“Humans need to share their darkest parts. Unburdening makes you closer to everyone.”

Jayne Baek is our narrator.  She is a college student living in New York with Jeremy. They have an ambiguous relationship, and a dirty sublet with no heat or hot water.

Jayne’s sister June is a perfectionist who also lives in New York in a very fancy high rise, working in finance. The sisters are Korean, but raised in Texas by their parents who run a restaurant.

The family does not seem close.

When June asks Jayne to stop by her apartment and tells her sister she has cancer, they start to reconnect. Since Jayne is the narrator, the focus is mainly on her life, her bulimia, her poverty , and her feelings of inadequacy.

This well written novel is visceral and raw, exploring love, loss, intimacy and illness, and family relationships.