Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Before writing this post, the first thing I did was check to see if there was going to be a sequel to this book. To my relief (I had been holding my breath since I finished reading it on Saturday night), Lisa See stated in an interview with the Los Angeles Examiner that a sequel to Shanghai Girls is what is next for her...and I quote..."I don't feel done with the characters, but more important they aren't done with me." Whew!

I have had this book on my list for quiet some time. Having read See's book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and I knew I just had to read this one too.

As an author, See has the ability to transport her readers to an unfamiliar land and an unfamiliar time. But she does it in a way that our hearts are truly invested with the characters. She did not disappoint with this one either. I was so attached to both May and Pearl that by the end of the book, I was craving more. That is why I was so relieved to hear that she is going to write a sequel. The emotion, heart ache and tender love from this story can only make the reader want more, more, more.

I highly recommend this one. And if you haven't read Snow Flower, you can read my post about it by clicking HERE.

In her latest book, Shanghai Girls, See brings all of it together for what has to be her most personal book yet. We meet Pearl and May Chin, beautiful sisters, who are models in Shanghai, the Paris of Asia in the late 1930s. But when their father loses all of the family’s money, he sets his daughters up in arranged marriages to Chinese-American brothers who’ve traveled from Los Angeles to Shanghai looking for brides.

This is just the beginning of an adventure of a lifetime that will take these sisters through a war-torn China, across the Pacific to an America you never knew existed: Angel Island, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Chinatown, and China City. What follows is their powerful struggle to find their place as wives, sisters, and Americans amidst discrimination, Communist paranoia, and the old ways that rule their new community.