Name: Searching for Sylvie Lee
Rating: 3.818181818181818 (22 reviews)
ISBN: 9781529398281

JEAN. KWOK

A Novel

Searching for Sylvie Lee

Jean Kwok

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2019 BY Marie Claire • Nylon • Huffington Post • CrimeReads • Bookbub • Book Riot • Debutante Ball “Like all most compelling mysteries, Jean Kwok’s Searching for Sylvie Lee has a powerful emotional drama at its heart. A twisting tale of love, loss and dark family secrets.” — Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women—two sisters and their mother—in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge, from the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Translation It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother—and then vanishes. Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn’t rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love. But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it’s Amy’s turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister’s movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy’s complicated family—and herself—than she ever could have imagined. A deeply moving story of family, secrets, identity, and longing, Searching for Sylvie Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive portrait of an immigrant family. It is a profound exploration of the many ways culture and language can divide us and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone—especially those we love.

Sarah Erle

Patricia Nelson

I was really looking forward to reading this, based on some reviews I saw online, and it being included in the Modern Mrs. Darcy summer reading guide, and I wasn't disappointed! This story is about family relationships and expectations, misunderstandings when too many things are left unsaid, and secrets that come to the surface over time. This is a very well-written book - the author is very talented and reading this was a pleasure. The proverbs referred to had me bookmarking far too many pages; the dialogue written in a voice of a character where English is not the first or even second language, and the plot development and revelation were done so so well. I would love to see this developed into a film but only if they keep much of the dialogue, because it was one of my favorite parts.

Jeannette Ordas

This was a fun mystery with jumping timelines and different character perspectives and language. Immigrant stories, Amsterdam differences, and sister and family conflicts all beautifully told. Enjoyable!

Cheri McElroy

Where is Sylvie Lee? She went to the Netherlands to say goodbye to her dying grandma...and disappeared.

Sylvia is perfect...or is she? As the story unfolds, we discover family lies, anger, abuse, and so much more.

This story had the potential to really work for me. And I love flawed characters. But, I could not stand Sylvie. Yes, she had a lot of pain in her life. But much she brought on herself and all she ever thought about was how awful she had things and her own predicament. Her younger sister, Amy, saw the negative and looked beyond herself to others, flaws and all.

And the ending felt flat to me because nothing was really resolved, just brought out into the open. 


3.5 stars.

Kim Tyo-Dickerson

The perfect summer read with a unique and compelling #ownvoices twist. Suspense, romance and painful family secrets are all woven together with characters who speak a complex and often surprising blend of English, Dutch and Mandarin in translation. Gaps in understanding between the worldly but troubled Sylvie who was partially raised with extended family in the Netherlands and her younger and more musical sister Amy who stayed behind in the United States with their hard-working Ma who immigrated to the United States under a cloud of mystery and hardship, are particularly poignant. Direct translations from Dutch to English, idioms and proverbs from all three languages shape the voices of Ma's broken English, Amy's inability to speak or understand Dutch, and Sylvie's navigation between all three worlds and languages without really belonging to any of them. A timely story about a first-generation immigrant family struggling to make sense of their complex dreams and regrets while facing cultural and racial challenges that increase the pressures on their deeply personal and intimate family traditions, losses and legacies.

Nadine 

** spoiler alert **
           I wanted to like this book more than I did. And I wonder if it’s the narrator who spoilt it for me. Publishers note - you just HAVE to get the accents right if you do them at all!
The author got the nuance of Dutch people speaking English spot on with the inversion of word order in sentences. Ditto for Chinese. But the narrator insisted on doing a faux-accent that was German rather than Dutch which was super annoying (and insulting to Dutch people). The Dutch have a very distinctive specific way of speaking English that is immediately recognisable.
Back to the actual writing. The story was sound, the cultural nuances excellent. There was just a lot happening on all sorts of levels that much didn’t get explored deeply and thankfully so because it was already an overly long book. 
For example the underage sex & the domestic violence of Sylvie’s husband- it was more a - whodunnit let’s lead the reader astray device - & then left dangling. 
Some of the characters were real cameos - the “other” grandparents 
I just felt it could have been tighter, shorter and more intense.

Searching for Sylvie Lee A Novel

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