In Focus

This month’s book club read was Happiness Falls by Angie Kim. It’s a mystery that keeps you guessing while also diving deep into family relationships and communication.

The story follows a family trying to find out what happened to their dad, Adam, who suddenly goes missing. The family includes mom Hannah, daughter Mia (the narrator), her twin brother John, and their younger brother Eugene, who has autism and Angelman syndrome. The catch? Eugene is the only witness to what happened—but he’s nonverbal.

To make things even more complicated, the story takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic, so masks, social distancing, and isolation add another layer of challenge for the family. As they search for answers, they start uncovering secrets about Adam—some surprising, some shocking—especially when it comes to Eugene.

A big theme in the book is something called the “happiness quotient” or HQ. It’s basically a way to measure how happy a person is based on emotional, social, and physical factors. It comes up throughout the story and makes you think about what happiness really means to different people.

Overall, I liked the book, but the narrator, Mia, kind of drove me nuts. The writing is very intelligent—maybe too much so sometimes. It feels like the author wanted to show how smart the family is by using big words and long thoughts that can be hard to follow. For example, one line goes:

“Life isn’t geometry; terrible, life-changing moments don’t happen predictably, at the bottom of a linear slope. Tragedies and accidents are tragic and accidental precisely because of their unexpectedness. Besides, labeling anything about our family ‘typical’—I just have to shake my head.”

It’s written like that a lot—interesting, but a bit much at times.

If you can get past Mia’s overthinking, Happiness Falls is a really good mystery with a realistic and surprising ending. It definitely makes you question everyone and their motives.