Review: Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
MIRACLE CREEK BY ANGIE KIM
Publisher: Hodder
Publication date:2019
Source: Purchased
How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies?
In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident.
A showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe?
“We all have thoughts that shame us.”
Miracle Creek is one of those books I was hearing about all over the place – Instagram, YouTube, Twitter … everyone and their dog seemed to have read it, and it sounded like something I might enjoy. But then I heard a couple of reviews from people who didn’t enjoy it so much, and it put me off a bit. Eventually, I bit the bullet and picked up a copy so I could decide for myself.
The story follows a Korean family who have recently immigrated to America. They open up a hyperbaric chamber to treat people with various ailments and conditions with high pressure oxygen – children on the autism spectrum, men dealing with infertility … an odd combination of people. One day the chamber explodes, killing two people, and the story unfolds from there.
The story is told from multiple points of view – each member of the Korean family, mothers of the children being treated, the chap dealing with infertility … a wide range of people. There were so many different points of view that it took me quite a while to figure out who was who. I found myself not really caring about any of them – we didn’t stick with any of them long enough to really get to know them, and while I definitely empathised with the mothers struggling to deal with the children they clearly loved, I wasn’t bothered about what happened to any of them!
On the surface this book has everything I enjoy – a mystery told from multiple points of view, a court room drama, a bit of medical/science thrown in, the immigrant experience … but I’m afraid to say I found this quite boring with too much details. It was too long, too drawn out, too many characters and it just wasn’t for me.
2 stars
