A courtroom drama which has family loyalties and betrayals at its heart. One lie leads to another and the consequences can be devastating. I loved finding out about Pak, Young and their daughter Mary and the thoughts behind their actions. A compelling read.

So I found this book starts off slow. It does pick up about half way through. Overall I did enjoy it. It was definitely I different idea of something bad happening. Everyone lies throughout this book. It's trying to figure out what those lies are and who really started the fire. There is a lot of courtroom drama but even more drama outside of the courtroom. If you like courtroom dramas and trying to figure out a mystery then pick up this book.


*I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.*

The cover had me wanting to pick this up, it's really nice. I absolutely LOVED this book and think all the buzz surrounding this book is so well deserved and warranted.

"But that was the way life worked. Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together... Good things and bad-every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness-resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential."

In the small town of Miracle Creek, Young and Pak Yoo a Korean immigrant family run an experimental medical treatment centre using a device known as the Miracle Submarine. A pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing illnesses such like autism or infertility. But when on a “dive” the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial topples the Yoos’ small community and life as the Yoo’s know it.

Who or what caused the explosion…?

As the ensuing trial starts, the accused, a single mother to one of the victims, Henry her 8 year old autistic son, begins to unravel inconceivable secrets from that night, rendezvous in the woods, secretive notes, child-abuse charges, as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.

Penned as a literary courtroom drama I’m more inclined to say it is more family drama orientated with small amounts based in the courtroom but either way it was a fascinating read. I’ve not read anything like this before. To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect, and the author is a new to me author which I was surprised to read that this is her debut novel. I felt Angie Kim delivered a well thought out plot with an array of authentic characters that I couldn’t help connecting with.

Overall a compelling read that delves into the lives of people hit with tragedy and the consequences of people’s actions, that I highly recommend.

**Arc kindly gifted by the publisher via NetGalley.**

Angie Kim's MIRACLE CREEK is wonderful - a first purchase for general fiction collections and a good option for book clubs.

I am completely confused about this book.
I found some parts utterly dull and uninspiring and yet I was utterley completed to continue reading.

I am a huge fan of multiple perspectives and so I really enjoyed this mix of so many different characters and voices. The character is written in such a way that you care for each and every one of them, flaws and all, and even when you don't believe a word they are saying.
Told in dual timelines in the form of flashbacks between the current court case and they previous incident. Through various peoples eyes we begin to get a picture of what has happened, but who are you to believe.
this book explores the parameter of good and bad, guilt and innocence, and justice and redemption with many of the plot points open to opinion and interpretation.

Polarizing book blurring the lines between black and white.

It seems after looking through the other reviews that I'm going to be ina minority dissenting opinion on this book.

I wasn't a great fan of the writing style, there were too many occasions when I wanted the plot to move on and diverting off to hear yet another POV which often detracted rather than added to the story was causing some confusion but then I would accept that this is probably more true to life than some crime/courtroom stories where everything draws towards an obvious conclusion before introducing the sudden twist.

About a quarter of the way through I seriously considered not taking it further but as NetGalley keeps providing me with books to read and review I felt I should persevere.

It became a bit clearer to me before the denouement who the culprit probably was but the book as a whole just fell a bit flat and still left too many unanswered questions for me about the fate of some of the main protagonists.

So overall not awful but not something to rave over like the other reviews I've read.

Wow! This book kept me guessing! So many of the characters were keeping secrets and played a role in the devastating fire at Miracle Submarine. I really enjoyed reading Miracle Creek. I found so many of the characters to be relatable and there were times this book truly pulled at my heartstrings.

Compulsive reading, this is an addictive suspenseful psychological thriller like no other.

The plot is unpredictable with lots of twists and turns along with solid engaging characters.
There is also a sense of dread as the story deals with the deep and dark corners of the human psych.

I very much enjoyed this and would recommend it to anyone!

Seemed at first like a book. Would really love but soon seemed to get bogged down in all the lies and half truths which were so numerous you needed a spreadsheet to keep a record of. Then the technical detail was heave going too. Just not a good story for me.

I'm a big fan of courtroom dramas and this was up there with the best with lots of satisfying twists. It also dealt in a balanced way with a number of issues including the struggles of being an immigrant and caring for a child with disabilities.
Thank you netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for a copy of this book.

This book was brilliant. The chapters switch between different povs slowly revealing new bits of information to gradually piece together the events preceding the tragedy. This is done in such a clever way that with each chapter I thought I knew who it was, only to completely change my mind a chapter later, and then do it all over again! Well worth reading.

I can honestly say I haven't read a book like this in a long, long time. Pak, Young and their daughter, Mary, come to the USA from Korea for a better life; one where Pak can set up his controversial treatment centre for people with Autism and disability - the Miracle Submarine - a hyperbaric chamber where patients are enclosed and treated with pure oxygen. Tragedy strikes and the story skips forward to a courtroom where Elizabeth, mother of one of the children treated by Pak, is on trial for her son's murder. Pak, his family and the former patients of the Miracle Submarine are each in turn put through cross examination, with each narrating their part of the story. I could not believe this is a debut novel. It's beautifully crafted, and the characters are so real! I savoured this book because I did not want it to end. It's amazing.

What a fantastic read, I was kept guessing all of the way through. I went from character to character not knowing who was to blame.
The content is disturbing in places which made it harder to read, but because of the style of writing, just the content. Emotionally written and really touched me. I would highly recommend this book.

Not a great read,too many conflicted characters who were not very likeable. Lots of secrets and lies.

Miracle Creek is a legal thriller, in terms of the plot set-up and concept, but a story about people and their limits at its heart.

The reader is introduced to a small number of parents and children; husbands and wives; patients and practitioners, as they struggle with the aftermath of a terrible tragedy, but also as they struggle with their pre-tragedy lives. The author explores the consequences of our smallest decisions and how tiny split-second choices can lead to unpredictable outcomes.

The story switches between the events leading up to the explosion at the Miracle Submarine facility and the legal proceedings afterwards but, by cleverly skipping between viewpoints and depicting the events filtered through the perceptions and biases of the characters, the author keeps the reader in the dark as to what truly happened, right up until the end of the story.

I found the depictions of parenting particularly poignant and realistic: these parents do their best for their children, without always knowing what that is; sometimes they feel trapped by parenthood; sometimes they delight in it; sometimes they wish their lives – or their children – were different, and mostly they love their children fiercely… even as they let them down. There is a particular focus on the parenting of children with additional needs, but the author also covers infertility and the parenting of a neurotypical teen.

Another huge themes is that of isolation: seen through the lens of immigration, and also through the lens of parenting a child with additional needs. We see how painfully hard it is to live in a country where you don’t speak the language or understand the cultural norms, and also how terribly difficult it can be when it is your child that is unable to ‘speak the language’ or follow those same norms.

Miracle Creek is a compelling who- and why-dunnit of a legal thriller, but also a deeply heart-wrenching story about people, the mistakes they make, and how they live with them.



My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first. It was such a small thing, what he wanted. The police had just released the protesters, and while he stepped out to make sure they weren’t coming back, I was to sit in his chair. Cover for him, the way coworkers do as a matter of course, the way we ourselves used to at the grocery store, while I ate or he smoked. But as I took his seat, I bumped against the desk, and the certificate above it went slightly crooked as if to remind me that this wasn’t a regular business, that there was a reason he’d never left me in charge before.

– Angie Kim, Miracle Creek


Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

What a sad story, highlighting the problems of S Korean immigrants, autism, IVF, sexual frustrations and bad choices, by people trying to improve their lives. A story of a S Korean family who set up a new "medical facility", an oxygen chamber that is supposed to help relieve symptoms of infertility and autism ( amongst others).
Autism is presently a very volatile subject, with many different opinions on how to deal with it and it's causes. This book touches on how this disorder affects the lives of families and how passionate some parents become to try to help their children.
An act of arson occurs and there is a court case to find out who the guilty party is, with many twists and turns.
Well written and the plot is one to keep you guessing.

Spoiler ahead. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did, and as a result it took me ages to finish as I kept putting it down. It's a real shame as there are so many genuinely interesting elements- the rift between mother and child as a family emigrates to achieve the American Dream and a better life for their daughter, the sometimes toxic reality of internet mummy forums and groups for differently abled children, and at the heart of things a good old fashioned courtroom whodunit. Unfortunately the plot overall for me was lacklustre and the trickle of information, instead of playing successfully on the unreliable narrator trope, falls flat. I don't think that I understood or sympathised with a single character's actions except for one who decided they would rather just drive off a cliff.

Elizabeth and to some extent the human exposition character Teresa were written with real integrity, and their candour about oftentimes hating or wishing their children dead was both heartbreaking and the most affecting parts of the book. Those very human and unashamedly true passages made the rest of the circus worth the price of entry.

I found this book riveting from start to finish as it was so different from the normal whodunit. When Pak moves from Korea to Miracle Creek with his wife Young and daughter Mary he sets up a centre to help in the treatment of Autistic children using oxygen therapy. When tragedy strikes and the oxygen tank explodes killing a mother and her son it soon becomes apparent this was a deliberate act. A mother is arrested and the courtroom drama begins. The story unfolds through the lives of several.different characters and the doubts begin to surface. Is the right person being accused of murder? Did the protesters against the therapy play a hand in the explosion or was someone else behind the murders? Not till right before the end were these questions answered and I was kept guessing throughout - the recipe for a perfect read.

Every now and then you read a debut novel and are emotionally blown away and MIRACLE CREEK is one of these books. It’s one of those books that can’t be categorised as a mystery novel or a courtroom drama or a legal thriller because even though it IS all of those MIRACLE CREEK is so much more.

The writing is absolutely BEAUTIFUL, the characters are, in my mind, totally REAL, the courtroom drama is AUTHENTIC, the storyline is HEARTBREAKING and this goes straight into my TOP TEN Books of 2019.

Pak and Young are a Korean couple who have moved to America and set up an alternative health clinic with a HBOT (hyperbaric oxygenation tank) they’ve called MIRACLE SUBMARINE. The HBOT claims to help with autism, infertility and other health problems. Controversial and considered dangerous by many “non believers” on the day a group of protesters arrive to stop the patients using the HBOT a fire is deliberated started causing it to explode resulting in a catastrophic tragedy.

The story then takes the reader to 1 year later at the murder trial and is narrated by each of the former patients, victims and the families involved and affected during the fire. It’s difficult to put into words how incredible this book is, how real it felt, how plausible and believable each characters emotions, feelings and thoughts were.

We are taken into the lives and feelings of the parents of autistic children, their hopes and dreams, their pain and grief, their selfless determination and unconditional love is at times hard to read and yet it is written with such feeling and emotion you can’t help but feel for these fictional characters.

Throughout the courtroom chapters the reader is taken back to the event a year ago and slowly we learn more about what happened and why. MIRACLE CREEK is beautifully constructed, cleverly interwoven and an emotional roller coaster. In my opinion, this book will appeal to EVERYONE and I gave this book a very easy 5 stars.