This is the story of two sisters. Sylvie Lee and her younger sister Amy. Sylvie was brought up until the age of  nine by her grandmother and aunt and uncle in the Netherlands. When she learns that her grandmother Is dying she leaves her home in the USA to be with her. When she doesn't return home after her grandmother's funeral and cannot be contacted, Amy decides to go to the Netherlands to find her.  I really enjoyed the way the story unfolded and I thought that having chapters from the points of view of Sylvie. Amy and their mother worked really well. I look forward to reading more from this author.

An engaging and beautifully written prose fiction. I engaged with the characters as each had their own quirks and voice and the world they lived in felt authentic and was therefore easy to let myself get immersed. 

The story is based around Amy, the sister of Sylvie and her search for the missing woman. And while it started out as a mystery, it soon transcends genres into literary, world fiction, domestic fiction. This sometimes drew away the thrill of the mystery because the prose made the story slow down from the normal fast pace expected in thriller, but it somehow worked.

Highly recommended. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Jean Kwok for the ARC copy of this great book.

This book started out as a really good read, and I was engrossed until it got to around two thirds of the way through, then something changed. The story is told through two main points of view that of younger sister Amy as she goes looking for Sylvie, and Sylvie telling her story from around a month earlier, the chapters jump between these two with the extra added odd on added from the perspective of the mother.

Sylvie Lee is a beautiful, successful woman. When she hears her grandmother who raised her for some of her early years is dying, she flies to the Netherlands to be with her. She had been sent there to live by her parents as they were too poor to raise her, she had returned to them in the US at the age of 9. Her younger sister Amy, idolises Sylvie.

But Sylvie has disappeared. Despite her youth and shyness, Amy is determined to go and find out what happened to Sylvie. But her search uncovers family secrets that have been buried for a long time.

I liked the characters in the story, you felt the emotions the parents went through, especially the mother, how much she had to sacrifice, the effect this had on her relationship with Sylvie. The cultural difficulties are well portrayed, the racism the immigrants were shown  in the Netherlands.

There is a strong family theme that runs through the story along with heritage. There are also secrets, betrayals and tragedy that revolve around the family.

As Amy, looks for her sister, she comes to realise that she hasn’t had to deal with some of the pressures and traumas her sister had had to deal with. Having been separated from her family at a very young age. Amy’s story is as important as Sylvie’s although at times it does become very overshadowed.

Towards the end third of the book something changed, I went from being totally engaged with these characters to losing interest. I had figured out what I thought the ending was going to be before reaching it, hoping I was wrong, but the momentum seemed to have just gone for me. Something seemed missing, it just went flat.
I couldn’t fault the writing it is beautiful, with lots of imagery, metaphors and emotion. I just wish it had kept that to the end.

I would like to thank #netgalley and #JohnMurray for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest, fair and unbiased review.

I enjoyed this beautifully written book very much. The use of language is breathtaking in places, and the skilful characterisation brings the cast to life.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting approach to a storyline, but I felt that it was a little unbelievable in places as regards some of the actions taken by the characters.  Some of this may be around the cultural characteristics of the actors involved, but it did make it a little difficult to be totally convinced.  Will perhaps try another novel by this author in the future.

This is a moving tale that, while billed as a mystery, transcends the genre. There is so much in this novel that mirrors modern life as Jean Kwok pulls us into the lives of people who encounter prejudice and ignorance as they struggle to assimilate.

The alternating structure allows readers to witness how the Lee sisters frequently saw the best in each other but thought the worst of themselves. Kwok’s novel is at its best and most engaging when exploring the Lee sisters’ relationships with themselves and each other, the effects of immigration on entire generations of families, and the weight that the adult children of immigrants often feel.

'Searching for Sylvie Lee' is a novel about Amy Lee, whose sister Sylvie goes missing during a business trip to The Netherlands. Amy goes off to find her and begins to unravel the enigma that is her sister and the secrets she's been keeping from her family. Seems like a good premise, right?

This book is a tale of two genres. You have a mystery/thriller element that follows who Sylvie really is and what caused her to 'go missing', but you also have a literary fiction element that just causes everything to drag. Because it's stuck between the both, you're missing the tension that generally characterizes a mystery book. I honestly did not believe that anybody wanted to find Sylvie because they were taking their sweet time doing anything. Similarly, you do read from Sylvie's perspective at a very deep level and I think this also took away from the 'mystery' aspect. Perhaps if they were diary entries or letters - things that are deliberately ambiguous. But because we knew all about her time in the Netherlands, it's pretty easy to see where things are going. 

Fair warning - this book contains scenes of domestic violence and treads the line of cliché to the nth degree. I just wanted more from these characters and this story. Perhaps with a change of direction in the plot or just some tightening of the narrative, it'd have more effect. 

Ironically for a novel set in the Netherlands, this book is full of waffle.

A beautifully written piece of prose and intriguing storyline which I will not divulge as it caught me by surprise. What did surprise me was that I only realised just how well written this is when reviewing the novel myself before writing this review. Each of the main characters speaks in their own voice and very true to the essence of their own individuality.  It is a masterpiece of character writing so understated and so perfect that it feels unnoticeable. So thank you John Murray Press and Net Galley for the ARC of Searching for Sylvie Lee but more importantly, thank you Jean Kwok for writing this.

‘Searching for Sylvie Lee’ by Jean Kwok focuses on a Chinese immigrant family in New York who make the difficult decision to send their elder daughter to live with relations in Holland when she is little more than a baby.  Reunited with her family over a decade later, Sylvie feels more of an outsider than she did living with her Dutch relations.  However, her little sister, Amy, adores her, seeing only her strengths: her academic success, her beauty, her stellar career.  It is not until Sylvie disappears, now a management consultant and married to a wealthy New Yorker, that Amy begins to understand that her version of Sylvie is not entirely accurate.
Timid, hesitant Amy makes the decision to fly to Holland to investigate what has happened to her sister.  From the outset she learns that, whilst her Uncle Willem and cousin Lukas evidently adore Sylvie, her aunt Helen takes every opportunity to disparage her.
This is a novel about what it is to be an outsider.  The author is an immigrant from Hong Kong and her experience has clearly affected the way in which she approaches the central theme.  It is shocking to read the Dutch racist remarks that Sylvie and Lukas have to endure as children and interesting to learn of the family’s Chinese customs and sayings.  Nevertheless, the latter appear a little too frequently to sound like authentic conversation between a generation born and brought up in mainland Europe and the USA.  But then, as a UK native, who am I to judge?
Whilst the insight that this novel gives into another culture is fascinating, the mystery of Sylvie’s disappearance is not particularly gripping and the reason for her aunt’s antipathy is obvious from very early on.  This novel does not fit into any one category easily and, whilst this can be a strength, that’s not the case with ‘Searching for Sylvie Lee’.  The characters appear rather stereotypical; the ‘chiselled jaw’ descriptions of the young men and the ‘wrinkled, old and sagging’ depictions of the older generation do nothing to bring Kwok’s characters to life.  The plot lacks tension.  It’s easy to guess why and how Sylvie disappears.  All in all, read this novel for a window into elements of Chinese immigrant life but for that alone.
My thanks to NetGalley and John Murray (Publishers) for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A Powerful Meditation on Identity, Love and Loss.

This is a difficult book to categorise as it is more of a hybrid of genres than a straightforward mystery/thriller. Yes, there is an element of suspense in "Searching for Sylvia Lee", with the main thread of the plot revolving around the disappearance of Sylvie, eldest daughter of the successful Lee family, whilst visiting her grandmother in the Netherlands. We learn gradually that Sylvie's disappearance is just part of the web weaved by the secrets and lies of the Lee family. With panache and style, Jean Kwok subsumes us in the tangled interplay of relations that constitute the history of the intergenerational, immigrant Lee family. With her expert storytelling and thought-provoking meditations on identity, this is, however, more than a thriller. It is a powerful family drama of love, loss and alienation. It is also a timely reminder in our Brexit obsessed times that our sense of identity and our feelings of belonging to a particular culture or country is highly subjective and not something that can be imposed on us by some sort of objective criteria. In the Lee family, which is wonderfully drawn by Kwok, this is also mediated by ideas of class, race, religion, sex and age. This is integral to the plot and brings a beautiful, poignant originality to a novel that is 'sold' in the blurb by the mystery element of the narrative. "Searching for Sylvie Lee" is expertly plotted and with its gentle pacing and understated prose, eschewing the usual 'Oh My God' tropes of the thriller genre, is a work of determined individuality from a wonderfully creative author.

An absorbing novel that is much more than a thriller.

Summary:
It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother - and then vanishes.
Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn't rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love.
But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it's Amy's turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister's movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy's complicated family - and herself - than she ever could have imagined.
A deeply moving story of family, secrets, identity, and longing, Searching for Sylvie Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive portrait of an immigrant family. It is a profound exploration of the many ways culture and language can divide us and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone - especially those we love.

Searching for Sylvie Lee grew on me the further I progressed in the book. Initially, I was of a 3/4 star state of mind but felt strongly for all the members of the Lee and Tan families by the close, as Amy's investigation uncovered more than expected. What started out as a strange arrangement made more sense as we, the readers, became immersed in Chinese and Dutch culture and the necessity for familial child care to enable work in both the U.S. and the Netherlands.

This novel was sprinkled liberally with intriguing phrases endearing me, especially, to the elder Chinese characters and even the young, too. Ma, in her stilted speech, was particularly colourful in her narration and the imagery she described so well. It provided a rich tapestry to sew the story against making the writing truly sing. There was a gentle lovely quality to the text making a fusion of Chinese culture in a Dutch background feel...well, right in some magical way. It's difficult to describe but beautiful to behold.

A very good book. Very well written and quite a page turner.  It was quite different to most books that I have read and it kept my attention fully. The characterization was good and the plot very cohesive. The movement backwards and forwards in time meant that we had all the background first hand and made everything clear. 
The only slight problem for me, was that every character was in first person, so that when the chapter changed and it was about a different person it sometimes confused me and took me a time to remember who was speaking. apart from that a really enjoyable read

I enjoyed this book to a certain degree. I liked the bits of Chinese culture but I didn't feel any emotion towards the characters.

This book looks at family secrets of a Chinese immigrant family split between America and The Netherlands . One part of the family Ma and Pa are in America with their daughter Amy . The other daughter Sylvie is left behind in the Netherlands with the Grandmother and uncle (Willem) and aunt (Helena) along with their son Lukas  , Helena does not like Sylvie and treats her badly . When Sylvie is older she moves to America looks after Amy and later becomes very successful and marries well . Grandmother is dying and wants Sylvie to visit her , which she does . After a while Sylvie  goes missing and Amy sets out to find her . A trail of misfortune unfolds when it reveals Sylvie has lost her job and her marriage has broken down , but why has she gone missing ? This is where all the family secrets are revealed . An interesting story but I did not find it totally gripping .

I failed to engage with this story and its characters, or they failed to engage with me.  Either way, this came as a disappointment since I found the publisher’s description intriguing and I expected more.  To be fair, I did quite enjoy the first few chapters, despite some reservations about the jarring effect of some of the writing.  I spent the last few years in the Netherlands in the Amsterdam area so reading Sylvie’s and Amy’s experiences there rang true for me and filled me with nostalgia for Dutch people and places.  I kept reading for more of this.  I soon realised, though, as the book progressed that the characters were not going to gain any more depth and I didn’t care for the direction the plot took in the second half of the book.  Not to my taste, I’m afraid.

Any travels from America to Holland to search for her missing sister. Who is Sylvie Lee, do her friends, husband or even her family really know her. How much do peoples opinion influence one and affect how you act, behave and eventually become.

I read this book to the end because I wanted to find out what happened out of curiosity but not necessarily because I cared.

I don’t feel the characters were developed in a way to get me invested in the outcome however, in the most part the story was an enjoyable and sensitive insight in to what it’s like being an immigrant family.

A really good story about family, love, secrets and lies.  This is an interesting read.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

A story of identity, of a place within a family, and within a country.  The book moves from New York, to Amsterdam, with many references to China. I loved the inclusion of Chinese and Dutch sayings and homespun wisdom.
The characters are realistic and believable, with enough action to hold our attention.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC

The official description:
It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother - and then vanishes.
Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn't rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love. But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it's Amy's turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister's movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy's complicated family - and herself - than she ever could have imagined.

My review:
‘Searching for Sylvie Lee’ is a powerful and poignant book exploring the family ties of three generations of a Chinese immigrant family dispersed to the USA and the Netherlands and what happens when the eldest daughter disappears and a series of family secrets are laid bare.
Kwok writes about identity, family, belonging, and how we are shaped by the culture of our parents but also by where we grow up or live. She expertly explores the immigrant experience, how you never quite belong where you are and never quite fit in but desperately try to. Kwok also explores whether it is actually ever possible to truly know someone, even your closest and most loved ones.
As I reader I empathised with Amy’s desperate search for Sylvie. It rang so true that I was not surprised to read that this part of the book was inspired by real life events that happened to the author.
This is a difficult book to put into one genre. Because it is much more than simply a family drama. It is also a domestic noir, a thriller and a romance. But what it is not, is predictable. This is the first book I have read in a while where I did not guess the ending. As a thriller it had plenty of red herrings. As a domestic noir it had suspense. And as a romance it had pathos. But no matter what, it was simply well researched, beautifully written and cleverly crafted. It was thrilling, emotional, suspenseful and kept me guessing till the end.
Some books just resonate with you. For me, as an immigrant in today’s Brexit UK, this is one such book. I recommend highly.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Reviewed 27/10/2019
Thanks to #NetGalley for eARC.
 #SearchingForSylvieLee #NetGalley