Hello, lovely readers! Welcome back to my blog!
As someone who has long been fascinated by Asia, China surprised me in many ways. "A Welcome Misfortune" is not the first chinese book I've read. There's something about Chinese literature that always brings tears to my eyes.
One thing about China, that was always kinda odd for me, is that they can only have one child, and only if it is a boy. Girls were not welcome, and if a woman gave birth to a girl, she was taken away and "A Welcome Misfortune" is a book about this. It's the first novel in the "Sworn Sisters" series. The plot takes place in 1867, when a girl named Luli is born into a middle-class Chinese family. Her father calls her a misfortune and sends her to the well-known Chaozhou wall, where parents abandon undesired daughters. BUT, Luli's mother is desperate and asks her son Min Kao (one of the twins) to look after her, and as promised, he does. He fell in love with his sister right away, but his twin was not pleased. He wasn't even "that nice" as Min Kao. After a while, father sent both twins to America to take over his business, and they secretly brought Luli with them.
At the same time, we read a story of two Hong Kong slave girls, Sunling and Jingwei, who escaped for freedom to America and met twins on the ship. They bond, and the story continues. The book also depicts how Americans threatened the Chinese. I loved an American girl who adored Sunling and her clothing designs, so she asked her to work for her. During the reading, I could see her in my mind. One awkward, cute, noisy, white female discussing her own problems with Sunling and treating her like a friend, while others disapproved.
I must admit that I was not a huge fan of Sunling and Jingwei. For whatever reason, I didn't connect with them. I liked the American girl's characters, and my favorite was of course the "nice" twin brother Min Kao, who was repeatedly misled by the "rude" twin. He annoyed me throughout the book, haha!
Overall, the book is good. I wouldn't call it my favorite, but I enjoyed it. I didn't start reading the second book right away because I'm more of a "mood reader," but it's on my TBR and I can't wait to see what happened to Luli and if the twin brothers' friendship improved. I also have a feeling there may be some love scenes between Jingwei and Min Kao, so we'll see ;)
Thank you for taking your time and reading and I'll see you in my next post!
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because I need a music to be in a mood to write and imagine the place of a book easier, I'll leave here a link of a music I've listened to while reading this blog post:
Try and read this post while listening to this song,
I garantine you, you'll imagine the story easier :)