“Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We’re pitted against each other from the moment we’re born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax. God, how they must have wanted a boy when they tried a do-over after a dead baby girl.” One of the most fraught relationships in humanity is sisterhood. In Yolk, Choi takes on that relationship and explores it through both the joy and pain. Coming of age, learning to live on one’s own, and navigating modern romance are all tackled in turn with the grace and realism for which readers have learned to love her writing. Come for the angst, stay for the characters you may just love like sisters. Content warnings for disordered eating, depression and anxiety, absent parent, and cancer.
Yolk by Mary H. K. Choi, (List Price: $12.99, Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 9781534446014, March 2022)
Reviewed by Faith Parke-Dodge, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina