want to reread it.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. Kyra is shocked when her brother was murdered. When the police have no answers, Ky decides to find the answers herself. The witnesses at the scene offer little to no help. This book took you behind the scenes of what it feels like to lose a family member.

Ky learns of a sudden tragedy involving her brother, Denny, and immediately heads home to her family in the Sydney area in the 1990s. In shock about how something could happen - and searching for answers, Ky seeks to uncover the truth, but will it require her to revisit some painful parts of her teenage years?

This was a slow read with a dual timeline that kept me thinking about how much we know about others, how we reach out, what we accept-and how we deal with tragedy.

Thank you to William Morrow and Netgalley for the ARC.

#Bookclubgirls #AllThatsLeftUnsaid #NetGalley

📚Book Review📚
All That’s Left Unsaid: A Novel by Tracey Lien
Available Now!
308 Pages

Happy Pub Day to this amazing 5-star debut by Tracey Lien. I had no expectations going into this book and was so moved by this story about immigration, family, drugs, hopelessness and rising from grief. I also loved that this story centered on a Vietnamese-immigrant family in Australia, which was different from any other immigration story that I have read. (I’ve read a lot of immigration stories.)

The main character, Ki, fled Vietnam when she was a young child with her parents and settled in Cabrametta, Australia. When we meet Ki, she is a reporter living in Melbourne, but has returned home after her younger brother Denny is senselessly murder. Denny was at the top of his class, no trouble, sheltered son, but gets beaten to death at the Lucky 8 restaurant on the night of his school formal. A formal that Ki told her parents to allow Denny to attend.

When Ki returns to Cabrametta, which has a serious heroin problem, she finds out the police have no leads and everyone at the restaurant claims to have seen nothing. Ki starts to investigate the murder. This is not a murder mystery. It is a layered family drama that tells the story of Ki’s family, and other families that were at the Lucky 8 the night of the murder.

This book is heartbreaking on many levels, but it will stay with me. If you like complex family dramas, this one is for you.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Thank you @netgalley and @harpercollins for an advanced electronic copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This debut novel from Tracey Lien is set in a 90s Australian neighborhood ravaged by drugs. The vast majority of the inhabitants are Vietnamese refugees and their children.
Ky is a young adult who has returned home because of her brother’s murder. As Ky tries to unravel what happened, she encounters different people and tries to understand the choices they have made since arriving in Australia.
Although this was a tough subject matter, I enjoyed learning about a history that I was completely unfamiliar with. The characters had good development and the plot was engaging.

This book is, on the surface, a story about a murder and a sister trying to figure out what happened. But ultimately this is a story about so much more. This book touches on the effects of intergenerational trauma, racism, poverty and the effects of war. The structure of going between the main protagonist's POV and several other POVs helped push not only the murder mystery plot along but really added dimension to the community and their collective as well as individualized experiences. Each POV made it so we could really understand the individual's story and thus their actions and we could see how different people respond to trauma in different ways.

This book is beautifully written, I very much enjoyed it.

Cue the tears, once they start rolling its going to be hard to catch them....

All That's Left Unsaid, was one of my most sought after books of the year. The anticipation that built up was pouring out of me. I could not wait to get my hands on this book!!

I am not disappointed.

Instead I am left a wallowing ball of mush begging for someone to console me. Tracey Lien, you ripped me apart and I doubt I will ever be the same. Quite honestly, I am heartbroken. My biggest question is, how on earth is this a debut novel?

All That's Left Unsaid is going to affect you in ways you could not imagine. This is a story of a violent crime and how one family came together to fight for justice. There is no way you could prepare for what you will read and the angst of emotions you will feel. This book is unforgettable and one of the best books I have ever read.

This is a must read book for all, I wont go into the details as I want everyone to feel the raw emotions I felt while reading this book.

Five Stars, anything less is an insult. Tracey Lien, I can not wait to see what you publish next.

In this heartbreakingly profound debut novel, Ky Tran returns to her suburban Sydney home after her younger brother Denny is brutally murdered. Although the horrible crime was committed in a popular and busy local restaurant, everyone who was there that night claims they didn’t see anything. The police, weary of the Australian heroin epidemic, couldn’t be less interested. With resistance at every turn, Ky finds herself on a mission to track down everyone who was in the restaurant that night, trying desperately to gain understanding of the senseless crime.

“All That’s Left Unsaid” is an achingly nuanced look at the Vietnamese Australian refugee community, examining racism, duty, honor, poverty, and trauma in the migrant population. Alternating Ky’s voice with witnesses and others in the community – a child, a white teacher, Ky’s dad, and her childhood best friend – Ms. Lien gives us a beautifully-written, authentic look at the struggles of FOB (fresh off the boat) Vietnamese refugees and the impact of their trauma and sacrifice on first-generation Vietnamese Australians. Although billed as a thriller, the mystery of Denny’s death is more of an axis around which this gripping story unfolds rather than a driving force of the novel.

This complex, insightful novel is ideal for book club discussions. Comparisons to Celeste Ng and Brit Bennett are well deserved, so if you loved “Everything I Never Told You” or “The Vanishing Half”, you definitely want to put “All That’s Left Unsaid” on your TBR list.

Many thanks to Scene of the Crime and William Morrow via NetGalley for providing me an advance copy of this book.

What happened to Denny, the perfect son of Vietnamese immigrants to Australia? That is what his sister Ky is trying to figure out. Mixed with a history of Vietnamese immigration to Australia, the complicated lives of immigrant families, and a mystery, <i>All That's Left Unsaid</i> is a compelling look at the hardships and choices that many have to endure.

This book had so many thing I enjoy in books that I knew I would end up loving it as soon as I read the synopsis. 17-year-old Denny Tran gets dinner at a restaurant in Cabramatta, Australia with his friends and is murdered. Despite the restaurant being busy, all witnesses claim to know nothing. Denny's sister Ky, a journalist, returns home for the funeral and starts investigating what happened to her brother and trying to parse the meaning of all the silences.

Despite it being classified as a mystery, in a lot of places this one was light on the mystery. While I was curious to find out the truth, this was a story of so many other things. Dealing with loss, generational conflicts, pressures to adapt and succeed, trying to fit in at the only place you can call home, especially when "home" is unsafe for so many reasons, all through lenses of vivid characters. I also hadn't known anything about how Cabramatta used to be and I went through a wikipedia dive because it sounded so crazy (and yep it was pretty crazy and sad).

Thank you Harper Audio for the ALC and William Morrow and @bookclubgirl for the ARC.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Book Club Girl and Harper Collins William Morrow for gifting me a digital ARC of this wonderful debut novel by Tracey Lien - 4.5 stars rounded up!

Ky Tran is Vietnamese-Australian and working as a journalist in Melbourne when she learns that her younger brother, Denny, was beaten and died while at a restaurant celebrating the end of school. Both Ky and Denny were hard workers, rule followers, under pressure from their immigrant parents to do well. So Ky doesn't understand what happened. When she returns home to Cabramatta for Denny's funeral, she learns that her parents refused an autopsy and the police interviews of those in the restaurant went nowhere. The Constable does give Ky a list of those in the restaurant who swore they didn't see anything, and Ky begins interviewing them to find out what happened to her brother.

This was such a wonderful book - tragic, beautifully written, a mystery inside a family saga. The book is told from Ky's point of view, in past and present, as well as from other characters. There is so much here to unravel besides what happened to Ky - family trauma passed on, societal expectations, growing in up a depressed region, guilt, shame - and it all feels very real. This is the type of book to really think about and would be a great book club pick. Can't wait to read more from this author.

Ky investigates the death of her younger brother because the police investigation is going nowhere and no one is talking. She obtains a copy of all the witnesses information and interviews them herself.
The book gives insight into the Vietnamese culture. It took me several ,pages before I realized what era it takes place in, based on the descriptions and technology.
I like Ky’s temerity and tenacity. She’s going to unearth those answers, if just only for herself.
It’s a good read about family, culture, and moving forward.

When I first read the premise for Tracey Lien’s debut All That’s Left Unsaid, I knew this was a book I wanted to read. Comparisons to some of my favorite authors (Liz Moore, Celeste Ng, Brit Bennett) aside, I was intrigued by the case at the center of the story: 17-year-old Denny Tran attends a dinner at a local restaurant in Cabramatta, Australia (a suburb in Sydney) with his friends, but before the night is over, he is brutally murdered in plain sight of over a dozen witnesses, yet all of them claim not to have seen a thing. The Tran family is devastated, but faced with an indifferent police force in a refugee enclave where the proliferation of drugs (specifically heroin) as well as violent crime have become commonplace, Denny’s parents seem to have no other recourse but to accept the “bad luck” of their beloved son’s murder. But Denny’s sister Ky refuses to let things simply get swept under the rug. Desperate to assuage her feelings of guilt for leaving the family in order to pursue her own life in Melbourne (an act akin to “abandoning” the family and is severely frowned upon in traditional Asian households), Ky returns to Cabramatta and, after her brother’s funeral, decides to seek out and interrogate each of the witnesses herself in order to find out the circumstances behind Denny’s murder. With each person she speaks to, Ky gets closer to understanding what happened to her brother, but at the same time, she discovers the myriad complexities and difficulties of navigating the path to justice and closure for her family in a community where its citizens are mostly resigned to their fates.

There was honestly so much to unpack with this story that it is impossible to cover every angle in a brief review such as this one (personally, I highlighted so many things in this book that were significant to me, it would take me pages and pages to parse all of it). I will attempt to relay a few thoughts that stood out, but I encourage people to actually read this book in order to get the full experience.

I do want to start off by saying that this book is technically incorrectly classified under mystery / thriller. While it’s true that the plot overall revolves around unraveling the “mysterious” circumstances behind Denny Tran’s murder, it quickly becomes obvious (a chapter or so into the story, in fact) that his death is actually the trigger point for a deeply complicated and intricate exploration of community, society, class struggle, immigration, culture and assimilation, systemic racism, family bonds, parent-child relationships, generational trauma, mental illness, abuse, etc (and that’s just scratching the surface). The “mystery” itself was easy to figure out, which essentially rendered the ending anti-climactic, but the gut wrenching process of getting to that point was really the crux of what made this story work so well. With its “social commentary” angle, I feel like this would’ve fit more appropriately into literary fiction, though from a time and place perspective — Cabramatta (which was an actual place in Australia) in the 1990s, during which time there truly was a heroin epidemic — there was also a historical element to the story as well that I didn’t expect, but made the story even more compelling.

Before I go into talking about the characters, I wanted to comment on the title and structure. This book actually has one of the cleverest titles I’ve ever seen: it complements the book perfectly because when we peel back the layers, the story is essentially about “the many things that are left unsaid” by every character in the book — not just the witnesses from that night, but also the parents, Denny, and even Ky herself. So in this sense, there is a deeper meaning to the title that can only be understood after reading and reflecting on the entire story. Structure-wise, I love how the narrative alternated between various perspectives — sure, we got Ky’s perspective primarily, but there were also chapters narrated from the perspectives of the witnesses as well as Ky’s parents. Through these chapters, we were able to get the backstories to the various characters, which helped us understand what ultimately drove each character’s decision that fateful night. Structuring the narrative this way not only made the story more powerful and poignant, it also helped make the characters realistic and relatable, which I felt was very important to this story overall.

Speaking of the characters, I truly appreciate the brilliant job that the author Tracey Lien did in the area of character development, especially with Ky and Minnie. Reading this book was actually quite an emotional roller coaster for me because of the resonance I felt with the characters and so much of what they went through. With Ky especially, I saw so much of myself in her — from her struggles with identity and acceptance, to her analysis of her own shortcomings and insecurities, her feelings of anxiety related to the environment in which she grew up, and most significantly, her relationship with her mother. I’ve always been drawn to stories about parent/child relationships, but those between Asian mothers and their daughters are especially resonant with me because of my cultural background and the hope that reading about these relationships will help me navigate the complex dynamic that exists there.

One of the other things I loved about this book was how, through the character of Ky (and Minnie to some extent), Lien so accurately expressed the realities of life for many Asian women like myself — daughters of immigrants (and/or refugees) who may or may not have been born in the Western countries where we grew up and currently live — and how many of the conflicts that we constantly deal with, be it the cultural expectations or the societal pressures that come with being Asian and female, greatly inform how we end up interacting with our parents (and with others as well). I wanted to share the below passage from the book, which blew me away when I read it because it hit the nail on the head and made me feel “seen” in a way that so few books I’ve read in the past have been able to do.

“To anyone else, [his] reason would have been baffling. But Ky understood. She hated how well she now understood. After all, hadn’t she kept every hurt she’d ever experienced from her own parents? Hadn’t she hidden the bullying, the name-calling, the cruel acts of strangers, the times she’d been told to go back to where she came from, the ching-chongs, the pulled-back eyelids, the blondies with the Cabbage Patch Kids, the way she was forced to play the monster, the way she was asked why she couldn’t just take a joke, the times she was told that Asian women were ugly, kinky, docile, crazy, nerdy, unworthy, the way she was dismissed by men, the way she was dismissed by white men, their comments about what Asian women were and weren’t, what Asian women could or couldn’t be, the way she smiled with her tongue pressed against her teeth even as an ache beat in tandem with her heart—hadn’t she hidden all of that? And hadn’t she lived her own ambitious, exciting, anxious, uncompromising life while knowing that she could never, ever, ever, ever tell her parents about what she had been through? Because knowing would break their hearts. Because she had to help them believe that their sacrifices had paid off. Because she had to help them believe that moving to a country where they didn’t speak the language and weren’t seen as individuals had been worth it. Because she had to convince them that they’d done right by their children, that no one had failed, that no one had been let down, that they were one of the lucky ones who’d followed the path and found success. It made perfect sense. You lied to protect. You lied because of love.”

This is a book I definitely recommend and will likely want to re-read myself at some point. However, with that said, a word of warning that this is not going to be an easy read — it is sad and heart wrenching, it presents truths about our society that may be difficult to face, and it may take you places that you would rather not be, especially with some of the things going on in the world at the moment. But is is a worthwhile read — I would even say that it’s a necessary read — for those who are up to it, of course. This was a fantastic debut and I definitely look forward to what Tracey Lien has in store for us next.

Received ARC from William Morrow via NetGalley.

2.5 starts rounding to 3. I struggled with this book - it was depressing and slow. I really couldn't relate to the characters. There were several characters (Lulu, Ms. Faulkner, Flora) that were introduced, and a lot of time was spent on them but then they just disappeared. The writing was good but the story just didn't flow very smoothly. Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC.

This was a very unique book. What seems a bit like a thriller/mystery is really an exploration of the immigrant experience across generations. It’s rhe 90s and Ky, and Australian Vietnamese journalist, has lost her brother Denny in an act of violence at a graduation celebration. When no one in the community will talk to the police she takes it upon herself to start interviewing people herself. When she goes to the police station in a heroin riddled community we see the interactions of the people who live there and it’s very eye opening. Like other books that touch on immigrant experience we see how the younger generation has to translate for the elders, and how hard it is for the older generations to understand their new culture and surroundings. The book makes us see the impact of never feeling like you belong, and how that Is carried to families and communities. I especially loved one chapter from a young girls perspective that was so rich in description and emotion of what this young girl felt and experienced as a daughter of Vietnamese immigrants.
This was a beautiful book and I think if you go in thinking of it more of a study of an immigrant community vs a mystery it will make more of an impact.

📚Book 35 of 2022: All that’s left unsaid by Tracey Lien

💬Reader’s digest version: When her younger brother, Denny, is brutally murdered, Ky, a Vietnamese Australian journalist, finds herself pulled back to the place she grew up. A place she has desperately tried to distance herself from since graduating from high school. No one seems to know why Denny was murdered, but Ky is determined to find the answers.

🏃🏻‍♀️My Take: if you’re going into this thinking this is a thriller or murder mystery…think again. This story is so much more than that.

As Ky unravels the mystery behind her brother’s murder she finds herself unpeeling layer upon layer of the pain of the immigrant experience and the violence and desolation that results from never quite feeling like you belong anywhere.

This book was beautiful, brutal, and haunting. I cannot stop thinking about it. Hands down the most devastating, heart wrenching book I have read all year. I think everyone needs to read this to gain a better understanding of what life is like for immigrants. We would all be a little more compassionate if we did.

⭐️My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

🙏🏻Big thanks to @netgalley and @williammorrowbooks for the advanced reader copy. All that’s left unsaid by Tracey Lien hits shelves September 13, 2022. Do not miss this one.

When Ky’s young brother Denny is beaten to death in a restaurant, where all witnesses claim to have seem nothing, Ky makes it her mission to find out what happened. She obtains a witness list from the police and the more people she talks to, the more questions she has.

I had never heard of Cabramatta and its heroin epidemic, but I was fascinated while reading about it. There was so much loss, so much suffering, between drugs and loss of people too. This story also shined a light on Vietnamese refugees and all that they went though while trying to build a new life in Australia. It was, quite frankly, painful to read. It made you a little uncomfortable but it was done for a reason, and successfully made you think. The author did a beautiful job tackling these heavy subjects. I wanted to hug so many characters too. Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC! “All That’s Left Unsaid” publishes September 13th.

This review will be shared to my Instagram blog (@books_by_the_bottle) shortly 🙂

A tragedy. Ky's little brother Denny is beaten to death at a local restaurant on the night of his high school formal and her parents, immigrants from Vietnam, have turned their heads from who did it and why. She can't and her journey to the truth takes her, and others, back and forth in time. Their neighborhood in Sydney is a rough one but not everyone is a druggie, Ky and Denny among them. Ky's beloved childhood friend Minnie has disappeared, her old teacher has lost her mojo, and things are just not right for so many even before Denny is killed. The police haven't done much but the Constable does give her a list of those present in the restaurant that night and one by one she goes back and talks to them. No spoilers from me but this unfolds beautifully with terrific characters whose pain and fear is palpable. The atmospherics are great. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. The storytelling and writing had me turning the pages. Highly recommend.

⭐️: 4.5/5

After Ky learns that her younger brother Denny was beaten to death at a celebratory dinner out with friends, she returns home to Cabramatta, a suburb of Sydney with a high Vietnamese population currently facing a heroin epidemic. When she learns that the police are uninterested in solving the case, categorizing it as a cut and dry case of gang violence, she sets out to find and interview the witnesses herself to try and figure out the events that led to Denny’s senseless death and hopefully find some closure for herself and her family.

When this book was compared to Everything I Never Told You and The Mothers, it made me really excited to read it because those are two of my all time favorites. I truly feel like All That’s Left Unsaid deserves the comparison, because it was an expansive and sweeping reading experience that also felt really intimate and character focused. I loved the deep exploration of feelings of resentment and misunderstanding between one generation of refugees and their first generation children, and the cultural divide that exists due to cultural obligations and traditions at home versus the very different culture and norms of the country they’re living in. I was able to draw a lot of comparisons and parallels to things I’ve felt within my own life experience as an Asian American to the concepts being demonstrated in the book, and it’s always refreshing to feel seen and represented in literature. It was also interesting and enlightening to read about immigrants and refugees living in Australia and facing racism and other challenges, as opposed to the majority of books with similar themes that I’ve read centering those types of conflict but in America. The structure of the book was so inventive and compelling, and hearing a chapter from inside the mind of each of the witnesses really helped me emotionally connect with many different characters, instead of just the main character of Ky. I definitely recommend this book as a thought-provoking and culturally important read.

Thank you to @netgalley and @williammorrowbooks for this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

**Many thanks to NetGalley, @BookClubGirl, William Morrow, and Tracey Lien for an ARC of this book!**

Denny Tran is dead....and his sister Ky is in shock. Returning home to Cabramatta, Australia for his funeral, she finds her former home in some ways just how she left it...but in others even MORE deadly and dangerous. Plagued by violence and a pervasive drug culture, the Vietnamese refugees in this town often seem to face terror at every corner. Ky learns that her brother was killed at a Lucky 8 after a school event, but she can't seem to get any more detail out of anyone...even her own parents. Luckily, Ky is a journalist and is hell bent on getting to the bottom of her straight A student brother's death, so she takes matters into her own hands and starts hunting down witnesses to get to the bottom of the mystery. What she finds, however, are secrets more harrowing than she could have imagined...and links to her own past that are coming back to haunt her. Have the answers she's been searching for been hiding in plain sight...and if the past refuses to be ignored, what does THAT mean for Ky's future?

This is a difficult book to review for several reasons. I felt like I read a couple of different books combined into one book, which can be tricky in and of itself. This is a book that in some ways is very much in the vein of a Celeste Ng story, but in others has its own unique bent. The mystery is VERY important at the beginning of the story and I got hooked immediately trying to find out whodunit, but as we jumped from the Big Case into more of an exploration of the immigrant experience in Cabramatta...and THEN into Ky's past with her friends...I had trouble focusing and knowing exactly where the novel was headed.

Commentary on the different paths Vietnamese immigrants took (or were forced to take) in Cabramatta is clearly the most IMPORTANT driving force behind the book...but in some ways, I'm not sure if it was the most interesting in terms of furthering the plot itself. However, this was a tricky balancing act for Lien, so I applaud her effort to fit so much detail and so many perspectives into one story. There are explorations of what it means to be family, what sacrifice entails, and how those we love may not always be what they seem (or perhaps are EXACTLY what they seem!)

There is one chapter in particular that was striking, early on, which is narrated by a young character and was SO well-written. I almost wish Lien had used this device more often throughout the book because she was able to really NAIL the voice of the character and show off her writing prowess. Though I didn't mind narration by Ky, as a mystery/thriller lover, I would have liked a LITTLE bit more focus on the mystery or perhaps a bit more of a surprising ending in that department, but again, that is definitely a personal preference!

I struggled a bit with my rating on this one, but since overall this was a thoughtful, intriguing, and well-written debut, I'm happy to round up to 4 stars. I look forward to hearing more from Tracey Lien!

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4