The Story of the Chinese Cinderella
Grade 7 bring us more reviews of books.
Chinese Cinderella was written by a well known Chinese author by the name of Adeline Yen Mah. She was born on 30th November 1937 and is still alive to this day. This book isn’t a normal fairytale judging by the name. This book is about Adeline Yen Mah and how her life as a child went by. The book narrates all her hardships throughout her childhood.
This book is very interesting and keeps you captivated because there is always a twist just when you think there isn’t going to be one. The story is about a girl who was born to a mother who died 2 weeks after her birth. All of Adeline’s siblings always hated her as they believed that Adeline killed their mother. Later on the father marries another woman called Niang who is a very bad person and also very strict on the first mom’s children. She is very nice to her own children but not to the other ones. Niang is especially strict on Adeline. Although life is very hard for Adeline, she has some meaningful people in her life that she can count on such as her grandpa, her aunt, and her friend Wu Chun Mei.
The book relates to real life considering it’s a journal. It has many “antagonists” but also has a handful of people who support Adeline. This is another reason why I liked this book, I felt that the protagonist wasn’t so lonely and suffering too much. Luckily the book didn’t end with any cliffhangers which is a good thing, at least for me. My favourite character was none other than Adeline Yen Mah.
There are a few things that I dislike about the book though. For example, around chapter 15 the story got very confusing and suddenly skipped ahead to a completely different scene. Probably because the author wanted to include more important parts on the book and didn’t want to take up much space. Other than that the book was pretty informative about everything.
I would recommend this book for 13 year olds, as it can get a bit boring sometimes, and also the sudden jump to a completely different part of the book is very confusing. However, overall this book is very good.
I give it:
4 / 5 stars.