Yet again I have picked up a sequel that while it stands alone I am told it would be much richer having read the first wonderful book. Alas I did not read them in order and while I did enjoy the charm of this book and the beautiful town and characters developed, I hope to go back and read its predecessor and update this review.

What We Were Promised by Lucy Tan is a thoughtful, slowly paced, look at love, family and immigration. Well-written with great characterizations, all-in-all a great read.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher for my honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Synopsis from NetGalley/Publisher
Set in modern Shanghai, a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront painful secrets and unfulfilled promises.
After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city.

One morning, in the eighth tower of Lanson Suites, Lina discovers that a treasured ivory bracelet has gone missing. This incident sets off a wave of unease that ripples throughout the Zhen household. Wei, a marketing strategist, bows under the guilt of not having engaged in nobler work. Meanwhile, Lina, lonely in her new life of leisure, assumes the modern moniker taitai-a housewife who does no housework at all. She is haunted by the circumstances surrounding her arranged marriage to Wei and her lingering feelings for his brother, Qiang. Sunny, the family's housekeeper, is a keen but silent observer of these tensions. An unmarried woman trying to carve a place for herself in society, she understands the power of well-kept secrets. When Qiang reappears in Shanghai after decades on the run with a local gang, the family must finally come to terms with the past and its indelible mark on their futures.

From a silk-producing village in rural China, up the corporate ladder in suburban America, and back again to the post-Maoist nouveaux riches of modern Shanghai, What We Were Promised explores the question of what we owe to our country, our families, and ourselves.

A gorgeous book! Deep-rooted family issues in a different culture from China to the US and Back make for an interesting story and the imagery is wonderful. A beautiful debut!

This novel is paced slowly and deliberately, building to a conclusion on the intersections of familial and romantic love. I was surprised by the depth from a debut.

I was hooked since the beginning for this one. There was a mystery or secrets that the characters were hiding and I wanted to unearth them. I was intrigued to follow them on their current path and to their journeys down memory lane. In a year that debuted so many amazing titles by Asian American writers this one does not disappoint. I think one of the main themes that have attracted me from these stories are their eloquence in transmuting the feelings and struggles of identity into universal themes. The fact that they are so respectful to their characters and allow us to look at their thoughts and insights are just a huge bonus. I hope to read more from Lucy Tan. You will not be disappointed by this story. This story explores so many themes that there is no way to not have a part of yourself relate to the characters and to their experiences relating to familial expectations, cultural ties and identity. I can't even imagine the feeling of not feeling at home neither in your birth place nor in the place where you've set root. I think this novel does a great job of exploring those feelings along with the multitude of other themes it exposes. Definitely full of character insight and thought provoking sentences that will leave you looking at the world a little differently in the end.

What We were Promised touches on family issues not always talked about in other cultures. Lucy Tan has written a beautiful debut novel!

I loved this book so much and have been recommending it everywhere! Including my summer reading guide and minimalist summer reading guide:

The guide doesn’t typically include books published after July 4, but this immersive debut which glides smoothly between cultures is way too good to leave out. After twenty years abroad, the Zhens return to their native China to take up residence among Shanghai’s nouveau riche. But deep unease lies behind the façade of their pampered lifestyle: husband Wei finds no satisfaction at work, wife Lina spends her days shopping and lunching, and both miss their daughter, who attends school in America. When Wei’s long-lost brother reappears, he stirs up a host of long-buried emotions, forcing Lina to revisit past choices she hid from her husband. A second story line follows Sunny, the Zhens housekeeper and nanny, who also faces difficult choices about what she wants from her friends, her family, and her future. The backdrop of contemporary Shanghai and a national festival highlights how the family embodies China’s current conflicts and complexities: rich vs poor, urban vs rural, old vs new values.

A compelling story of class, culture, regret, and anxiety about the road not taken.

I really enjoyed this subtle, delightful book about a family and the individuals intertwined in their lives. The characters are all interesting, compelling people. The writing is quietly very lovely.

A really thoughtful and moving take on immigration, from two perspectives that are underappreciated: a return migrant and an internal migrant.

I had heard so much about What We Were Promised and couldn't wait to pick it up. I absolutely love books about Chinese culture (Lisa See is one of my very favorite authors!) and I knew this book would appeal to my tastes. Though it gets off to a bit of a slow start, it didn't take too long for me to get sucked in to the Zhen family and Sunny.

What We Were Promised bounces back and forth between a few different characters, including Wei Zhen, a husband and father who moved his wife and daughter from America to Shanghai for his high-powered job at an ad agency; Lina Zhen, Wei's wife who is trying to adapt to suddenly being wealthy in China instead of working in America; Sunny, a housekeeper/nanny working for the Zhen family in their luxury apartment complex. When Wei's brother, Qiang, comes to visit them after having gone missing many years ago, there's potential for many secrets to come out.

The book is a serious but also entertaining series of case studies of how people of different socioeconomic lifestyles interact in a place where wealth and status is very important. I do think it was a little too slow-moving at times, but I feel this was likely purposeful on Tan's part as she wants readers to truly focus on each character and their feelings and interactions. I also would have loved more at the end of the book, but I can definitely say the ending made the characters and the story stick in my mind for quite a while. I can't wait to see what Tan comes out with next!

This wasn't for me. I didn't care for the writing style because it was all tell, no show, of both events and emotions and I gave up on it at 35%. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Tl;dr: An unflinching, gorgeously writtenlook at expat life through the view of a Chinese couple returning to China and the woman they hire to watch their daughter. You can be at home and yet never be there like you want to be.

What We Were Promised is exquisitely written and traces the consequences of leaving home, and how whether it's for another country or simply another place means that the gulf between what you knew and who you've become can make you a stranger to what you thought you'd always know, be it your future, your family, or even your own heart.

Through Lina, Sunny, Wei, and Quiang, Ms. Tan weaves a story that begins in the late 1980s and spans to the present, tracing how Lina and Wei left China for America, their return to Shanghai, and how the reunion with Wei's younger brother, Quiang, unfolds over the span of about a week. In that time, Sunny, who is a maid in the building where Lina and Wei live, is hired by Lina to be an Ayi, a sort of companion/nanny to their daughter, Karen.

China's culture was indelibly marked by Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the ripples of that are in What We Were Promised as well.

I think some readers may find it difficult to relate to Lina, but I loved her. She's a woman who is now a product of two cultures, but yearns for what she's lost--or rather, what she thinks she has.

Sunny was fascinating--a woman who yearns for more, even as she's unsure not if she can have it, but if she should, and if so, should she try? The last scene with her broke me more than a little.

Thought provoking and nuanced, this is the kind of novel that stays with you. Most definitely for fans of Ha Jin (especially his novel Waiting) and, I think for anyone who has ever yearned to return to somewhere or someone only to learn that nothing and no one is ever constant.

I did receive an ARC, but also own the book, and eagerly look forward to Ms. Tan's next work.

What We Were Promised looked so promising sitting on the NetGalley shelf. It’s a very well-written book.

All of the characters were seriously lacking in their interactions with each other. There wasn’t much tension between husband and wife, mother and daughter or boss and employee.

I think there was supposed to be tension between the brothers, and Lina and Qiang. Lina and Qiang were going to run off together 20 years ago but they didn’t. No one else knows their secret – not even Lina’s husband, Wei, who is also Qiang’s brother.

Qiang disappeared 20 years ago and has had no contact with his family since then. Lina wants to know what happened between them. I think she was hoping that he would come back for her.

Everything was set up for fireworks or a fight. There was hardly even a cross word. It’s great to have a civil discussion in real life but in a book, politeness doesn’t work out quite as well.

I wanted to like this book but it was a little bit boring. I guess I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars. It was not as entertaining as I had hoped it would be.



What We Were Promised on Amazon

I received an ebook from NetGalley in exchange for doing a review. All opinions are mine. Obviously.

Excellent. An enthralling story beautifully written. I was sucked in from the beginning and loved the illustration of the cultural divide that Tan explored in this book. The characters were compelling and I was hooked through the whole book.

Lucy is a wonderful writer and also teaches writing. We had a great conversation about this book on The Secret library podcast. It was fantastic getting to talk about her process and the experience of writing this book.

This book was exactly what I was hoping it would be. I could relate to all three narrators, and the story was truly heartwarming.

After having immigrated to the US from China, Lina, her husband Wei, and their daughter Karen are back in Shanghai as part of the new rich. When Qiang, Wei's long lost brother arrives on the scene, emotions flare and long buried secrets are revealed. The family housekeeper Sunny is a very observant family outsider who represents the changing modern China. This a complex family saga, East meets West meets East. What We Were Promised is an interesting story with a great plot that keeps the story moving. Characters are all very well developed and the writing is beautiful., It's a great first novel.

In an age when 'the immigrant experience' has never been so talked about or politicized, Lucy Tan's 'What We Were Promised," is the portrayal of a family that returns to Shanghai after a long absence, only to discover that the city has changed in unexpected ways. Wei, the family patriarch attempts to reconcile the city of his childhood with the one he sees now, while his wife Lina and their daughter Karen try to carve an identity of their own amidst lost loves and new challenges. Sunny, their housekeeper watches the family dynamic with the undisturbed silence of one who is used to knowing and keeping many secrets.
A missing ivory bracelet of Lina's will be a catalyst for this family, whose very different wishes and hopes may tear them apart or finally bring them together. Tan's prose is engaging and the plot a testament to the joys and heartbreaking of coming home.

Thank you to Little, Brown & Co. And Netgalley for the eARC of this book!
What We Were Promised follows a now wealthy Chinese family who have returned to China after a decade in the States. The story is also told from the perspective of their housekeeper turned ayi, Sunny, who came to Shanghai from a farming village.
This story explores what home is, and the lengths people will go to to help their family. I really appreciated Sunny’s perspective- she was trying to answer some of the same questions about home, and she provided a bit of grounding to the story.
If you like really well written family drama, you should definitely give What We Were Promised a look!

I really wanted to like this book but I just couldn't get into the story. It felt really slow at time. i was looking for a faster paced plot. This book is more character development which is not my go to type of book.

i think I came in with the expectation that this book would be comparable with Crazy Rich Asian's trilogy since it's set in Shanghai and the characters are rich but alas it's not a good comparison.

I ended up reading up to 20%.

In What We Were Promised, the opening prologue includes the Zhen family leaving China to move to the United States. When life does not turn out the way they had expected financially, they return to Shanghai several years later.

Next, we meet Sunny, a housekeeper working in a lavish high rise apartment in Shanghai. Immediately apparent are the class differences as a result of her occupation, as well as her home background.

Years later, the Zhen family moves back to China, where their money goes further, and Lina, the wife, no longer has to work. They make their home in the fancy Lanson Suites in Shanghai where they hire a housekeeper and nanny companion for their teen daughter. The nanny they hire is Sunny.

Wei, the husband and father, begins to doubt his status as a marketing strategist and wishes he had chosen something more prestigious. At the same time, Lina is now lonely and bored without a job to keep her busy. Qiang, Wei’s brother, mysteriously comes to visit, and there is an uncomfortable feeling both from Wei and Lina, with Sunny observing it all. Qiang has been on the lam for years and is associated with some dark activity, which forces Wei and Lina to confront the past, as much as they have tried to bury it. This is a novel of family and explores topics such as the appropriateness of arranged marriage, the necessity of love in marriage, and money and its role in happiness.

Overall, I found What We Were Promised to be a thought-provoking and beautifully written novel about cultural and familial expectations, and how those same expectations can unknowingly shape our lives. It is also a parable on those who have it all versus those who must work hard in order to have, and of course the lesson of just who is happier.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for the ARC. All opinions are my own.