All Things Under the Moon by Ann Y.K. Choi

What if – in the span of one day, one horrible accident, everything you thought you knew was no longer safe? This is how Na-Young’s story truly begins: the only daughter of a first wife of a well-off family, she was coddled and sheltered her whole life, not even taught how to read. She manages to scrape what little freedom she can, and is mostly happy with what she has, until her friend Yeon-Soo’s young son dies tragically, setting off a chain of events which lead Na-Young on a lifelong, treacherous, unexpected set of adventures. Set in occupied Korea in the 1920s and 1930s, All Things Under the Moon by Ann Y.K. Choi is a novel that travels through a country at war, seen through the eyes of a young woman coming of age.

As a protagonist, I struggled a bit with Na-Young. Her interiority wasn’t fully developed, and I often wondered what her motivations were. Her family members described her as something of a free-spirit, not always acting as a proper young Korean woman should, and asking too many questions, but I didn’t always get that sense of her. And despite the trauma she suffers in the novel, she didn’t spend a ton of time dwelling on it, other than the practical things needed to pass off her baby as her husband’s, and how to manipulate the Japanese customer who falls for her when she beings to work with the Korean resistance.

What really shines in this novel, and makes it worth your time, is the vibrancy of the relationships between the female characters.

On the other hand, occupied Korea is not a hugely common setting for novels written in English (though certainly not unheard of), and I relished the opportunity to learn more about Korea at that time period, and how every day life was conducted. Choi provides a well-researched and well-imagined version of that Korea, and using inspiration from her family’s story, as she states in the Author’s Note.

What really shines in this novel, and makes it worth your time, is the vibrancy of the relationships between the female characters. Women of all stations support and hide one another, with long-reaching friendships that resurface through the occupation years in different ways, and often without question. Community care is strong in this novel, and that’s a particularly beautiful thing to see. I really appreciated Choi’s crafting of care under oppression.

Ann Y.K. Choi is a Canadian author and educator. She is known for her 2016 debut novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, and her 2020 children’s book, Once Upon An Hour. She currently sits on the program advisory committee for gritLIT, Hamilton’s literary festival, and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 2, 2025)
Paperback: 9″ x 6″ | 320 pp
ISBN: 9781982114565

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.