Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

*Disclosure of material connection- I received a copy of the book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest thoughts. I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions stated are 100% my own.

About the book-

My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first . . .

In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine—a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community.

Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night—trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges—as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.

Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek is a thoroughly contemporary take on the courtroom drama, drawing on the author’s own life as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of a real-life “submarine” patient. Both a compelling page-turner and an excavation of identity and the desire for connection, Miracle Creek is a brilliant, empathetic debut from an exciting new voice.

My thoughts-

I am still rolling this one around in my mind. What an intense debut novel! There was controversy and suspense at every turn. I thought I knew from the very beginning what happened, and then I changed my mind about 30 times between pages. Miracle Creek is a book that shows we are all flawed, but for the most part we can all sympathize with these flaws. I enjoyed that the story was from several different viewpoints, because we did get to see more than one side to each story and then we got to see the side to most of those stories that came out in court and were not necessarily exactly what happened. It is a reminder that the justice system doesn't always work the way it is supposed to. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Literary Fiction. I will warn that there are some triggers in the book, so be cautious if reading about extreme depression might be a trigger for you. Otherwise, it was an excellent novel that I enjoyed and I can't wait to discuss with my book club.