This is a fast paced mystery. It follows two POVs over a dual timeline. There is queer representation in this book.
This is a great debut

I thoroughly enjoyed "When We Fell Apart" for its masterful storytelling and the author's ability to create a palpable sense of mystery and emotional depth. The intricate character development, particularly of Min and Yu-jin, made the story all the more engaging. I appreciated how the author skillfully tackled complex themes such as identity, cultural belonging, and the consequences of societal expectations.

The multicultural backdrop added a unique dimension to the narrative, resonating with my own experiences of navigating different cultural worlds. Min's internal struggles with his identity and sense of belonging were portrayed with authenticity, making his journey relatable and adding an extra layer of connection to the overall story.

The suspenseful elements of the plot kept me eagerly turning the pages, as I became increasingly invested in uncovering the truth behind Yu-jin's tragic end. The revelation of her hidden complexities and the intricacies of her relationships, especially with her father and roommate So-ra, kept me on the edge of my seat. The author's ability to maintain a delicate balance between suspense and emotional resonance was truly commendable.

In essence, "When We Fell Apart" captivated me not only with its compelling plot but also with its exploration of universal themes of love, loss, and the intricate ties that bind or fracture families. The writing style, the well-drawn characters, and the nuanced exploration of cultural and personal identity combined to create a reading experience that left a lasting impression. For anyone who appreciates a thought-provoking and emotionally charged drama, this book is a must-read.

This was such a beautiful and moving story.
It is completely captivating and once I started reading I could not put it down.

A huge thank you to the author, publisher and of course netgalley for this arc

I absolutely loved this book! The premise immediately hooked my interest and it was filled with twisty characters and such intense plot!

WOW!!!!! Hooked from the first page and read this book in one sitting… A real page turner, a domestic noir but OMG so much more!!!!!

This is Soon Wiley's first ever book, and I have one question - how?! This book reads so well like it was written by someone with 20, 50 years experience. It has everything a great mystery should have, and more. The representative of Korean and queer storylines add something to this slow burn thriller filled with well developed characters and a tense and suspensive atmosphere.

Min is a young Korean American man living in Seoul when he finds out that his girlfriend, Yu-jin, has committed suicide. Yu-jin seems to have everything in life going for - she is beautiful, smart, talented, and seems to know exactly what she wants in life. Her suicide makes no sense and as Min tries to make sense of her death, he is left with more questions than answers that make him believe the woman he knew didn't even exist.

Trigger warnings with this book are; suicide, mental health, death.

I loved this book. I loved the plot the characters and how it delves into real issues. The story conveyed by this author was absolutely extraordinary, I would definitely recommend this book! 5 stars from me :)

Where do you truly belong? In your ancestral homeland or the country where you were born? Through the eyes of two distinct characters, Soon Wiley’s debut novel examines the search for one’s true cultural identity. The driving force behind this search is the mysterious death of a young student and her boyfriend’s determination to expose the truth.

The rest of this review can be read on the Crime Fiction Lover website where it was originally published: https://crimefictionlover.com/2022/06/when-we-fell-apart-by-soon-wiley/ or on my blog: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2022/06/23/when-we-fell-apart-soon-wiley/

This is a novel set in Seoul about an American-Korean immigrant trying to find out what happened to his girlfriend Yu-jin who appears to have committed suicide.

I constantly had the feeling the author was in two minds about what this novel should be: a murder mystery for a large audience or a literary novel about identity, mixed race etc. – a bit in the style of recent works by Elisa Dusapin or Jessica Au. It felt like he wanted to say more on these themes but refrained from doing so in order to keep the plot central – in the end it was much more a murder mystery than a literary novel. The plot was quite intriguing but I would have appreciated more ‘atmosphere’.

This book was beautiful and sad and explored identity perfectly.

When the Seoul police tell Min that his girlfriend Yu-Jin has taken her life, he can't believe it. She had a dream life, right? However, the more he discovers, the more he discovers Yu-Jin's life was much more complicated than he realised and even their own relationship hung in the balance.

The book follows two main characters, Min and Yu-Jin in two different time frames after the death of Yu-Jin and perfectly explores the pressures put on both Yu-Jin as a young female and only child making her way in Seoul and Min, a man of mixed Korean and American heritage who has always felt 'too Korean' to fit in at home in California.

I absolutely adored the beautiful, poignant writing style and the explorations of characters within, such a good read!

A superb debut novel, full of emotion and discovery, conflicting expectations from ourselves, our cultural upbringing and surroundings, parents and peers. A story that delivers so much more than the blurb of a mysterious death investigated by a boyfriend. This book deserves much more than a holiday skim read; it draws you in with the dual narrative and the ending leaves you considering why our lives always seem to include someone who believes that they know better than you.
Brilliant - thank you NetGalley and huge congratulations to Soon Wiley, I'll look out for your next novel. Please don't leave it too long.

I really enjoyed this, it had interesting themes of belonging, family and home and was more thrilling than I expected.

A thought provoking and interesting read with themes of race, belonging, sexuality and familial duty.

When Min's girlfriend Yu-Jin is found dead, he's told she committed suicide. This just doesn't ring true for Min, and so he sets out to piece together the truth. Min has no idea just how little he really knew about Yu-Jin, and in his quest for the truth, he discovers a lot about himself as well.

Detailed characterisation makes this a superb read, immersive and original with plenty of food for thought.

Set in Korea, with a cast of American, Korean, and Japanese, When We Fell Apart is a story about finding truth.

The story begins with Korean-American Min informed that his Korean girlfriend Yu-jin has taken her own life. The narrative is split and told from duel points of view: by Min in the aftermath of Yu-jin’s death, and by Yu-jin leading up to the event. For me, Yu-jin’s chapters were the more compelling, and I found her voice clear and close, like someone sharing something important with only me.

We find out that Yu-jin was the studious daughter of a powerful father, attending university in Seoul and striving for freedom from her father and his expectations. Yu-jin attended women’s university Ewah, where she meet and was befriended by So-ra, a friendship that is described as excusive and obsessive from the outset.

As Min walks around the city, confused and wondering about Yu-jin’s life and death, he connects with her friend Misaki, a Japanese student. I really liked Misaki’s character and her role in the story. Like Min, a Korean-American in Korea for the first time, Misaki is both integral to the story and an outsider. The way Wiley describes Misaki’s enthusiasm for Korean culture, her clothing, and even just her attitude, she becomes incredibly vivid and relatable.

Working for a multi-national, and carefully trying to unite with both the Korean heritage he feels he knows little about, and the American that he has struggled to fit with, Min has his own struggles in Seoul. And in investigating Yu-jin’s life and death, he perhaps finds some reconciliation for himself.

When We Fell Apart is a quiet mystery, with the interesting and entangled lives of the characters the real glory. Wiley’s writing is so rich that characters really do seem to live, and as such the story kept me captivated to the end.

If I have one criticism, or warning to sensitive readers, it might be Min’s insistence in the early chapters that Yu-jin couldn’t have taken her own life because she was essentially a happy and successful student. Ultimately, the reality of Yu-jin’s life and Min’s intrigue are what drives the story forward, but that such a notion wasn’t robustly challenged did make me uncomfortable.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.

This dual narrative novel tells the story of Korean American Min and his Korean girlfriend, Yu-Jin who live in Seoul.
It tackles themes of cultural identity, belonging, sexuality, family, race and suicide. It also explores our inability to truly know another person and our anxieties about being lost and misunderstood.
It sounds a lot but it’s well written, evocative and compelling- a great debut novel!
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

"In Korea, they call it Han. It's a feeling of sorts. A kind of collective despair in response to being conquered and oppressed for long periods of time, over generations. To choose your own destiny- that's what an individual, a nation, craves most. Han is a result of that basic desire being crushed."

Told from two perspectives, When We Fell Apart tells the story of Korean American Min and his girlfriend Yu-Jin, who dies in an apparent suicide.

Yu-Jin has been driven by her parents her entire life to be academically successful. She is an only child and her goals and dreams have been set out for her by her father, who later becomes the Minister of Defence. So-Ra enters Yu-Jin's life after she joins college and opens Yu-Jin's eyes and thoughts to the world around her.

Min has always felt like an outsider in America and decides to move to Seoul. He meets and falls in love with Yu-Jin. It is after her death that Min desperately searches for answers about why his seemingly happy girlfriend is now dead.

This is a book that has multiple layers. It questions identity, self-expression, sexuality and conforming to culture.

As a debut novel, Soon Wiley has done a phenomenal job. His vivid descriptions and language fully captured the essence of the story he wanted to tell.

something about the premise—with the girlfriend/or possible girlfriend dying—brought to mind The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida. The male protagonists have an affable and every-day man vibe to them, while the 'girl' is given more of a 'she's complicated/mysterious' type of personality. i personally found the author's switching of perspectives not so successful and i questioned why he choose to use a 3rd pov for his chapters and a 1st pov for her chapters as she doesn't come across as a believable and her interactions with her friends struck me as very much the product of a male author.

I enjoyed the way in which the dual narratives fit together - with Min's perspective beginning at the point Yu-Jin's ended. At times the story was a bit dramatic but overall a great exploration of belonging through the lenses of family, race and sexuality.

'How do you say goodbye without saying goodbye? How do you thank someone, ask for their forgiveness, without uttering a word?' — When We Fell Apart, Soon Wiley, (2022), p.316.

'How well do you know your loved ones?' That's the question Soon Wiley invites us to reflect upon with his debut novel When We Fell apart. The story follows Min, a Korean American who seeks to find his place in the world. After struggling to find it in America, he decides to give a chance to Korea by taking a job at Samsung in Seoul. Here, he meets Yu-Jin, a young and beautiful Korean student at Ewha (University for women), who quickly wins his heart. They fall in love for ten months, after which, one day, Yu-jin is mysteriously found dead in her apartment. For Min, the possibility of suicide is not even to be considered, despite what the police and everybody believe. Why would his happy girlfriend commit suicide? But who knows if Yu-jin didn't have secrets... Min is desperate to find the truth behind her death, no matter the risks he must take and the people he must confront.

When We Fell Apart is a novel which I anticipated a lot since I discovered it on Netgalley (I was desperate to read it and discover what was behind this amazing summary!). Seeing my rating, needless is to say that I was not disappointed. WWFA was everything I could have hoped for. From the beginning of the novel, I was thrust into the narratives of Min and Yu-jin and grew more eager to unravel their backstory to know the truth about what happened to Yu-jin. The suspense and mystery were so well built-up that I got surprised a few times by the turn the story was taking. One of them was the theme of queerness, tackled in the story of Yu-jin and Soora. As it wasn't mentioned in the blurb, I encountered it and felt agreeably surprised to find out that Soon Wiley decided to go for very controversial themes when it came to Korean society. I thought that he did well in introducing queerness and in representing the way Korean society perceived it today. The fact that he chose to insert Yu-jin's narrative, too, helped concerning this point; it gave more tension as to when and how other characters would find out about it, and I happened to feel as anxious as Yu-jin about what would happen to her (even knowing her fate in advance).

I was really intrigued by the narrative choice that Wiley made. The idea of having two perspectives, one from Yu-jin and one from Min, made things very interesting in my opinion. I got curious about Wiley's choice concerning the narration as well, for I thought it curious that Yu-jin was telling her story from the first-person narrative and Min from the third-person. It felt like the story belonged to Yu-jin exclusively, in a sense, and that Min was living in it, trying to maintain it alive while its main protagonist was dead. The flashbacks and flashforwards flowed quite easily though, first because Wiley simply decided to alternate their perspectives from chapter to chapter, and second because he kept things in chronological order. I didn't feel disorientated in the process, which was good.

Concerning the characters, I think the one I related the most to was Min. I could understand his frustration of feeling 'out of space' and 'out of time' in a country which was said to be his. I could understand his wish to travel somewhere else in hopes of finding the little something he longed for without knowing it. I could understand his loneliness in Seoul, despite being in a space which was buzzing with crowds everywhere. I could relate to the way he spoke about his body as being 'disembodied', as being lost between what he wanted to be and what people expected him to be. As for Yu-jin, I connected with her in her impression of feeling locked up in a life prepared for her. Her frustration for being restricted to the image her father wanted her to take up, for being unable to shape her own body and desires—romantic desires and professional aspirations. And of course, I identified a lot with Misaki through her anger and feeling of not being desired anywhere, of being used by everyone she encounters and thought her friends.

If readers are not familiar with the Korean way of life, I think they could at least recognise themselves in all those little human frustrations one discovers in society. The anxieties that society arises in us and which make our life sometimes unbearable. There was something inexplicably moving about Yu-jin's, Soora's, Min's, and Misaki's stories, I think they'll stay in my head for a while. The writing style and atmosphere of the novel somewhat made me think about Joël Dicker's 'The Truth about the Harry Québert Affair' (I loved this novel!), so I would totally encourage people who read this author to give a chance to Soon Wiley's writing. As for me, I would love to read more of Wiley's works in the future, for I really enjoyed the experience with WWFA.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster (UK) for the opportunity of reviewing When We Fell Apart!