A really thoughtful book, hard to read due to the themes at times but worth reading. Dramatic and powerful.

A beautiful and emotional book which I really enjoyed reading.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for my honest and unbiased opinion.

This isn't the type of book I would normally read but I was offered the chance and I'm really glad I did.

This was a really thought provoking novel which dealt with a theme which I haven't really encountered much in the novels I have read

Highly recommended

I enjoyed this book a lot! The story was fast-paced, full of twists and suspense. It explores themes of adoption, motherly love, race, immigration, societal expectations as well as pressures and abuse. The characters were intriguing and unforgettable. I recommend this book a lot!

Thank you to Netgalley and Serpent's Tail / Viper / Profile Books for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest opinion..

I loved the premise for this and thought the title and cover were fab! I struggled a little to get into it but, once I did, I was hooked. A deeply moving and compelling tale about two women's struggles i their very different lives.

Very different to what I normally read, but I'm glad I finished this.

The story is good but the cultural references just got a bit too tedious for me and I thought they portrayed a stereotype that I wasn’t comfortable with. This wasn’t for me.

The Leftover Woman is a story about motherhood, love and cultural divisions; it’s also a story of the pressures and challenges that women face every day to succeed and fight for identity and thier own freedom to be.

Jasmine is Chinese and her adopted parents arrange her marriage at 14 to a controlling , cohercive man - she is one of the many victim’s of the one child / one family policy- she was abandoned. After a few years of marriage she gives birth to a girl whom she believes died at birth but discovers this was a lie and the child has been adopted by a couple in New York Jasmine escapes her a marriage to find her daughter. The child- Fiona- has lives with Rebecca and her husband Brandon who left China some years before when meeting Rebecca. Rebecca is town between her career in publishing and being a mother .. they employ a live - in Nanny to support them .
Premise established…initially the exploration of the two women’s lives to survive and succeed clearly contrasted the two worlds of Jasmine and Rebecca. Jasmine’s determination to raise the money to be able to find and support her daughter and Rebecca’ conflict between winning the bid for a succesful author and maintaining a harmonious albeit wealthy and privileged family life.

Cultural differences and the difficult path of motherhood in patriarchal systems / societies as well as the sacrifices to achieve these goals was the key plot device that hooked reading this tale. But at a certain point , it started to feel rather cliched and too coincidental in the key trigger events that lead to the denouement. Maybe the book needed to be longer and the story of Jasmine’s early life a more powerful detailed / factual based recount so that western readers were more immersed in what happened to many Chinese women… the details of the adoption and the homecoming of Fiona weren’t included

That said - if you like your writing fast paced and contemporary with the ubiquitous definite article “,The “ in the title then this is a psychological drama that will hook many

3.5;out of 5

There are just so many good things I could say about this book. I absolutely tore (pun intended) through this read . Everyone needs to go read it

This book has it all - an emotional drama, a mystery and a some very serious cultural commentary. I would highly recommend it to those that are looking for a dramatic story that would keep them absolutely invested in it.

A powerful and suspenseful story that had me hooked from the first page.

This is my first Jean Kwok novel and I adore her rich, sumptuous writing. The way she writes creates such vivid images and Jasmine, Rebecca and Fiona felt so real to me.

With interconnecting themes of family, race, motherhood and immigration, the book took me on a powerful journey.

If you love thrillers that are also deep this one's for you.

I read Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok many years ago, and it left an indelible impression on me. I have read her other books in the interim, always hoping to feel a similar swell of emotion to that which her debut novel engendered in me, but never quite realising that aim. Leftover Woman is the book that finally delivered what I had been hoping for.

The novel tells the story of two women. Rebecca Whitney, a privileged white woman, and Jasmine, a Chinese woman who is anything but privileged. Their disparate lives intertwine, against the odds, in this beautiful book.

Rebecca is looking to rehabilitate her career in the publishing industry by winning the opportunity to work with the sought-after new author, Isabel Navarro. Navarro's book is about a female protagonist who is a woman of colour and has a huge secret.

Rebecca has a secret of her own which could threaten her apparently perfect life with her successful and good looking husband, and her adopted Chinese daughter, Fifi. In order to juggle her responsibilities as mother, wife and career woman, Rebecca has also hired a Chinese nanny for Fifi, for whom no expenditure is spared.

Jasmine has found her way to the US illegally, in search of the daughter who was taken from her. Her story is tragic, having been sold into marriage as a teenager, to a man who exploited her through multiple miscarriages and took away her baby girl, a casualty of China's One Child policy at the time.

Now, working round the clock to pay off her debts to the snakeheads who brought her to America, Jasmine is determined to stay out of the clutches of her husband and somehow find her baby, for whom she has suffered through so much.

This book is a meditation on the power of love, and the deeply-rooted resources of motherhood. It's about resilience, grit and determination - and the lengths we will go to, to protect those we love. That, at least, is one thing that Rebecca and Jasmine do have in common...