When We Fell Apart
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Daniel K. Isaac
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Shannon Tyo
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By:
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Soon Wiley
About this listen
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022: Harper’s Bazaar • Vogue • Good Housekeeping • CrimeReads • BookBub • Veranda • Shondaland • Debutiful • PureWow • and more!
A profoundly moving and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties that bind families together—or break them apart—as a young Korean American man’s search for answers about his girlfriend’s mysterious death becomes a soul-searching journey into his own bi-cultural identity
When the Seoul police inform Min that his girlfriend Yu-jin has committed suicide, he’s sure it can't be true. She was successful, ambitious, happy, just on the cusp of graduating from university and claiming the future she’d always dreamed of.
Min, on the other hand, born to an American father and Korean mother, has never felt quite the same certainty as Yu-jin about his life’s path. After growing up in California, where he always felt “too Korean” to fit in, he’s moved to Seoul in the hope that exploring his Korean heritage will help him find a sense of purpose. And when he meets Yu-jin, little does he know that their carefree relationship will set off a chain of events with tragic consequences for them both.
Devastated by Yu-jin’s death, Min throws himself into finding out why she could have secretly wanted to die. Or did she? With a controlling and powerful government official father, and a fraught friendship with her alluring and destructive roommate So-ra, Yu-jin’s life was much more complex than she chose to reveal to Min. And the more he learns about her, the more he begins to doubt he ever really knew her at all.
As Yu-jin’s story—a fraught exploration of selfhood, coming-of-age, and family expectations—collides with Min’s, the result is an engrossing thriller that poses powerful, urgent questions about cultural identity, family bonds, secrets, and what it truly means to belong.
"Transportive and poignant."—Susie Yang
"Spellbinding."—Jamie Ford
"A young writer to watch."—Jess Walter
"Unforgettable."—Abi Daré
"The most compelling debut novel I've read in years."—Alexander Chee
"Heart-stopping and exquisitely plotted."—Patricia Engel
"Will stay with me for a long time."—Angie Kim
"Gorgeous."—Julia Phillips
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Critic reviews
"Wiley is a master of structure and pacing, with a gift for ending chapters at their most gripping moments, which gives this quiet, mournful novel the page-turning quality of a thriller. Yet what makes When We Fell Apart such a must-read is its portrayal of the extraordinary pressure faced by young people in Korea to conform and perform."
—The Washington Post
"In his suspenseful debut . . . Soon Wiley navigates two different points of view on a young woman’s mysterious suicide . . . That we know her tragic conclusion doesn’t make [Yu-jin's] past any less urgent than Min’s quest in the present. This is a story about young people constrained in their self-development, one by his own internal pressures, the other by social expectations that are at odds with her true desires." —The New York Times Book Review
"Death arrives quickly and triggers a deepening mystery in When We Fell Apart, the celebrated debut novel of Soon Wiley. . . . Wiley tells parallel stories in alternating, brief chapters—Min's and Yu-jin's, one a roller-coaster of suspense and suspicion, the other a gradual awakening . . . But there are secrets held and kept, secrets that define and deepen characters. There are moments here that beg for the movie rights to be signed: a father-daughter fishing trip where lessons are taught gently but must be followed rigidly; a moment on a dormant driving range when a woman claims her voice for the first time; and a betrayal that leads to one character's destruction. . . . [And] there is another character, one that Wiley lays out just as carefully as he does his young lovers. It is Korea, a nation that has seen conquerors bent on its destruction, on erasing its ambitions."
—USA Today
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- Narrated by: Erica Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the most magical parts of Manhattan - the Upper West Side, Central Park, Greenwich Village - The Ramblers explores the lives of three lost souls bound together by friendship and family. During the course of one fateful Thanksgiving week, a time when emotions run high and being with family can be a mixed blessing, Rowley's sharply defined characters explore the moments when decisions are deliberately made, choices accepted, and pasts reconciled.
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Lovely Portrait of The City
- By Dingo27 on 02-19-16
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Beautiful Addictions
- By: Season Vining
- Narrated by: Susannah Jones
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Josie Banks is a girl without a past. After being found unconscious with no memory, she was shuffled in and out of foster homes where she suffered years of abuse - an experience that left her broken, damaged, and clinging to drugs and meaningless hook-ups to numb her pain. When Josie disappeared years ago, she took a piece of Tristan with her. She’s the girl he thought he lost forever - the one he’s never been able to forget. Now a twist of fate has brought them back together, and he never wants to let her out of his inked arms again.
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you will feel so many emotions threw out this book
- By sydney on 06-12-14
By: Season Vining
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In Malice, Quite Close
- By: Brandi Lynn Ryder
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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French ex-pat Tristan Mourault is the wealthy, urbane heir to a world-renowned collection of art - and an insatiable voyeur enamored with Karen Miller, a 15-year-old from a working-class family in San Francisco. Deciding he must 'rescue' Karen from her unhappy circumstances, Tristan kidnaps her and stages her death to mask his true crime.
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In malice,Quite close
- By Wendy on 09-06-11
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The Finishing School
- A Novel
- By: Joanna Goodman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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One spring night in 1998, the beautiful Cressida Strauss plunges from a fourth-floor balcony at the Lycée Internationale Suisse with catastrophic consequences. Loath to draw negative publicity to the school, a bastion of European wealth and glamour, officials quickly dismiss the incident as an accident, but questions remain. Was it a suicide attempt? Or was Cressida pushed? It was no secret that she had a selfish streak and had earned as many enemies as allies in her tenure at the school.
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this book was just ok
- By Josh Fields on 02-26-20
By: Joanna Goodman
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The Snow Garden
- By: Christopher Rice
- Narrated by: James Daniels
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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It is more than just the late November weather that has cast a chill over the campus of Atherton University. When the wife of respected professor Eric Eberman is killed in a tragic accident, his secret student lover, Randall Stone, fears the professor tried to avert career suicide by committing homicide. Or do the dead woman’s haunting last words point to an even more damning crime? Fearing the truth, Randall digs into his lover’s hidden history.
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Murder, Mystery and Mayhem at it's best!
- By Tammy M on 11-30-14
By: Christopher Rice
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
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I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
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Halo
- Halo Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Alexandra Adornetto
- Narrated by: Alexandra Adornetto
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Three angels - Gabriel, the warrior; Ivy, the healer; and Bethany, the youngest and most human - are sent by Heaven to bring good to a world falling under the influence of darkness. They work hard to conceal their luminous glow, superhuman powers, and, most dangerous of all, their wings, all the while avoiding all human attachments. Then Bethany meets Xavier Woods, and neither of them is able to resist the attraction between them.
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Love Conquers All... Twilight for Christian teens
- By Wrightaway on 10-18-10
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True Biz
- A Novel
- By: Sara Novic
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges listeners into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they’ll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the hearing headmistress.
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A good story with added features both intriguing and informational
- By A Signing Mom on 05-15-22
By: Sara Novic
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The Invisible Circus
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan's highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O'Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.
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Too bad zero was not a choice...
- By IVAL on 04-28-13
By: Jennifer Egan
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The Wrong Sister
- By: T. E. Woods
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....
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Nothing like anything T E Woods has written B4!!!
- By shelley on 03-01-18
By: T. E. Woods
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The Moonlit Earth
- By: Christopher Rice
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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From award-winning New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice comes an evocative psychological thriller about a woman who must try to save her brother’s reputation and life when he is accused of being involved in a terrorist act.
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Over-analyzed characters and their actions.
- By Artur on 09-07-10
By: Christopher Rice
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Breaking Night
- A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
- By: Liz Murray
- Narrated by: Liz Murray
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.
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unbelievably inspiring
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-12
By: Liz Murray
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Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
What listeners say about When We Fell Apart
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- spidergirl
- 02-07-23
Makes you think
I liked the themes here - impacts of parenting on children, all the things we hide, how we are seen and see ourselves, expectations and honesty. Great book.
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- FP
- 10-02-22
Excellent read
Soon Wiley takes the reader on the most incredible journey that leaves you feeling such empathy towards the main character of Yu-Jin. Do not miss this story of true love and the fight that can exist to be able to even contemplate love.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Katie
- 06-11-22
O.K. story but took a long time to get there
Way touch detail about everything. Felt like it dragged on. Interesting story though. Very different.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Good mom
- 05-08-22
Beautiful first novel
Wonderful writing! This beautiful first novel by Soon Wiley is sure to stay with you for a long time. Lovely narration.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-26-22
Stunning and thrilling
A thrilling and engaging mystery that has the best elements of the genre, but also offers something entirely new through a cast of characters I’ve been waiting a long time to encounter in fiction. As a bi-racial Korean American, listening to Min’s story made me realize it was the first novel that featured a character whose interior life spoke to aspects of my own that I’ve never seen represented in fiction, or any media for that matter. Regardless of your background though, the humanity of the characters is what makes this story a marvel. A must read/listen.
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- Glenn A. Douglas
- 11-15-22
Excellent debut novel
I greatly enjoyed this book. It's a story about trying to belong, to the lengths we go to find our place, and the lengths we can go to in order to try and get out of lives that we don't want to live. Ultimately, a very sad book, but well executed, and well narrated.
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- KVV
- 06-12-24
Haunting
This is a beautiful, sad, haunting story. I thought it was going to be a mystery/thriller but it was so much more. Exquisite writing that wasn’t flowery or overblown but really brought the characters to life.
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- Barbara S
- 02-05-23
Cultural story masquerading as a murder mystery
I was moved by “When We Fell Apart”. I listened to the audio, narrated by Daniel K Isaac and Shannon Tyo, and written by Soon Wiley.
The story is told from two narrators, Min, a American Korean man whose mother is Korean and father is American. We learn from Min that he never felt he belonged anywhere in the USA. He was too Korean to be American. He decided to go to Korea as a young adult to see if he could find identity in his Korean roots. Author Soon Wiley has a similar background to his character, Min. Wiley was raised in Nyack, NY and endured similar inner conflict as he gave his character, Min. Min’s ruminations about his biracial identity is heart-rending.
The second narrator, in first person narration, is Yu-jin, a timid college coed who came to Seoul to study at Ewha, an elite woman’s university. Yu-jin is an obedient daughter of the Korean National Minister of Defense. Yu-jin was a model high school student, solely concentrating on her studies at the expense of her personal life. She came to Seoul to find herself, her true passion.
We learn early in the story that Yu-jin dies, allegedly by suicide. Min was dating her at the time and found it difficult to believe that she would do that. Slowly, through both their alternating chapters, we learn what happened.
Through Yu-jin’s chapters, the reader learns of her evolving friendship with her roommate, So-ra, a dance major and feminist. Yu-jin is consumed by her need to become independent of her controlling family.
There is much Korean culture and expectations in this story. Author Wiley wrote Yu-jin’s character so well that I felt her pressure. I found it interesting to note the differences in Korean culture and American cultures with respect to young adults obeying their parents. Through Min’s chapters, Wiley shows the difficulty that mixed raced young adults find difficulty in belonging. In Korea Min is not accepted as Korean. In America, he’s not accepted as American.
This is a coming-of-age story masquerading as murder mystery with racial undertones. Min does not believe Yu-jin died by suicide. Through the unraveling of the days leading up to Yu-jin’s death, the reader learns of the secrets held by Yu-jin, and the tremendous pressure she was under.
Wiley analyzes the cultural differences in expectations of America and Korea. He examines the pain of emotional growth of young adults. The murder mystery is the bones of the story, but the meat is pressure of expectations.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Y
- 07-02-22
Talented Writer
The book kept my attention, the author’s writing style is appealing, he draws you in to the story and makes you care about the characters and what is happening to them. I enjoyed listening to his at times mesmerizing descriptions of surroundings, he definitely has a way with words, painting lovely visuals. I liked the story as it drew me in, with its mystery and character studies. I liked the way the mystery peaked my interest throughout most of the book. The narrators did a nice job. The story itself lost interest for me as it progressed, if I were an editor I would have tightened it a bit, with less angsty introspection, and a deeper development of the relationship between the two main characters to support the storyline - minor issues, though, compared to the writer’s overall talent. I look forward to reading more by him.
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