Peach Blossom Spring is an emotional family saga spanning three generations and nearly seven decades. The main character is Meilin, a very young mother who is displaced from her home in China when she and her son flee from the invading Japanese forces.

The novel covers a lot of ground thematically: it tells a story of unbreakable family bonds over distance; the comfort of storytelling; the trauma of war; the weight of surviving; loss of identity, language & heritage, and the importance of memory. When the book transitions into Renshu’s time in America we also get a portrait of what life was like for Chinese nationals trying to build a community in the US during the 1950s to the early 2000s.

This is historical fiction done well. For a start, it is interesting to read about WWII from a Chinese perspective – something I don’t think I’ve personally come across before in a book, TV show or film. The snippets of Chinese fable Meilin reads to Renshu from a prized, ancient scroll she carries were cute and interesting but also not arbitrary: the story about Peach Blossom Spring is revisited and is (obviously) important to the story and the growth of a main character. The scroll fables were also a great way for the author to balance out the darker events of the war.

I tend to measure the quality of a book by how much the author made me care about the characters, and I really did care about the characters in Peach Blossom Spring: Melissa Fu makes you hopeful for their futures, yearn for them to reunite, sympathetic to their trauma and saddened when some are met by tragedy. I gave this book 5 stars for that reason, as well as the fact that I enjoyed learning titbits about China’s history and the story kept me interested. I would happily read more by Melissa Fu!

Thank you Netgalley and Hatchette UK Audio for this advanced reader copy of the audiobook.