Searching for Sylvie Lee

Description: It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother--and then vanishes.
Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn't rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love.
But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it's Amy's turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister's movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy's complicated family--and herself--than she ever could have imagined.

Review: Amy Lee is living in her parents’ cramped Queens apartment when she gets a frantic call from Lukas Tan, the Dutch second cousin she’s never met. Her successful older sister, Sylvie, who had flown to the Netherlands to see their ailing grandmother, is missing. Amy, the sheltered and favored sister, must put aside her own short comings as she looks into Sylvie’s disappearance. As Amy digs deeper she uncovers Sylvie's secrets such as separation from her husband and her unemployment at a prestigious law firm. And when Amy finally musters up the courage to travel to the Netherlands for the first time, why do her relatives—the Tan family, including Lukas and his parents, Helena and Willem—act so strangely whenever Sylvie is brought up?
  Amy’s search is interlaced with chapters from Sylvie’s point of view from a month earlier as she returns to the Netherlands, where she had been sent as a baby by parents who couldn't afford to keep her, to be raised by the Tans. There are also chapters written from Amy's and Sylvie's Mother's point of view which adds a layer of suspense to the story. As Amy navigates fraught police visits and her own rising fears, she gradually uncovers the family’s deepest secrets, some of them decades old.
  Unfortunately, I did not find this story very compelling as a whole. I can see what the author was trying to do in pitting two sisters who grew up in two different environments to show how race, family, and culture played in their lives. I, however, skimmed most of Amy's point of view because she was not an interesting character to me. The book really shines with Sylvie's chapters are we got to see how immigrants, particularly the Chinese, were treated in Netherlands, which unfortunately is no different than their treatment in the U.S. Sylvie's character is much more three dimensional and I would have loved this book more if it was solely written from her point of view. The Ma, Amy's and Sylvie's mother, chapters did not add much besides more soap opera melodrama. The mystery was a bit underwhelming since I figured it out before Amy. I had hoped for more introspection and less melodrama in this story.

Rating: 3 stars

Words of Caution: There is some language and allusions to statutory rape and domestic violence. Recommended for older teens and adults.

If you like this book try: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng