Play Book Tag discussion

This follow-up to Shanghai Girls begins straight after the events in that book. Joy, having uncovered long buried family secrets and blaming herself for the suicide of the man she had believed to be her father, runs away to China to try to find her biological father. Pearl, the woman she had thought to be her mother, follows her. The book then follows Joy and Pearl’s time in China, showing us the real dangers of the Communist regime and the conditions people in remote villages were living under. See recreated the atmosphere for the reader of just how desperate people were to survive and the hopeless situations some people found themselves in, as well as the difficulties they faced not just leaving the country, but also leaving the countryside to move to the cities. Whilst there were times that I really wanted to shake some sense into Joy, I really liked the character of Pearl, and I enjoyed the sense of the setting and Chinese culture that See gave the reader.