What We Left Unsaid - Winnie M. Li

Sometimes I think I live for road trips, but not just any old road trips. I like to get out and wander aimlessly for two or three thousand miles before doing the same thing on my way back home. That kind of trip has led me to countless unexpected places, and to friends I would have otherwise never known over the last several decades, and it’s still one of my favorite things in all the world to do (although I had to skip doing a trip in 2025). 

And that is what led me to Winnie Li’s What We Left Unsaid, a novel about three middle-aged siblings on a drive from Chicago to California to visit their seriously ill mother. First, though, I fell in love with the cover because of the way that it so perfectly captures the serendipitous spirit of a four-wheel ramble across America. I wanted to experience someone else’s road trip, and I did that. But that’s not all there is here.

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My What We Left Unsaid impressions and takeaways:

• The basic plot (three rather estranged Asian American siblings forced to spend days together on a cross-country drive) is a solid one,
•  Flashbacks to their last road trip together, when the three were children, effectively explains their current family dynamic,
• Too much of the plot heavily depends on coincidence, and this many critical coincidences start to feel overly contrived and forced before very long,
• Li tries to hit every hot-button social/political issue on this roadtrip of about a week’s duration: overt racism, gun violence, gender issues, gay marriage, politics with a definite anti-Trump tone, it’s all there,
• the ending is predictable enough to be disappointing because most readers will see it coming long before the novel’s “big reveal,” is officially unveiled, and
• despite the book’s almost 400 pages, the last quarter of it seems rushed and overly (and very negatively) stereotypical.

Overall, I was disappointed in What We Left Unsaid despite enjoying its road trip aspects. It proved to be too one-sided for me to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy its message. All the “good" guys in the story are exceptionally “good,” and all the “bad" guys are exceptionally “bad.” Li’s failure to include any grey areas or characters in her tale leads to the book’s predictability. And that’s my main gripe about this one. Reluctantly, I’ll give it three stars because it did keep me engaged enough to finish it.