Book Review: You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg (Audiobook narrated by Jennifer Aquino)

My Rating: 3.5⭐️

The once-bustling Greenways Mall in Upstate New York now houses several shuttered businesses and is about to close its doors for good.

As the story begins, we meet Tina Huang, Asian American single mother, once an aspiring artist and is now a hairstylist at Sunshine Clips, a salon operating in the mall. Her nine-year-old son Jackson spends his time after school in the salon. He dreams of becoming a magician and avidly follows videos of famous magicians to learn about the craft. One of Tina’s regular customers is the elderly Ro Goodson, a widow who lives alone and who is kind to Tina and Jackson. Ro isn’t quite liked by her neighbors for her aloof yet judgmental attitude. Among her neighbors is Kevin, an employee at the mall bookstore. Kevin is in a mixed-race marriage to Grace, an academic and poet. Once an aspiring academic, Kevin is struggling to complete his dissertation. Parents to twins, their financial struggles have resulted in them moving into a Tiny Home in Grace's mother’s backyard. We also meet Maria, a high school student, working at a fast food joint in the food court of the mall, who hopes to secure a spot in her high school’s production of West Side Story. All of their stories intersect at the mall where they work/visit. The narrative follows these characters through the ten months preceding the mall’s closure.

I found the premise of You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg to be very interesting. The characters are well defined as are their individual stories. The author touches upon several themes in this novel – family, community, financial uncertainty, discrimination and racism among others. Despite a few relatively lighter moments, overall, the novel is a heavy read. This novel reads like a set of interconnected stories with the failing mall at the center of most of their common interactions. Naturally, there are multiple tracks to follow/subplots that are woven into the narrative. I enjoyed the first half of the novel where we are getting to know these characters, their aspirations, their connections and how the impending closure of the mall might affect their lives. But I feel that too much time is devoted to establishing the characters and thereby limiting how deep we can get into what transpires before the mall closes. As the narrative progresses, I felt that these different tracks remained mostly disjointed until almost the end of the novel. There is a lot that is happening in the lives of our characters and while there are some moving, impactful moments in this novel, I couldn’t help feeling that the story suffered from repetitiveness and overall lacked depth.

Overall, this story had potential and while I do appreciate the concept and the characterizations, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the execution of the story in its totality. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Jennifer Aquino, which was satisfying but sadly not engaging enough to make up for the flaws in the execution of the story.

Many thanks to NetGalley and HighBridge Audio for the ALC. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This novel is due to be released on May 2, 2023.