The Devoted

• Author: Catherine Cho
• Genre: Thriller
• Publication Date: June 4, 2026
• Publisher: Washington Square Press

Thank you to NetGalley and Washington Square Press for providing me with an ARC of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

In this emotionally transportive literary debut about family and fate, a young Korean woman whose father is a leader in an infamous crime organization becomes entrenched in the dangerous world she once sought to escape.

Raised in Hong Kong by their Korean grandmother in a quiet village, Eunha and her brother Solomon live a sheltered life. Their father is a Dragon Head, a leader within the infamous criminal organization of the Triads. While their beloved grandmother does her best to shield the children from the constant hum of violence and fear that surrounds their father and his world, Eunha only has Solomon and their one permitted companion, a boy named Kai, for company.

But as Eunha grows up and marries into a supposedly respectable Hong Kong family, the veneer of her careful life begins to crack. When her young son is kidnapped, she is cast into the city’s criminal underground and back into the orbit of Kai, now a Dragon Head himself.

Will Eunha finally give in to the life she has strived so hard to rise above or was her future always fated?

The Devoted is at once a sweeping family drama, a moving account of forbidden love, and a story about a woman’s determination to choose her own destiny.

This book caught my attention because it is set in Hong Kong, but it also appealed to me because of the plot summary. I love a good mystery, and always want to find new authors to follow, so I figured I would check it out. However, it wasn’t quite what I had expected it to be. My expectations may have been too high, but here are my thoughts on this book.

It was really interesting to read about the experiences of Korean people living in Hong Kong. This is a diaspora community, but the story focuses on the story of one woman, Eunha. She comes from a family of gang members—her father was a leader in the Triads, a well-known criminal enterprise, and her brother Solomon seems primed to follow in his footsteps. Meanwhile, Eunha and Solomon are raised by their grandmother and protected from the gang life, but both siblings are pulled into the orbit of the Triads. 

Cho’s writing is fantastic. Her style is both lyrical and easy to follow, and I loved how she wrote this. The characters have depth, there is a heavy sense of atmosphere, and there is no shortage of emotional conflict. The story is told only thought 

The pace was a lot slower than I would have expected for a thriller, reading more to me like literary fiction than a thriller. This absolutely factored into my rating, because I typically like the fast-paced thrillers. Instead, this story takes a meandering look at Eunha’s life and experiences, both past and present. I really enjoyed the flashbacks to the Eunha’s past, to get a better understanding of what made her who she is and the factors that contributed to her present-day experiences. However, the book didn’t quite bring the same ever-growing tension that is found in a typical thriller, which speaks to the expectations that I brought to this read. I thought this would be a grittier read with more conflict.

Eunha is a tough woman, but wants to escape the life her family has been stuck in. However, the Triads aren’t done with her. As an adult, Eunha is married with a young son, although there are definitely cracks in the marriage. It also involves the cultural expectations that are often found in Asian cultures, since she is a Korean woman that has grown up in Hong Kong. She is expected to be a dutiful wife and take care of their son while he has freedom to do whatever he wants. When Eunha’s son is kidnapped one day, she is forced to rely on Kai, who she was raised with and is now a Dragon Head in the Triads himself. 

So many of the characters are morally gray, primarily Eunha, Solomon, and Kai. They are complex, well-developed characters and had very complex relationships with the rest of the characters. Despite Eunha’s desire to live a quiet life outside of the Triads, she isn’t able to rescue her son without assistance from Kai. The dynamic between the two of them has changed significantly since their childhood days, and there was sexual tension between them. Her dynamic with her husband and his family continues to buckle under the strain of the kidnapping and readers can see how class plays such a big role in the diaspora Korean community in Hong Kong. Eunha has become respectable through her marriage, although she and her husband don’t seem to have much of an emotional connection even after years of marriage. 

Speaking of emotional connections, the slow-burn drama surrounding the family and Eunha left me feeling a bit distant from all the characters. Eunha is a fierce mama bear willing to go to any length to get her son back, but I never felt fully emotionally connected to anyone in the story. I did like and empathize with Eunha, but rather than feeling like I was right beside the characters in the story, there was a sense of distance. This was another disappointing aspect of my read.

Overall, this was a good read, although there were aspects that impacted my enjoyment and my rating. Cho has a real gift for creating realistic characters and her prose is beautiful to read. I liked how complex the characters were, making them feel even more realistic. There were two major factors that impacted my read. One was that the book was marketed as a thriller/mystery when it was more of a slow mosey through Eunha’s life and past. The other was how it always felt like the characters were at a distance which prevented me from getting fully emotionally invested and immersed in the story. Aside from that, the book was very atmospheric and a peek into a diaspora group I knew nothing about. 

Bottom line: A good read that delves into themes of class, family dynamics, gender roles, and cultural expectations, but this book is slower paced and more of a family drama than a mystery/thriller.

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