REVIEW: Yolk by Mary H. K. Choi

Mary H. K. Choi, author of contemporary young adult favourites Emergency Contact and Permanent Record, is not just queen of the YA meet-cute. She’s also the queen of the bittersweet love story that follows it, effortlessly capturing the awkward loveliness of romance and mixing it with a gritty dash of reality. In Yolk, however, Choi tells a different kind of love story: one between two sisters.

Mary H. K. Choi

The Baek sisters, Jayne and June, are about as different as it’s possible for sisters to be. Jayne is a troubled design school student, living in Brooklyn squalor with the world’s worst roommate while doing her best to hide an eating disorder. Eldest daughter June, however, lives what seems to be the perfect life, working in what Jayne calls a ‘problematic’ finance job and enjoying the fancy apartment and perks that come with it. Despite both moving to New York City, the two girls haven’t spoken properly in years, until the day June tracks Jayne down to drop a bombshell: she has cancer.

Sisterhood seems to be a big theme in YA this year (see also: The Project by Courtney Summers) and it’s what I love the most about Yolk. June and Jayne’s relationship is one of deep contrast and Choi doesn’t shy away from capturing the mix of intense resentment and fierce, deep love that characterises it. We only see the story from Jayne’s perspective, but both sisters are strong, fully-realised characters in their own right, given equal opportunity to shine within the story. They will frustrate you while still making you laugh and, on occasion, cry as they both try and fail to hide how much they really need each other.

Food also plays a big part in Yolk as the place where family and culture meet, with the novel reading almost as a love letter to Korean food. It makes for a reading experience that is equally touching and funny in turns — in one scene, Jayne delivers one of the novel’s best lines to her white ex-boyfriend as she rescinds his Korean supermarket privileges (‘If I so much as see you at H Mart or even Sunrise Mart, I will fucking ruin you’). Food is also a double-edged sword, with Jayne having to confront an eating disorder that is slowly becoming harder to hide with June back in her orbit. Again, Choi doesn’t evade the heavy subject matter and gives an open portrayal of bulimia that is handled with all of the sensitivity and understanding that it needs.

To finish, I can only say that Yolk is gorgeous, a novel that cups the messy, complex lives of the Baek women in its hands and cradles them while they scream, laugh and cry through their chaos. Mary H. K. Choi is an author who keeps giving me reasons to read every single thing she writes — at this point, I’d probably read her shopping list. Yolk is unequivocally her best book yet.

—Yolk by Mary H K. Choi (Hachette Australia) is out now.

If you’re struggling with disordered eating or body image issues, call The Butterfly National Helpline on 1800 33 4673 or visit https://butterfly.org.au/.

For 24/7 crisis support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Yolk

by Mary H. K. Choi

Jayne and June Baek are nothing alike. June's three years older, a classic first-born, know-it-all narc with a problematic finance job and an equally soulless apartment (according to Jayne). Jayne is an emotionally stunted, self-obsessed basket case who lives in squalor, has egregious taste in men, and needs to get to class and stop wasting Mom and Dad's money (if you ask June). Once thick as thieves, these sisters who moved from Seoul to San Antonio to New York together now don't want anything to do with each other.

That is, until June gets cancer. And Jayne becomes the only one who can help her...

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Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

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