Adult Book

****

Everything I Never Told You
by Celeste Ng

­­­­The story opens:  “Lydia is dead.  But they don’t know this yet.”  Blunt, devastating.  The favored middle child of James and Marilyn Lee, a mixed American-Chinese couple, Lydia drowned--intentionally?  James and Marilyn who were drawn together by their differenced and shunned by Marilyn’s mother and society, piece together a life of love without honesty.  He, a graduate of Harvard, is destined to become a respected professor, and she, a Radcliffe undergraduate, is on the path to becoming a doctor and gifted scientist among skeptical men.

But the family comes along and dreams remain dreams.  Nath, then Lydia, and surprise, Hannah.

Haunted by what they don’t say to each other, each family member pretends to be happy and socially accepted while James and Marilyn try to live their incomplete lives through Lydia, the favorite child. But when Lydia’s body is found in the lake near their house, the quiet lies they have been living begin to unravel.  James, shouldering guilt, suddenly leaves on a path that could devastate his marriage, and Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is out to prove the neighborhood bad boy is involved, but could it be Hannah, the “invisible” third child, who may shed light through her quiet observations on the truth of what happened with her sister?