This story is loosely based on the Sampoong Department Store collapse in Seoul, but it became so much more than Sae trying to find her husband after the collapse. I didn't expect this book to turn into a mystery with so many surprises and twists that came with the different POVs and timelines.

I couldn't put it down, because I was so invested in the story. I ended up really enjoying this one of a kind story filled with unique characters. Fans of literary fiction, mysteries, and multi-generational family stories set in a different country will enjoy this book!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy.
This book was atmospheric and filled with tense moments that really put a focus on the mystery surrounding a Sae's husband disappearance. I thought the story was interesting with all the aspects of a k-movie or drama. It was a overall good suspenseful novel that was thrilling and enjoyable to read.

I wanted to like this a little more than I did. I felt like the writing was a little stilted. The "reveals" were a little soap opera-y too. The idea was so great and I think based on an actual event? But the writing seemed a little off. I wanted to get sucked in on her search but I really didn't. There was an odd remoteness to the book.

Sae's husband, Jae, is an engineer installing a swimming pool in Aspiration Tower and when the tower collapses Sae starts to search for her husband. There wasn't a lot of character development and I really didn't like Sae much. Sometimes the dialog between her and her husband seemed forced and he also had many secrets. I became a bit more interested in the middle as things were falling into place but there were a lot of characters and sometimes the Korean names were confusing to me.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House for providing me with a digital copy.

Random House, One World pinged me with this ARC based on my love for If I Had Your Face - and well, they were spot on with that recommendation!

I really enjoyed this book and found it hard to put down. It's compulsively readable, with the story and action constantly moving ahead and reading very much like a movie in style and pacing.

This story covers A LOT and the author touches on a wide array of topics and commentary. Spanning a period in Korea and a few events I didn't know much about until I read this, they are a fascinating setting for the author to discuss corruption, political upheaval and resistance and the long shadow it casts on those who survive, American involvement in the war/post-war and it's effects on economy/politics/power, international adoption, womens' roles in a rapidly changing society, power both individually and collectively, what makes a family, and more.

While I really enjoyed the wide-ranging discussions, there is a point in the novel where it felt like we were trying to cover too much at the expense of some plot points and important scenes getting time to breathe and fully resolve. I can also imagine the writing style may not be for everyone, it can feel a bit detached at times but I felt it read like the main character - a woman pushed to the edge.

Overall, I would absolutely recommend this! I devoured it and look forward to the author's next work!

You can feel the despair of Sae as you read this novel and she searches for her missing husband. Excavations is both a literal and figurative title - Sae needs the excavations of the fallen tower done to find her husband, but she also goes on a journey to excavate all of their secrets. Sae has to decide how dangerous secrets are, and whether she can fight those in power.

"At home in Seoul, former journalist Sae is waiting with two clingy toddlers for her husband to come home from work. He has never been this late before. Her children are crying, and Sae, exhausted and anxious, turns on the TV to distract herself. She clicks to the news, which shows a horrific disaster, the collapse of a massive skyscraper where Jae was an engineer.

Minutes, then hours, and then days pass. No one has seen Jae, but things aren't adding up. There are rumors that the foundation was unstable. Jae had told Sae he was working on a swimming pool on the top floor, but reports showed he was in the basement, on a different project. The government was involved but the contractors missing. Sae--who met Jae when they were students at an anti-government protest and has relied on him as her guiding and steadying hand--is troubled, terrified, and...suspicious.

Leaving the children with her estranged mother, Sae sets out to uncover the truth of what happened to her husband. Her research turns up files and secret correspondences pointing to government cover-ups. Eventually, her investigation takes her to an upscale club where the proprietor, Myonghee, is not merely supplying booze and girls but also seeking information, for her own purposes, from every drunken businessman who lets corporate secrets slip. As Sae begins to find what she sought, she must ask herself: how well can you truly know the one you love and how much should you really trust those in power?"

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Based loosely on the actual collapse of the Sampling Department Store in Seoul, Excavations follows a young mother's quest to find out about the disappearance of her husband. Sae is a former activist and journalist who left her job to stay home and care for her two young children. Jae is the boy she fell in love with and who she converted into an activist as well. As the story opens, Jae is working as an engineer constructing a swimming pool for the famous Aspiration Tower when it collapses. Sae waits anxiously for him to come home and even heads to the site of the destruction to find him but with no success. As she hears more about the details of the collapse and the company in charge of the construction, she finds that the details don't add up. Calling on old contacts, Sae begins to dig into the corporate corruption that led to the collapse, trying to find out what Jae was really working on. But there are those who don't want Sae to uncover the truth and will do anything to further destroy her life to keep her silence.

The plot to this novel was intriguing and definitely kept me turning the pages as the pieces slowly came together. I will admit that the characters were a bit hard for me to connect with on an emotional level. I appreciated both Sae and Myonhee's stories and loved how their lives connected but something just felt a bit detached about them. Overall, though, the story was great.

Thank you to Random House, One World for an early review copy of this novel. This one will be available on 7/11/23.

I've been watching K-Dramas this year and Excavations has all the elements of an amazing K-Drama. I loved that the book looked at the past, present, and future. The timeline does jump around a bit but for the most part it didn't affect the story. I learned a lot about South Korean history. Some of the things about the collapse of the tower in this novel will have you remembering the images from 9/11 which gave the plot an even more eery vibe. I liked how she wove multiple plot points and characters into a seemless story. I really hope to see this book on the screen some day.

This book was quite unexpected. I was pulled in from the first page and anxious to learn about what truly happened. Sae was a little difficult for me to like because of her leaving her children to search for her husband. However, I have never had anything like this happen to me since having kids so who know how I would react.

This story is full of lies and destruction. My heart aches for Sae's children. They loved their father and lost him while so young.

I loved the way the story ended and that Sae was able to get some justice for Jae. My heart ached for him. I think he was just trying to right the wrongs of his family.


Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House, One World for the ebook ARC of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Excavations was a twisted tale of whether or not truth truly sets you free. We follow a journalist turned stay-at-home mom as she searches for her husband after the building he was working in collapses. A non-linear storyline along with multiple points of view give us insight into who her husband truly was versus who he portrayed himself as. But what are you willing to sacrifice to learn the entire truth? Your family? Your future?

I enjoyed this novel. I loved watching all the pieces fit into place to create a true picture of what really happened to this family and how everyone was tied together. Definitely a worthy read.

EXCAVATIONS |

A former journalist, now mother of two hears news that the building her husband has been working on has collapsed. Her husband had been employed to work on a pool addition to the roof. Now it has come in to question whether that faulty architecture caused the collapse

We flip back and forth between the past when Sae was a student and a recruiter for an anti govt activist group during the 80s that faced stark silencing and crackdowns of any disobedience or show or unionizing and current day where Sae can't just sit and wait to hear what's happened and her journalist side kicks in as we dig in and start chasing leads. Only we find out that there is much that she does not know about who her husband is and who he ever was.

In some ways this reads as a neo-noir where Sae, the MC and mom, is the detective, searching for the truth about her partner in a city run by corrupt corporate greed. There's also a men's nightclub at the center of this, that acts as a point of double crossing but also much much more which you could argue is the femme fatale.

But there's some stark commentary on the question of who gets to tell history, to write down not just your own personal history/legacy, but a country's history, the govt, those in power? And is it worth one person's livelihood and all that they have at stake to go up against the pets that be to challenge that, in order to execute the truth? Set against historical backdrop of Korea's history I found this to be a powerful read. And of course ended it crying. I thought it was a great read.

Sae is a former journalist turned stay at home mother of two. Her husband Jae is an engineer working on a swimming pool at the top of the highest building in Seoul. Tragedy strikes and Jae is missing. As Sae seeks to find the truth of what has happened, she finds herself with more questions than answers. The biggest question of all, is can you trust what you have always thought to be true?
This book is a fairly quick read. It is well written and the storyline is interesting. There are elements of mystery and surprise. Overall though, this book fell flat for me. I found the characters, with the exception of Myonghee - the madam of the room salons - to be unlikeable. The random ramblings of the Chairman which were dispersed throughout the book were distracting, although the ending explained the reason behind them. I had some trouble following the storyline and keeping the characters straight. The book itself was good. I just didn't enjoy it. I consider that my preference rather than an overall censure of the book. I'm certain there is an audience who will love this book. I just can't count myself among them.

Stories are about power and corruption are not new, but Excavations tells such a tale against the backdrop of a high rise building collapsing in Seoul in 1992 in a fresh way. While there is a mystery to what has happened as Sae searches for her husband Jae who was working at the building when it came down, it’s really literary fiction that paints a vivid portrait of what living in South Korea at that time was like.

My favorite character was Myong-hee who has a steely resolve despite the many difficulties in her life that have led her to being a madame. Over time how she fits into the story become more clear and other seemingly extraneous details and plot points weave together in a way that is both surprising yet inevitable.

It’s very well written and has a lot of heart. The last third of the book when everything pulls together was terrific and very satisfying, I wouldn’t say this is a typical read for me but I’m very glad to have checked it out.

What a stellar debut Hannah Michell has crafted here! EXCAVATIONS is a thrilling and complex look at Korean politics and culture, filtered through the story of Sae, a woman who launches a guerilla investigation when her husband fails to come home from the catastrophic collapse of a luxury apartment building. What she uncovers is almost too much to bear--decades of secrets, corruption, and conspiracy knitting together the very fabric of both her family and her country. Michell moves expertly through multiple timelines, giving the reader an impressively comprehensive sense of the rapid political upheaval characterizing Korea in the twentieth century. The details of EXCAVATIONS plot unfurl in layers (appropriately, like an excavational dig), and though most details only come together at the very end of the novel, I trusted that I was in good hands--that trust pays off, with a gut-punch of an ending that I'll be thinking about for a long, long time.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group/One World and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book prior to publication. I was super intrigued by this book's premise: In Seoul, South Korea, a mom of two young boys waits for her husband to come home from work on the day when the skyscraper he was working at collapses. We then go on an exploration of before and after to figure out what happened, as things are not adding up. I lived in Seoul during parts of when this story takes place, and I could not stop googling people and places to see what actually happened and if certain things I remembered were still there. Once I hit about 30% in this book, I could not put it town and read the rest of it in one sitting. The characters, pacing, and setting were so well done, and I was really happy to get a sort of "where are they now" by the end of the book. Even though this is set in Seoul, the connections to similar themes in the US were uncanny and thought=provoking. This would make an excellent book club discussion! 4.5 stars.

I loved learning about the culture and how it works in a different country but I wasn't as invested in the storyline as I could have been. I felt like even more of the history would have allowed me more investment.

4.5/5

The drama is palpable in this tale of loss and hope. Sae, the MC, brings a lot to the pages here - you feel how she feels and think how she thinks - even though you may not fully understand it all. That’s a testament to the power of Hannah Michell’s storytelling and writing. It is rife with South Korean politics and history, and after finishing this book, you’ll want more. I guarantee it.

Sae is waiting for her husband to get home from work when she gets news that the building he was working on has collapsed. However, as the days pass, things don’t add up. Sae, a former journalist, sets up to uncover the truth about what happened to her husband.

I thought there was going to be more suspense here than there was. Part of that was writing style, which others might enjoy more than me here.

OKAY! I am so thankful to Hannah Michell, Random House Publishing Group, Netgalley, and PRH Audio for granting advanced digital and audiobook access to this jarring novel about political and economic tensions gone awry following the tragic loss of several hundred/thousand citizens. Excavations is set to hit shelves on July 11, 2023, and I can't wait to create some more hype for this gem.

Sae, a seasoned journalist in Seoul, Korea, grows worrisome after her husband doesn't return home from work. After heading into the city and referring to the local news, she finds that the building her husband was working in has collapsed, leaving thousands dead, displaced, and missing. Putting her journalistic cap back on, Sae finds there is more to this seemingly random disaster, and it was likely orchestrated as a form of an organization covering up its misdoings.

In a post-Japan-occupied South Korea, societal tensions are still high as the younger generations fight for equal treatment and freedoms that are still hesitant to be equally dispersed. There were points throughout this book that felt synonymous with the working conditions in factories here in the states, so I appreciated the stark comparisons to the evils of play/work.

Loosely based on real events, "Excavations" by Hannah Michell is the story of a journalist turned stay at home mom to two whose life is torn apart when an office tower collapses. While trying to determine whether or not her missing husband perished in the tragedy, Sae is forced to confront the fact that her husband may not be the man she thought he was.

This book is a slow burn set against the backdrop of South Korean history. It is well written and kept me guessing right up until the end. The story is told through shifting timelines and multiple characters, but it all comes together in a satisfying conclusion. This novel is more than a run of the mill mystery; it is a book about power and corruption, hope and strength. It's a book that will stay with me for quite some time.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the privilege of reading an advanced copy of this fabulous book in exchange for my honest review.