‘The Devoted’ by Catherine Cho

I really wanted to like this one as the premise immediately caught my attention. Eunha is raised by her grandmother alongside her brother in a small village in the Hong Kong countryside, deliberately kept away from her father, a powerful Triad leader. Years later, after building a new life in the city with her husband and son, that past catches up with her when her son is kidnapped because of her family’s ties to the underworld.

From that synopsis, I was expecting a gritty, fast paced thriller centred around Eunha’s desperate search to get her son back. Instead, The Devoted is much more of a family drama, and that’s not something I’m opposed to.

Catherine Cho’s writing is enjoyable enough, and I liked the way the narrative moves between the past and present, gradually revealing Eunha’s upbringing, the losses she endures and the inescapable consequences of being connected to the Triads. There are moments where the brutality of that world breaks through, but I found myself wishing those elements had been explored more. The opening is strong and intense, yet the story settles into a much slower pace than I was expecting and, at times, it felt a little too sedate.

I also struggled to connect with Eunha as a protagonist. She often felt quite passive in the face of everything happening around her, and I kept waiting for the story to build towards something more dramatic or emotionally explosive that never quite materialised.

That said, Cho explores themes of family, grief, longing and inherited trauma nicely, and those are undoubtedly the novel’s greatest strengths. Just don’t go into it expecting an action packed crime thriller. If you’re looking for an emotionally driven family saga with organised crime as a backdrop, there’s enough here to appreciate.