“[A] suspense-filled page-turner.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer“A touching portrait of two families bound together by a split-second decision.” —Attica Locke, Edgar-Award winning author of Bluebird, BluebirdA powerful and taut novel about racial tensions in Los Angeles, following two families—one Korean-American, one African-American—grappling with the … following two families—one Korean-American, one African-American—grappling with the effects of a decades-old crime
In the wake of the police shooting of a black teenager, Los Angeles is as tense as it’s been since the unrest of the early 1990s. But Grace Park and Shawn Matthews have their own problems. Grace is sheltered and largely oblivious, living in the Valley with her Korean-immigrant parents, working long hours at the family pharmacy. She’s distraught that her sister hasn’t spoken to their mother in two years, for reasons beyond Grace’s understanding. Shawn has already had enough of politics and protest after an act of violence shattered his family years ago. He just wants to be left alone to enjoy his quiet life in Palmdale.
But when another shocking crime hits LA, both the Park and Matthews families are forced to face down their history while navigating the tumult of a city on the brink of more violence.
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Steph Cha has taken a dark moment in Los Angeles’s violent history and cracked it wide open, creating a prism of understanding… A touching portrait of two families bound together by a split-second decision that tore a hole through an entire city.
I recieved a free copy of this book through netgalley and now I’m leaving an honest and voluntary review.
This book surprised me with the subject matter it has racism and gang fights and murders.
It gripped me room start to finish. The characters in this are likeable.
It’s based on an actual murder of a teenage girl called latasha.
Recommend this book
A standalone novel by Steph Cha, Your House Will pay is once again set in Los Angeles and involves two different narratives and protagonists. Taking inspiration from a real-life incident, Steph Cha story explores the nuance of culture, violence, gangs, social media and the meaning of family. With a gentle flowing narrative full of emotional intelligence, two families, neighbourhoods and a city are consumed by violence. A delicate modern fable-like tale that touches the heart strings and yet seeks to comprehend the mystery of human existence. Rarely is fiction so insightful and yet endearingly entertaining with a four-star ‘not to be missed’ rating.
This book takes place in Los Angeles, shifting between 1991 and 2019. Though it is told in third person, the story is presented through alternating subjectivities — primarily through Grace, the daughter of a Korean woman who committed a crime; and Shawn, whose sister, who is Black, died as a result. Although the action unfolds in a forward arc, this book is not so much a thriller as a nuanced, closely woven tale about how racism, resentment, and violence can be both intoxicating and devastating for a community; how the press and social media can both bring about and undermine justice; and how actions taken by groups can have profound effects upon individuals, who in turn form assumptions about groups. This is a novel in which most of the characters are complex, flawed, struggling, and devoted–either to an ideal or to family or to going straight or to old assumptions. Highly recommend.
Your House Will Pay is my favorite novel I’ve read this year. It’s about a Korean-American family with a dark secret in their past, and a Black American family with a dark tragedy in their past. The author gives us so much in this novel: a well executed murder mystery as well as moving portraits of both families and both communities. Reading the novel, I kept wondering how the author would pull off a satisfying ending, one that gave hope to both families and communities at the end without feeling saccharine; and she succeeded, with an ending that was dramatic, solved the mystery, and also gave tentative, well earned hope.
Beautifully rendered with deft characterization, this powerful novel explores racial tensions in the aftermath of a decades old crime.
It’s was a very I teresting novel with well thought out story line one of the better books I’ve read in a while
A superb book that is relevant to the times in which we find ourselves. Echoes of past come back to haunt the present as two characters deal with the racial divide in Los Angeles.
A literary revelation.
There are no easy answers or one-sided characters in Cha’s latest novel. Instead it offers a finely drawn dual perspective about racial relations through the main characters, Grace Park and Shawn Matthews. Rooted in authentically detailed Los Angeles history, Cha pens an illuminating work about racism, family, and society—a timely read for us all. A taut novel that features a raw and gripping storyline.
A story that will leave you virtually speechless while perfectly encompasses society and racial tensions today. I commend the author in her approach to a story, showing both sides of the violence, humanizing each and showing how it affects everyone both in the short and long term. I loved every character; each one had my heart and what stood out the most is there were no villains in a story surrounded in violence.
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha is raw, visceral and deep; it is timely and set in LA. It reads like a mystery book. Reads like the better Piccoult novels.
Thought-provoking
I wanted to get a lot of writing done yesterday, but I didn’t. And I blame Steph Cha and her incredible book, YOUR HOUSE WILL PAY.
I read the last 70 percent or so of Cha’s latest novel in one sitting because I could not put it down. The way she connected the early ’90s L.A. Uprising to the present through the story of two families with intertwined pasts had me riveted.
Shawn Matthews still remembers the violent death of his older sister, Ava, at the hands of a Korean woman. Meanwhile, Grace Park is saddened by the unexplained rift between her mother and sister.
When Grace’s mother is gravely injured by a masked shooter outside the family business, the elder Park’s past is exposed, sending Matthews and Parks on a collision course. And as a separate police shooting has tensions in Los Angeles reach a point not seen since the riots of 1992, which was partially a result of Ava’s death, Shawn and Grace wrestle with racism and the ideas of justice and punishment.
Because much of the narrative is based on a true story, I’m sure L.A. residents will have an even greater appreciation for this story than I did. But it was refreshing to read a novel about Los Angeles that included several perspectives I — and I imagine most readers — don’t get enough of.
The bottom line is that this novel is easily one of the best pieces of crime fiction I’ve read this year, written with the craft and storytelling ability I and most authors aspire to.
Thoughtful, heartbreaking, and important, Steph Cha’s YOUR HOUSE WILL PAY hits that sweet spot between a gripping, can’t-look-away crime thriller and an important, thought-provoking novel that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about race and family. Highly recommended!
I’ve liked Steph Cha’s Jupiper Song novels, but YOUR HOUSE MUST PAY is a completely different kind of book, a remarkable novel about two Los Angeles families, one Black and one Korean, who were on opposite sides of a tragic event almost three decades earlier, when the Korean mother of the book’s primary Korean character shot the teenage sister of the leading African-American character in the corner store the Korean woman owned. These families, marked forever by this tragic event, suddenly find their names paired once again in the news in the aftermath of yet another murder. For me, this is one of the most remarkable books of the year, and I only hope it gets the exposure and the readers it deserves.
An insightful, sympathetic take on the controversial issues of race, the law, and family loyalty.
Powerful, insightful, and emotional. Steph Cha delves deeply into the racial fabric of Los Angeles and weaves the threads into a profoundly impactful story. Kudos to audiobook narrators Greta Jung and Glenn Davis.
Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay is a tale of loss, both personal and societal. It’s a fictional account of a real-life shooting that took place in 1991 right after the Rodney King incident.
Cha’s story moves forward twenty-seven years to 2019 and focuses on two families—one Korean-American and the other African-American—as they deal with the continued aftermath of that shooting and the subsequent LA riots.
It’s a fascinating and heartbreaking tale of how individuals must deal with these moments long after they occur. It also reflects on society’s current need to inject itself into a situation even when its members do not have the full story, thereby making matters worse for those actually involved.
The book moves fluidly along as it changes points of view until the climactic ending.
Definitely worth reading and recommending.
“Your House Will Pay” by Steph Cha is not about a crime. Yes, Cha writes the story of a girl’s death, but it is really about the people, on all sides of this traumatic event, the lives they lived, the people they were, and the people they were to become. Who were they really? How did they find themselves in such traumatic circumstances? The narrative alternates between two families and events in 2019 and the one traumatic event in 1991. Chapters are identified by date to reinforce the time relationship for readers.
Cha’s characters are believable and complex. Readers know them through meticulous details and vivid descriptions. They are victimized by history; they make mistakes; they keep secrets. However, a secret is revealed, events will never be seen in the same way as before, and the real story depends on whom one asks. Characters built their houses on sand, and when the rain of reality finally came, the cold rising waters of the real world threaten to destroy everyone.
“Your House Will Pay” is a compelling and complex tale of the search for justice, the nature of revenge, and the cold hard reality of each. I received a review copy of “Your House Will Pay” from Steph Cha and HarperCollins Ecco. This book makes readers think and puts forward compelling questions. How do people feel about a tragic event thirty years later? Do people even remember? Was justice served, and if so, for whom? Is Justice delayed still justice or just bitter revenge? Does society view things differently today? Do social media posts incite confrontation? The answers are left for the reader to decide.
Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay has got it all. This suspense-filled page-turner about murder, repentance, and forgiveness draws from the fraught history of Los Angeles, where America’s immigrant dream bleeds into America’s racist nightmare. The novel would have been relevant thirty years ago. It will likely be relevant thirty years in the future.