What readers think of The Kinship of Secrets, plus links to write your own review.

Leaving your home is always complicated and emotional, even when that home has become a dangerous or hostile place to live. That is the crux of The Kinship of Secrets, the new novel by Eugenia Kim. When it is time for a Korean daughter to rejoin her family in America in the 1960s, the reunion is not as seamless as everyone would like. Add the daughter that was brought to the U.S. in 1948 to the mix, and you have a recipe for dramatic tension. Kim does a great job of fleshing out all of the characters and giving us a great insight into their adaptation to America, their culture, and the emotions that guide them. This book is just as good as her previous novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter, and is well worth a read.

This book started out a bit slow for me. I found it difficult to remember the details from chapter to chapter and I was slow to keep picking this book up again.

About half way, I became much more interested and the book picked up quite a bit. I'm glad I stuck with it thru the slow beginning, as this story unfolded beautifully.

I also learned information about the Korean War.

I really enjoyed this book once I got into it.

I read The Calligrapher's Daughter first. I'm glad I did as the story The Kinship of Secrets has a lot of secrets that are shared in advance in The Calligrapher's Daughter. Now that I've said that...I liked The Kinship of Secrets. The story of two sisters that are separated at very early ages, leaving one in Korea with relatives and taking one to the US with parents. This tells a hard story about separation from your child, the guilt you carry and why a parent does what they feel they have to do. When the sisters and parents are united it is not always a happy new beginning. Anger, grief, love, war, the unfamiliar make it hard to put lives back together. I will recommend this to my library.

This book is well written with an engaging story about two sisters who grow up separately because of the Korean War It's a great opportunity to learn a piece of history through the eyes of people who,lived at that time. I was swept up,in the family and their attempts to cope with the situations that years of political on rest put them in. I enjoyed the writing style of short chapters to help me understand the history.