In Jinwoo Chong’s sophomore novel, “I Leave It Up to You,” waking up from a two-year coma is just the beginning of Jack Jr.’s problems. Disoriented and displaced, Jack finds himself thrust back into the life he once fled—his family’s struggling Korean-Japanese sushi restaurant in Fort Lee, New Jersey. With his Manhattan advertising career and apartment gone, and his fiancé moved on without him, Jack must navigate the delicate terrain of family expectations, new romance, and his own uncertain future.
Following his acclaimed debut novel “Flux,” Chong delivers a poignant exploration of second chances that resonates with both heartbreak and humor. The story masterfully weaves together themes of family obligation, queer identity, and the immigrant experience through the intimate lens of a Korean-American family’s struggling sushi restaurant.
Waking Up to a World That Moved On
Jack Jr.’s journey begins with disorientation—both literal and metaphorical. Chong brilliantly captures that fish-out-of-water feeling as Jack awakens to find himself intubated in a hospital bed, his body weakened and his memory fragmented. The opening scene, where Jack mistakes his male nurse for his husband Ren, establishes both the novel’s wry humor and its emotional foundation.
What makes this story distinctive is how Chong treats the coma not just as a plot device but as a metaphor for life’s unexpected resets. Jack must reckon with the brutal reality that while he remained frozen in time, everyone else continued living:
“It had been twenty-three months.”
“It was twenty-three months. Two years.”
This temporal displacement creates a compelling narrative tension—Jack is simultaneously reconnecting with his past while inhabiting a present where he feels like an intruder. The story’s emotional core emerges from this tension: what happens when you’re given a second chance you never asked for?
A Family Feast of Complex Relationships
The heart of “I Leave It Up to You” lies in its richly drawn family dynamics. Jack’s relationship with his father (Appa) stands as the novel’s emotional centerpiece—a complex mixture of love, disappointment, and cultural expectations around the family business. Their interactions around the sushi bar, especially during the early morning fish runs, provide some of the book’s most tender moments.
Chong excels at creating multidimensional characters who defy easy categorization:
- Appa: A proud restaurateur with failing health who desperately wants his son to take over the family business
- Umma: Jack’s pragmatic mother who maintains ties to both her ex-husband and a mysterious new boyfriend
- James: Jack’s recovering alcoholic brother who manages the restaurant’s finances while harboring resentment
- Juno: Jack’s teenage nephew who idolizes him while trying to chart his own future
- Zeno: A determined teenage employee who sleeps in the restaurant to escape her home life
Through these relationships, Chong examines the complexity of family obligation in immigrant communities—the weight of expectations, the guilt of abandonment, and the delicate balance between honoring one’s heritage and forging an independent path.
Romance on the Rebound
The romantic elements in “I Leave It Up to You” provide both healing and complication for Jack. His developing relationship with Emil Cuddy, the nurse who cared for him during his coma, offers a tender counterpoint to the grief of losing Ren, the fiancé who eventually moved on while Jack slept.
Chong handles this romantic subplot with admirable restraint. Rather than rushing into a rebound relationship, Jack’s connection with Emil develops gradually and organically. Their conversations about Emil’s secret playwriting aspirations and Jack’s family struggles add depth to their bond. The tentative nature of their romance reflects Jack’s broader hesitation about committing to this new chapter of his life.
One particularly moving scene takes place at a bathhouse, where Emil reveals his struggles with insomnia due to memories of COVID patients he couldn’t save:
“I don’t sleep well…because for a while, when I’d fall asleep, I’d dream about all the patients I lost.”
These moments of vulnerability make their relationship feel earned rather than convenient, grounding the romance in shared trauma and healing.
Cultural Identity and Culinary Arts
Food—specifically, the art of preparing sushi—serves as both literal livelihood and rich metaphor throughout the novel. Chong’s detailed descriptions of fish selection, knife technique, and customer interactions at the sushi bar demonstrate impressive research and lend authenticity to the setting.
The restaurant scenes offer more than just culinary detail—they provide insight into the immigrant experience and the tensions between assimilation and cultural preservation. Jack’s conflicted relationship with the family business mirrors his complicated feelings about his Korean-American identity. His expertise in preparing fish contrasts with his fumbling attempts to speak Korean with his mother, highlighting how cultural knowledge can be simultaneously inherited and lost across generations.
Particularly effective is Chong’s use of food preparation as a window into character:
“To slice fish, one must see with the fingers, feel with the tips of the pads the tender flesh, capturing the lean meat at its ripest…”
These passages reflect not just culinary skill but also how tradition becomes embodied knowledge, passed down through generations despite resistance.
Strengths That Shine
“I Leave It Up to You” showcases numerous strengths that make it a compelling read:
- Authentic dialogue that captures generational and cultural differences without resorting to stereotypes
- Structural innovation through the inclusion of a flashback chapter written in third person that reveals crucial backstory
- Humor that never undermines emotional depth, particularly in Jack’s observations about hospital life and family peculiarities
- Careful attention to setting, with Fort Lee, NJ emerging as a vivid Korean-American enclave
- Realistic portrayal of recovery from both physical trauma and emotional wounds
The novel particularly excels in its examination of queer identity within the context of Korean-American family dynamics. Jack’s sexuality isn’t treated as a narrative problem to be solved but as one facet of his complex identity. This nuanced approach allows the story to explore queer experience without reducing characters to their sexual orientation.
Room for Improvement
Despite its many strengths, “I Leave It Up to You” occasionally stumbles:
- Pacing issues in the middle section where conflicts are introduced and resolved too quickly
- Underdeveloped secondary characters, particularly Umma, whose mysterious boyfriend remains largely unexplored
- Occasional over-reliance on convenient coincidences to advance the plot
- Uneven handling of the TikTok subplot involving Juno’s videos of Jack at the restaurant
- Some repetitive introspection that sometimes slows narrative momentum
The novel’s ambitious scope sometimes leads to thematic overreach. While the exploration of family dynamics and second chances feels fully realized, certain elements—like the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on small businesses—receive more superficial treatment that leaves readers wanting deeper engagement with these issues.
Final Verdict: A Resonant Exploration of Starting Over
“I Leave It Up to You” ultimately succeeds as both an intimate family drama and a broader meditation on what it means to reclaim one’s life after profound disruption. Chong has created a story that feels simultaneously specific in its cultural details and universal in its emotional truths.
The novel’s greatest achievement lies in its refusal to provide easy answers. By the conclusion, Jack has neither fully embraced nor rejected his family’s expectations. Instead, he occupies a more complex middle ground—honoring his heritage while still maintaining autonomy over his future. This nuanced resolution feels both emotionally satisfying and true to life’s messiness.
For readers of Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” or Michelle Zauner’s “Crying in H Mart,” Chong’s novel will resonate through its exploration of identity, family, and food as cultural touchstone. Fans of Bryan Washington’s “Memorial” will appreciate the similar blend of queer romance, family obligation, and culinary detail.
With “I Leave It Up to You,” Jinwoo Chong confirms the promise shown in his debut “Flux” and establishes himself as a vital voice in contemporary Asian-American literature—one who writes with humor, heart, and unflinching honesty about the complicated business of finding oneself after losing everything.
Recommended for:
Readers who enjoy literary fiction exploring family dynamics, cultural identity, and LGBTQ+ themes; fans of contemporary Asian-American writers like Bryan Washington, Michelle Zauner, and Charles Yu; and anyone who’s ever faced the daunting prospect of starting over.
Similar Titles Worth Exploring
If you enjoyed “I Leave It Up to You,” consider these comparable works:
- “Flux” by Jinwoo Chong – The author’s debut novel exploring identity and technology
- “Memorial” by Bryan Washington – A queer love story centered around food and family
- “The Family Chao” by Lan Samantha Chang – A family drama set in a Chinese restaurant
- “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner – A memoir exploring Korean-American identity through food
- “Interior Chinatown” by Charles Yu – A surreal exploration of Asian-American identity and stereotypes
In “I Leave It Up to You,” Chong has crafted a resonant narrative about the messy, imperfect process of rebuilding a life. It reminds us that second chances don’t arrive in neat packages—they come with complications, obligations, and no guarantee of success. But in that uncertainty lies the possibility of something authentic, something earned, something that might just be worth staying for.
