This book is the sequel to Shanghai Girls and continues the story from where Pearl's daughter, Joy, has run away to join the "glorious revolution" Mao's China. I listened to the audiobook of this and, quite frankly, I couldn't wait for this book to end. Joy has been brainwashed by a group of college friends into thinking that China is going to be so much better than her life in L.A. Pearl, now a widow, drops everything to follow her daughter to China to bring her back and expects to find Shanghai much as it was when she left it. In my review of the previous book I complained about there being too much tragedy, coincidence, heartbreak. etc. In this one I spent a good deal of my time thinking how stupid the main characters were. While the author has done a great job of describing the horrible failures of Mao's regime and the massive starvation and death that resulted from it, things are tied up too neatly at the end. If the author's intent was to elicit strong feelings from her readers, then she succeeded. But I don't think my feelings about this soap opera of a book are what she intended.
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