Happy Families by Julie Ma

                                            

Paperback:  360 pages

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Publisher: Welbeck Fiction Ltd. 2021

Source:  My bookshelves.

First Sentence: As I drive past my old school, I can't help noticing someone has daubed 'HMP' above the words 'Cawsmenyn High'

Review Quote: 'Delightful ... You'll want to devour this in seconds' Heat, 'Read of the Week'

My Opinion: The Welsh setting, a Hong Kong connection and the fact it was the winner of Richard and Judy's Bookclub, 'Search for a Bestseller' drew my attention to 'HappyFamilies.'

A quick and easy read about three generations of Chinese immigrants and their family business 'Yau Sum' a Chinese Takeaway. Amy Li the narrator has recently given up a successful career to return home and work in the family firm. The storyline rambles because the author tries to cover so much of the family history and I found it difficult therefore to retain my interest.

Although interesting it did not really inspire me, despite appreciating that the author was trying to get readers to understand that there is much more to peoples lives than there appears on the surface.

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

Three generations, two secrets, one extended family . . .

Amy is thirty-four and has just given up her glittering career in the big (Welsh) city to move back in with her grandfather, returning to work in the small-town Chinese takeaway where she spent her bookish and boring childhood. Why? That's a secret she won't tell.

Just like the secret of why her grandfather, Ah Goong, and her father, TC Li, haven't spoken to each other in thirty years. Weirder still, they've lived in the same small flat about the takeaway for the majority of those years, with Amy's mother Joan acting as their unfortunate go-between and buffer.

Now Amy's parents have moved, leaving her in charge of looking after the old man. But then Ah Goong collapses in the street and Amy realises time is running out if she wants to play happy families again . . .

Author Profile

Photo and words courtesy of Amazon

Julie Ma is the winner of the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller 2020. Her first novel Happy Families was published on 18 February 2021. As she now has an Amazon Author Page, she thinks she can legitimately call herself a writer. That time she wrote online product reviews for £0.03 per word probably didn’t count. Neither did the times she wrote replies to customer complaints for Virgin Media, Santander, Lloyds Bank and BT.She firmly believes in the ratio of 70% backside-in-the-chair writing time and 30% thinking about writing while walking a dog. Her most glamorous moment was being kindly congratulated on winning the competition while bending over to scoop some poop. She lives in west Wales with far too many members of her immediate family a stone’s throw away.

Photographs and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Amazon Author Page.   Goodreads Author Page