Amy Tan

3.5/4. Rounded down to 3.

The book was quite a hard, emotional and complex read for me, but totally worth it. The overarching theme of immigrant children having a hard time communicating and understanding their Asian mothers is powerful and heartbreaking. As a reader, you just can't help but feel sadness, anger and sympathy for every character.

Personally, since I'm not a child of immigrant parents, I feel like it's not my place to speak about how well the book portrays that part. But I can relate to just how difficult it is trying to find a common ground with my own mother, despite us speaking the same language.

The reason why I gave the book 3.5 stars, instead of 4 or more, is that I think the book lacks something. The fact that the book is about four women and their four mothers, and their connections was initially unclear to me. I got quite far into the book before I realized that I wasn't reading about just one person. And I take full blame for that. It's truly my fault. I went into the book completely blind. I think this book will definitely work even better for me on my second read, but I just need to give the story some time to settle, before I read it again.