A review by readingwithhippos
A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua

4.0

This book was stressful to read because the setup is so dire: Scarlett Chen is pregnant and living in Los Angeles with other Chinese moms-to-be. She was sent there by her boss, who is also the father of her child. He has only daughters with his wife, but when he finds out that Scarlett is having a boy, he wants his son to be born on American soil. When Scarlett finds out her baby is not the much wished for male heir after all, she makes a desperate escape in the maternity home’s van, with a pregnant teenage stowaway in the back. There are comic moments here, and some of the scenes even have a cinematic quality to them (I’m thinking specifically of a scene in which one very pregnant woman chases another around a rest stop parking lot), but Scarlett’s plight felt very real to me and I was deathly worried about her throughout. This book has important things to say about immigration, poverty, and women’s agency to control their own lives.