Book Review: Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

This book had been sitting on my TBR for so long that I had forgotten what it was about. While the book came out in 2019, it really could have been written in any year since then and felt shockingly, tragically fresh.

The book opens in 1991 in Los Angeles where we meet teenage Shawn Matthews. We then move forward to 2019 and are introduced to Grace Park, also in Los Angeles, in her late 20s. In 2019 we see Shawn again, this time welcoming his cousin, newly released from prison. Shawn and Grace seem to have little in common aside from living in the LA area. Shawn is a former gang member, attempting to live a quiet life as a Black man now in his 40s. Grace is quiet, a pharmacist, who still lives with her parents, Korean immigrants. But one awful event in 1991 links these two people.

This story feels so of the moment because violence against people of colour, against Black people particularly, is not at all in the past. It wouldn’t take long to find current events mirroring some of the events in this novel. The story is fictional but heavily based on the true story of Latasha Harlins. I wasn’t familiar with her story, though I knew the broad strokes outline of the LA riots.

The ways that Cha delves into her characters, drawing their histories and their characterizations, is truly impressive. I really cared about each of these characters and in making her readers care, Cha highlights the grey zones of the morality in this story. Can you love someone and also acknowledge that they’ve committed a heinous act? Can someone be both a victim of and perpetrator of violence? Does one justify the other? Throughout, Cha treats her characters and readers with respect, never offering easy answers but unrolling the story in all its messy discomfort. Just like real life.