Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
Happiness Falls
by Angie Kim
Contemporary | Mystery | Thriller
387 Pages
Released August 2023
Rating: ★★ 3/4
Goodreads
Content Warnings
I have had this book on my TBR for several months now and when it came available at the library, I decided it was the perfect time to pick it up. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped, which was a pretty big bummer as this book is quite highly rated!
This book follows Mia and her family over the course of several tumultuous days. Her father has gone missing, and her non-verbal, special needs brother, Eugene, may hold the clues to help her family find out what really happened.
This is my first novel from Angie Kim and I found myself a bit disappointed. Firstly, this book reads rather juvenile. I think it’s supposed to be in the adult genre but through the main character’s perspective, it comes off more young adult. It’s told in first-person through the eyes of Mia who is often pretentious, a bit self-centered and a self-proclaimed over thinker.
I found her to be both unlikable but instantaneously relatable which was an interesting mix. She feels three-dimensional, as do all the characters in this novel. I especially appreciated the amount of apparent research that went into special needs, particular the ones highlighted by Eugene. Unfortunately, there were several things that detracted from the story as well. This book suffers from over-information. There’s a lot of psychological concepts filtered throughout, as explained by our main character and through pages in her missing father’s notebook. It feels a little like Kim was trying to hand-hold the reader to analyze her characters as the mystery unfolded and I felt it didn’t really add to the overall story. I wish the focus had been more on Eugene and his experiences instead.
I also was not a fan of the constant blatant foreshadowing. Toward the end of each chapter, Mia often says things like “if we had only known then” or “if we had only realized that…” and I found that often pulled me out of the story as well because it felt like the author was trying to emphasize the importance of events throughout the book but felt like she had to spell it out for her reader. There are several of these moments and it felt over-done.
Finally, I was also a bit perplexed by the characters reactions to certain events and it diminished believability in the story.
Overall, I wish the author had taken a different approach to this mystery as the psychology-heavy overanalyzing just didn’t do it for me. That said, if you like contemporary mysteries, you may want to give this one a try.