Leila is the eldest of three sisters in a Chinese family living in San Francisco. Her father is no longer around and when her mom remarried, they had two additional daughters. Leila is as close to her half sisters as if they were her full sisters. The youngest sister has moved off to New York, the middle is dating another Chinese guy, and Leila seems to hover around her mom and step-father trying to ensure they are happy.
When the family finds out that the middle sister has committed suicide, the family goes in to a tail spin. The book goes from present day and then works its way back to the day of the suicide. We find out what pushed Ona to jump from the 13th floor and end her life. By the end of the book I was thinking that's it? It didn't seem enough for me. Ona had many different ways she could have reacted to what eventually drove her to suicide, and suicide certainly shouldn't have been at the top of the list.
In the end, this book fell short for me because we're trying to understand why Ona did what she did but we aren't given enough information to figure it out. Instead, we're focusing around how this affects the family which usually is ok for plot, but not when you don't even understand why it happened in the first place.
First Line: "We were a family of three girls."
Rating:
(2.5/5)
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