THE DEVOTED, debut family-saga novel set in Hong Kong's criminal Triads

THE DEVOTED
CATHERINE CHO
Washington Square Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In this emotionally transportive literary debut about family and fate, a young Korean woman whose father is a leader in an infamous crime organization becomes entrenched in the dangerous world she once sought to escape.

Raised in Hong Kong by their Korean grandmother in a quiet village, Eunha and her brother Solomon live a sheltered life. Their father is a Dragon Head, a leader within the infamous criminal organization of the Triads. While their beloved grandmother does her best to shield the children from the constant hum of violence and fear that surrounds their father and his world, Eunha only has Solomon and their one permitted companion, a boy named Kai, for company.

But as Eunha grows up and marries into a supposedly respectable Hong Kong family, the veneer of her careful life begins to crack. When her young son is kidnapped, she is cast into the city’s criminal underground and back into the orbit of Kai, now a Dragon Head himself.

Will Eunha finally give in to the life she has strived so hard to rise above or was her future always fated?

The Devoted is at once a sweeping family drama, a moving account of forbidden love, and a story about a woman’s determination to choose her own destiny.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: In my experience of this story, the devoted Eunha was the most important person. It's the longest récit on record. It should have been called "Eunha Says" because we're never shown the action but reported it by Eunha.

Interesting as the story of a Korean family of criminals in Hong Kong is, I'd really have liked it to include some other PoVs to give me a more rounded view of the genuinely involving events reported here.

The effect of Eunha telling me this story is that I have only her word that these acts and actions made her feel what I'm told she felt. I'm distant from the action; I'm not much invested in it. I get the point of Eunha being reserved, being non-demonstrative; I'd've felt it more as a character-building choice had I experienced directly at least some of the action either omnisciently or in an unrelated character's PoV. As it is, it's claustrophobic for me.

And what a shame that is! A story I myownself would've loved to get really sunk into, not trapped inside. It's a good story not very well told. I'd read another of Author Cho's works because I get that she's got The Eye℠ but didn't choose the most reader-involving way of telling what it saw this time around.