Category Archives: Book Reviews

Lines Review from Pages of Julia

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I’ve been a fan of Julia Kastner’s writing, which I first read through her reviews in Shelf Awareness. On a lark I sent her an ARC, and to her great kindness, she read it and liked it enough to review it. It’s such a lovely piece of writing — I think her review may actually be better than my book! Yeah, it’s that good. Please read it! And yeah, read my book, too, if you want. 😉

Posting this from rainy and beautiful downtown Portland — and getting ready for the reading tomorrow:

Saturday, November 2, 2024 7PM PT
Portland Book Festival, Cover to Cover Event
Rose City Book Pub
1329 Northeast Fremont Street, Portland, OR 97212
with Anthony DiPietro, Douglas Cole, and Anna B. Moore

I’ll also be at Unsolicited Press’s Exhibiter Table #69 at Portland Art Museum between 10-11am.

Now, on with the review!

This book came to me in an unusual way, and I just happened (entirely by accident, as far as I’m aware with my conscious brain!) to pick it up a few days before its publication date, and finished reading it on the very eve. So, happy birthday to this book just published on Tuesday (October 29, 2024). And a brilliant book it is: deeply beautiful, full of tragedy and pain but also awe and even bliss and the exaltation of quiet, daily acts of love and creation.

Deep Roots review: “Modern complications in family succession”

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Another review for Deep Roots, but this one has quite a few spoilers, so you might not want to read it until you’ve finished the book. 🙂 Thank you, Korean Quarterly, for covering my second Siobhan novel! I should also thank them for using a photo of mine that dates back a decade and change. Nary a single gray hair to be found back in those youthful days…

Deep Roots – First Review

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It’s a good one! Check it out.

Sung J. Woo (Love, Love) is one of those agile writers able seamlessly to insert detailed backstories mid-series: reading his second Siobhan O’Brien mystery, Deep Roots, without benefit of the inaugural Skin Deep is no less absorbing.

People often do a double-take when meeting Siobhan in person: “I was adopted by an Irish father and a Norwegian mother,” she’s forced to explain about her ethnic Korean heritage, which strangers have decided doesn’t match her name. Now 40, she finally seems at peace with who she is. She’s settled into running the detective agency she inherited when her boss died suddenly. She’s hired college student Beaker as her intern–and just in time, because she needs someone to check her e-mail while her new assignment takes her to a private island in the Pacific Northwest.

[read the rest of the review at Shelf Awareness]

A Review of Skin Deep from Mystery Scene

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Grateful to Mystery Scene for a super kind review!

First in a promising new series, Sung J. Woo’s Skin Deep introduces Siobhan O’Brien—a 40-year-old Korean American adopted in infancy by an Irish father and a Nordic mother. For the past two years, the laid-off newspaper reporter has been apprenticing under Ed Baker, a private detective in the upstate New York town of Athena. Now that she finally has her PI license, Siobhan is eager to assume more professional responsibility—but when Ed dies of a heart attack and bequeaths her the agency, she suffers a crisis of confidence. Siobhan strongly considers liquidating the business’s meager assets and starting over, but then her dead best friend’s little sister, Josie Sykes, shows up at the office. Two weeks ago, the dean of Llewellyn—a formerly single-sex liberal arts college in nearby Selene, New York—called to advise Josie that her adopted 18-year-old daughter, Penelope Hae Jun Sykes, was taking a leave of absence. Josie has since been unable to contact Penny, and is deeply concerned for her welfare—especially given that the girl has a serious medical condition. Siobhan agrees to assist, enrolling as a continuing education student at Llewellyn to provide cover. Her investigation reveals a newly coed campus full of furious feminists, a suspiciously robust police presence, and a tight-lipped college president who has ties to a yoga retreat with cult-like roots. A diverse cast replete with vividly sketched characters—the majority of them female—elevate this fun take on the classic PI novel. Siobhan is a snarky, smart, and refreshingly relatable narrator whose burgeoning romance with a widowed lawyer adds to the tale’s emotional complexity without detracting from its central puzzle. Snappy dialogue complements the breezy plot, which, like Siobhan, never takes itself too seriously. Kinsey Millhone fans, this one’s for you.

Katrina Niidas Holm / Mystery Scene (https://www.mysteryscenemag.com/component/content/article/26-reviews/books/6934-skin-deep-2)

Starred Library Journal Review of Skin Deep

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Check out the nice review of Skin Deep from Library Journal!

Despite her Asian features, her father really is Irish, her mother Norwegian. Her name is Siobhan O’Brien, never mind everyone’s surprise when trying to gauge the incongruity between her face and that moniker. Short answer: Siobhan is a Korean-born, upstate New York–raised transracial adoptee. At 40, she’s just inherited a private investigation agency since her boss of two years has suddenly dropped dead (of natural causes). The business has enough banked to last three months, or she could sell and net a comfy $20,000-ish. Inexperience aside, she chooses to stay open, and her first case turns out to be a doozy: to reunite her late best friend’s younger sister with her missing teenage daughter, Siobhan will need to infiltrate a radical womyn’s group at a nearby college, agree to trespassing, check into a yoga center, get poisoned by mushrooms, avoid a multinational billionaire’s posse, and, in between, maybe even risk falling in love.

VERDICT: With just the right mix of clever twists, endearing charm, looming threats, and contemporary issues (identity, privilege, cultural appropriation, the ugliest parts of the beauty trade), literary novelist Woo (Love Love) debuts quite the absorbing new mystery series, hopefully with multiple volumes to come.

Reviewed by Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC , Jun 12, 2020

Library Journal – https://www.libraryjournal.com/?reviewDetail=skin-deep