Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - River East, River West

I received this from Netgalley.com.

An okay read, with some very cringe worthy episodes. I also think it would have helped if I had a better understanding of Chinese history and its people.

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trop_de_livres's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Alva is 14-years old, the biracial daughter of an American woman living in Shanghai. When her mother marries a Chinese man, Alva’s teenage rebellion begins in earnest. Told in alternating chapters (Alva/her stepfather), this story spans several decades of recent Chinese history. I found the story fascinating at first and was fully invested until a certain event happened that made me dislike the mother so much that I could no longer enjoy the book. I’m not sure why the author chose to make the mother so abhorrent if she wanted us to care about this family. There is another event involving Alva that is also stomach-churning. If you want to tell a family story you need to have at least one person to root for, and after a while I didn’t even care what happened to Alva. It is a shame, because the writing is extremely good but my stomach is not strong enough to handle these kinds of plot points. I was lent this book from NetGalley and William Morrow in exchange for an honest review.

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veeteegee's review

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was a book that took a little while to fully grasp my attention, but I found one it did, it wasn’t released until its conclusion. The dual perspectives of Alva and Lu Fang offered a gift in providing two very different tales of longing, disappointments, triumphs, and everything in between set in two very different Chinas with a shared goal of escaping the norm or the standard route in their own ways. I find myself curious about where their respective stories would continue to converge and divert from one another, especially in relation to their shared link to Sloan. It was definitely not a happy story, but in the sadness Aube Rey Lescure created a tale that was beautiful in its heartbreaks too.

I am immensely grateful to the publisher for the receipt of this advanced reader’s copy of the book.

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