Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsA little disappointed
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2014
I read Dreams of Joy in the hopes of capturing the same feelings that Shanghai Girls evoked but now I wonder if it would've been more satisfying to leave me with a dissatisfied ending but a great overall story. This novel is the follow up to Shanghai Girls and I read it immediately after -- it left me disappointed and took twice as long for me to read because of my annoyance with one of the two narrators, Joy the daughter of Pearl (no spoilers if you haven't read Shanghai Girls, okay?) She came across as a spoiled brat at times to me, manipulating those around her but not with the same charisma as her aunt May in the previous novel. When she repeatedly defies both her mother and father, I almost felt like I wanted her to get her come-uppance just so she'd be taught a lesson. She was hardly likeable and if it wasn't for the emotional attachment to Pearl in the previous novel, I would've completely abandoned the book altogether.
What I did enjoy about both novels however, was that See managed to paint a detailed but not pedantic portrait of a China in flux and transition. What made Shanghai Girls a stronger novel for me was the bond that was built between the two sisters while they overcame the odds together. Dreams of Joy, while giving room for the younger Chin daughter/niece to also carve a path for herself, felt more disjointed especially with the switching between narrators from chapter to chapter. I had a much harder time actually liking characters in this book and many of them came across as extremely pathetic. The ending felt contrived and inasmuch as there was the theme of returning full circle, I felt like the development of Pearl returning to her country of birth was less interesting than the time spent when they moved to the US.
I do however, prefer these novels over See's other novels that take place before Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy and will most likely read China Girls. I would recommend reading Shanghai Girls before this one though, as it is essentially a sequel and failing to do so would probably lead to more confusion -- especially for readers unfamiliar with See's previous work.
