What's Next? discussion

Terribly uninspiring read, not to mention boring characters and lame storyline. The writer single-mindedly focuses on a type of prejudice by fantasizing such a "dystopia" where Americans are "explicitly" being xenophobic and especially flat-out towards the Chinese. If this is a memoir or at least based on one, then I get it, but this is a completely fictional story, and she basically just repeatedly regurgitates "real-life" news stories of how Chinese/Asians were attacked in recent years, and amplified them in the book to illustrate her point which I found naive and ludicrous.

To employ the term made popular again these recent years, this is nothing but a "Woke" book trying to provoke anger towards modern day social injustices through a story of a boy seeking and eventually found out what happened to his disappeared mother, (Spoiler alert) who had turned from a passive participant of some kind of activation against an authoritative government, to a homeless activist herself.

This is a case of trying too hard to be righteous but completely backfires because of the over-simplified political world she created in the book. I also found it annoying that the characters seem to 'promote' the idea that we should despise law abiding citizens who have means (rich), and romanticise (unnecessary?) hardship.

I recently read Stephen King's Fairy Tales and another book called Olga Dies Dreaming, both tackle similar social and political issues with interesting characters and are both fun and inspiring to read.

This is a searing, and well-written honest review. I admit I am a bit dismayed by it as I ordered Our Missing Hearts as my free Penguin Random House Reader Rewards book late last year :(. I loved Little Fires Everywhere so had high hopes for this one, but you've helped adjust my expectations down!

Sorry I just realised I might have spoiled it for people who plan to read it by giving away some plots. I will edit my review and add a Spoiler alert.

I also love Little Fires Everywhere, the author did a good job writing a story with interesting contemporary characters and family dynamics. That's why I'm very disappointed with her grasp of politics in this book and the kind of messages she's trying to convey. The portrait of such dystopia in which the whole point is to setup this group of people to become victims so that they can somehow rise to be heroes is just too naive and out of date, even as a fairy tale story for children.