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goblinhearted 's review for:

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
1.0

I did not feel that this stood up to its prequel Shanghai Girls.

As someone with a special interest in this period of history, as well as an awareness of how much misinformation is spread intentionally as political anti-China propaganda, I felt that the sources that See used to craft this narrative were perhaps not the most reliable.

That aside, I felt the pacing of this novel was off and the character development didn't quite live up to its sequel. By the second half, I was slogging through it just to see if it would eventually redeem itself. Also, I found the character of Joy to be a little one-dimensional.