Celeste Ng

4.11307 learners

Set in 1970s small-town Ohio, *Everything I Never Told You* unfolds when Lydia Lee, the golden child of a mixed-race Chinese-American family, vanishes without a trace. Her disappearance cracks open the quiet tension simmering beneath the Lee household’s surface: Marilyn, Lydia’s white mother, has poured her unfulfilled medical school dreams into her daughter, pressuring her to excel in science and defy gender norms. James, her Chinese father, haunted by a lifetime of feeling like an outsider, pushes Lydia to fit in and make friends, desperate to spare her his own loneliness. As the family grapples with Lydia’s fate, secrets emerge—her hidden academic struggles, fake friendships, and the rift with her astronaut-obsessed brother, Nate, who’s desperate to escape their suffocating home. Through flashbacks and intimate perspectives, Celeste Ng lays bare the cost of unspoken expectations, the pain of being unseen, and how a family’s love can turn into a cage. In the aftermath of tragedy, the Lees confront their mistakes, learning to listen to each other and heal the wounds they’ve inflicted.

Dan Bao

3819 learners

Fulfillment weaves together eight intimate, unflinching stories of ordinary people navigating the messy, often unspoken corners of life. From a couple whose marriage frays under unmet expectations and a false pregnancy scare, to grieving parents grappling with the loss of their child and failed attempts at starting over; from a geologist confronting his declining mental health and past infidelities, to an expat artist in Beijing juggling financial precarity and a fractured sense of belonging, each narrative lays bare the quiet struggles, hidden sorrows, and small, fleeting moments of hope that define what it means to seek fulfillment. These stories don’t offer easy answers—instead, they mirror the raw, relatable reality of loving, losing, and learning to live with the gaps between what we want and what life gives us.