The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo

The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo

2012 • 85 pages

Ratings3

Average rating3.3

15

A cute little story that left me a bit underwhelmed.

Told in the form of Jade's diary, what I missed the most in this story was a sense of place and time. The language is really rather pretty but if the blurb and the titles of each diary entry hadn't said so, I would have had no idea that this was set in the 1920s.

What I did like was Jade's view of the world and relationships. She is a practical woman who doesn't fuss around with romance much. Telling you more would be spoiling, so I'll keep it at that.

I enjoyed this well enough, I liked Jade and the way she told her story. In the end, things fell into place a bit too neatly and there wasn't enough build-up for the romance, at least for my taste (then again, I either go for the doorstopper-kind of romance stories or for bickering couples, so I'm hard to please).

A bit more drama or action or just problems for our heroine to overcome would have made this more interesting. But there is no doubt that Zen Cho can write, and I'll be glad to try something else she's written.

September 1, 2014