The Future Perfect

by Cay Kim

A radiant, exquisitely told portrait of a young woman growing up between cultures, in search of her future self

Before you are anything, you are a daughter.

At first, you are a child at home in your mother’s belly: a beloved daughter, a vision of the future. But who will you become? At the Dol ceremony on your first birthday, dressed in a bright fuchsia hanbok, your family gathers around to see which item you’ll reach for that will determine the course of your life. You choose the pencil.

As your family moves from Seoul to snowy Minnesota, you and your mother find yourselves in a new American life that you must navigate together, mastering its language and customs. Soon enough, you are in pursuit of perfection—your mother marshaling you through a childhood of achievements to shape you into the person she most wants you to be. But you are not just your mother’s daughter, despite her sacrifices. As the years go by, you want to build a life between these two cultures that feels yours—an identity that lies somewhere in between your homeland and motherland.

Told in incandescent prose, Cay Kim’s debut novel is a portrait of a brilliant young woman growing up between worlds, and a glorious love letter to girlhood, family, and the great dreams we hold for ourselves, no matter where we’re from.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

224 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication June 23, 2026

Reviews

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Riverhead for the ebook. In short chapters, we get the complicated history of a Korean family. A strong willed mother takes her young daughter to Minnesota so she can get an architectural degree and her daughter can discover a childhood in America. Over the years the daughter bounces back and forth as she comes to America for summer camp and then boarding school and then university and finally graduate school. The daughter is desperate for her mother’s love and wisdom when young, but they seem to fall into a constant battle of wills as the daughter gets older. She seems to always leave before an all out way breaks out, but then COVID hits and they are stuck in the same apartment for months and the daughter starts to see why her mother pushed her so much.

[Kristine]

Really Glad A Got an Early Copy of this Book. I love to try New Debuts that I haven’t heard anything about yet. This Story was one that interested me, and like the Conflict Between Mother and Daughter and trying to Balance Your Own Life and Goals with that of Family Expectations.

Takes place between Korea and US, and obviously different cultural expectations.

See how I like this.

[Chrissy Vaughn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
A story told in separate short-story chapters about a Korean family, focused on the difficult, deeply complicated relationship between a mother and a daughter with feet in two different countries and cultures, not fully belonging to either.

I applaud Kim's attempt at an untraditional narrative POV -- only using "you" and "her" -- but it got in the way a lot for me in its clunkiness. Otherwise I found this story to be compelling in its emotional rawness and in Kim's choices on when to zoom in and out.

+++
Thanks to Riverhead Books and Net Gally for this ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

[Sarah]

A devastating disappointment. A gorgeous cover and evocative title, but with writing that didn't live up to the above promise. An unfortunate reminder why the second person should, with vanishingly few exceptions, be reserved for short stories and struggles to be sustained across a novel. Does the justin torres vignette thing but doesn't have the brevity, precision, or ferocity to make it work. foreign words in italics (ugh, i thought we were long past that!). A lack of a greater organizing narrative throughline which i think the book is conscious of, but being conscious of it doesn't make it automatically work. Autobiographical (what isn't?) but under-cooked. Lastly, no reference to the tense at all!! why name your book the future perfect if there is no reference to the tense, or even (conspicuously) "will having done" anything???? i had been waiting for the entire book for it and it would have hit so hard. this kind of immigrant literature makes me sad.

[Char Grell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Riverhead publishing for the advanced readers e-book.

At the heart of the novel is the evolving relationship between the narrator and her mother, marked by love, tension, and mutual resilience. The main character straddles two worlds—Korean heritage and American upbringing—trying to forge a sense of self that honors both. The book captures the quiet, powerful moments of growing up: choosing who you want to be, and who you are beyond what others expect. As her family moves from Seoul to snowy Minnesota, the girl and her mother must adapt to a new American life. The story follows her journey from childhood into adolescence, exploring how she grapples with language barriers, cultural dissonance, and the weight of generational hopes.

Before I sat down to type this review, I reviewed what others have already said and reviewed on Goodreads. While I was prepared to say: I didn't like the 2nd person narrative. Upon reading other reviews, I may have missed the point. The whole point was that we were to feel with the mother and daughter along with them. We (the readers) are to grow and evolve with the mother/daughter relationship. We were supposed to be uncomfortable as we work through change.

I will say I did not care of the use of Korean language used without acknowledging what the words meant. Yes, I know I can google and look them up. But the eReader didn't know what those words either. This is coming from a place of me wanting to learn - not disparaging on the writing style. There will be many people that will read this without issue.

Mother-Daughter relationships are complicated, and their relationship was no different.

Thanks to the other reviewers that came before me on this one to help me understand what I missed or this would have been a 2-star review.

3 stars from me is a solid book.

Thank you NetGalley and Riverhead publishing for the advanced readers e-book.

[qq · Rating 5 out of 5]

What makes this book different from other Asian American/Diaspora stories about complex mother daughter relationships is that it is truly nuanced and patient in the way that it describes this dynamic. The mother is an individual herself rather than an opposing force that fuels bitterness and resentment in her daughter’s life. In a way, it feels like the daughter is the one that does not have her own individual formation, but it makes sense because she is still growing. At the very beginning, she was just a daughter, and it grows from there. We all need a starting point and that point stems from our mothers. I thought it was such a genius move to write this book in second person since we as readers are growing with the protagonist. We’re witnessing her growth and we see that at every point of her life, her mother was an influential voice affecting her thoughts and choices, yet at the same time they feel like their own. I think the normalcy of the book, of the events, of the interactions make it so that we can feel the complexity of their relationship like tingles on our skin that resonate more and more. I really love reading books about mother daughter relationships, and I would say that this one is very very well done compared to many in the Asian American/Asian Diaspora canon.

Thank you Netgalley and Riverhead for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Mahnoor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

What a novel!

Told in a stylistic narration that seems to address only "you" and 'her," this story is a poignant and melancholic story of a mother-daughter duo.

I just love reading about women who reminisce about their childhood and growing up while trying to understand themselves. I also feel like this was the first time I read a novel where I felt like the inclusion of COVID-19 actually helped and made sense for the story and the characters. We get to see how they deal with being in close confines for ages and what that means for their relationship. I also couldn't help but draw some parallels to But The Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu, another novel which is not about carving out a new identity, but learning to understand the people who made you who you are, as is the case for The Future Perfect. It is a very character-driven book so I can see why others who want a more typical plot would not enjoy it.

I highly recommend this book for its portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship in all of its visceral emotional rawness.

[Sydney Low · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley & Riverhead for the advanced readers copy of The Future Perfect by Cay Kim. This book immediately captured my attention. The 2nd person POV was incredibly captivating. Sometimes throughout the book, the she vs he got a bit muddy, and it became a bit confusing who the narrator was talking to (only in group settings) I’d suggest putting the years each chapter took place in since there were a lot of time jumps, I would love to follow the evolution of the MC this way. I think it would make the depth of the story stronger too. This was one of the strongest ARC’s I’ve read so far. As a half Asian, half white person, ‘being’ the MC dealing with the culture shock of studying / adapting to the accustoms of both cultures felt very familiar, and I think it encapsulates a lot of struggles a lot of immigrants can relate too, including my haelmoni. This book also does an excellent job depicting the complex relationships mothers and daughters have. I can’t wait to see how the story is when it is published, as well as more of this Authors future work.

[Gab N · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a coming-of-age story unlike any I’ve ever read; the second person POV and vignette-like chapters crafted so deftly, I was loathe to put this down. This gorgeous debut left me thinking about identity, about parents and caretaking, about reversals of generational order, of the expectation of parental sacrifice, and of their children—the benefactors of their parents’ martyrdom—burdened with living to appease them; and how that never leads either person to living a life that feels like their own. (Living for another person, this book reminds, never really serves either you or them, more often seeding resentment than anything else.)

I am still trying to work out the significance of the oranges, though: was that the critical moment of severance, as the MC promised her mother it would be? There’s also, I think, something to the idea of peeling, of being peeled; of the layers we all contain; the various versions of our selves and all of their facets, and the ways new versions of ourselves emerge from previous. Of shedding.

[Helen Wu ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written and thoughtful exploration of identity, culture, and the complicated bond between mother and daughter. I always appreciate BIPOC and immigrant-centered stories, and I valued how this one captures the in-between feeling of navigating two cultures with honesty and nuance. There are moments that feel deeply intimate and emotionally sharp, especially in how it portrays expectation, love, and resentment within a family. That said, the experimental writing style and shifting perspective made it harder for me to fully connect, and at times I found myself more aware of the structure than immersed in the story. I can absolutely see why this will resonate with many readers, particularly those who enjoy literary, character-driven narratives, but for me it was more a book I admired than one I felt fully pulled into. Thank you Netgalley and Riverhead for the ARC.

[Victoria D · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a challenging book to review. There is much of it that I found very emotional, wondering, and beautifully written (especially at the beginning and very end). But there were also many parts that I felt lose, that felt like filler, and that felt like I had to figure out what was going on/what the story took place/who was speaking and who was being referred to which I felt took away from the emotion that was portrayed. It meant that u couldn’t be in the moment with the characters and rather was trying to figure out what was happening. Regardless, there are many strong points to this book, perhaps I am the wrong audience. Thanks to all involved in providing me an eARC of this book to review.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Future Perfect is about the complicated dynamic that can exist between mothers and daughters. The mom in the story has her perfect vision of how she can create the perfect life for her daughter, by pushing her to study, by neglecting her own desires. However, like in life, this leads to resentments on both ends. I enjoyed how real this book is, it doesn’t try to sugarcoat things to arrive and an artificially happy ending. Instead, it presents life how it really is- imperfect, with a glimpse at the fact that you can love someone, but still have complicated feelings towards them.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really gorgeous prose. I was most struck by the detailed images Kay paints of childhood in the first half of the novel with incredible recall: The smell of your mother's cooking, the hard plastic of a McDonald's playground tunnel under your knees, the gut churning sick feeling of lying to a parent for the first time.

The second person narration, which is famously very hard to pull off, was also very well done and really added to the reflective auto-fiction tone.

Once the novel progressed into early adulthood and left that sense of childlike wonder and photorealistic nostalgia behind my interest and reading pace slowed a bit, but overall a great read and impressive debut novel.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful debut novel about how complicated the mother-daughter relationship is. I’m an absolute sucker for a story about mothers and daughters, and I found that there was a lot I loved about this book. The writing style is unique with the POV shifts, and I applaud Cay Kim for taking such an unconventional approach to putting us in the place of these characters.

There was an intensity to this book that could be a bit overpowering. I appreciated the glimpse it gave of family life in this home that shifted between countries.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

[vi_reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Apology? Don't say something that isn't even funny. If halmuni raised me with the care I did you, I would have had no other wishes. Why should I apologize for doing what I believed was best for you?"

I'm a sucker for examinations of Asian mother-daughter relationships, especially in the only child realm. If Chemistry was the best exploration of this dynamic from a late 20s/early 30s POV, The Future Perfect is its counterpart for childhood/young adult coming-of-age.

[Deirdre Megan Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was one that I struggled with but not in the way you might think. The story touches on complicated relationships with a mother and it was something that I can relate to from my past. Over all very well done as a debut novel. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the earc in exchange for my honest review.

[Olivia Allbritton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has such an interesting and inventive writing style, which was really cool. However, that just didn’t quite land right for me; I just never felt connected to or invested in the story. Could totally be someone else’s cup of tea, though!

*thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.*

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really hard to give this book a rating. I love the writing style, second person narrative gives you the sense of hovering above, watching the drama unfold. That said, it was incredibly depressing. The relationships are so damaged, I came away feeling really sad.

[JXR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely unique and interesting literary meditation on identity, culture, and becoming yourself. 5 stars. thanks for the E-ARC.