Hi friends, happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all having a good week so far. Today I’m posting my review of Jamie Chai Yun Liew’s novel, Dandelion.

This book was long-listed for Canada Reads 2023.

Dandelion by: Jamie Chai Yun Liew: When Lily was eleven years old, her mother disappeared; left her family and life, never to be heard of again. Years later Lily is becoming a mother for the first time and all she can think about is the kind of mother she’ll be as thoughts of the mother who abandoned her start to surface. This leads Lily to search, not only for her mother, but to search for a culture she’d shunned out for the majority of her life. This novel was short, but it sure did pack a punch. Leaning heavily on generational trauma, mother-daughter relationships, and questioning your identity in a world that can often times be cruel. This also dealt deeply on citizenship and statelessness, a topic that this reader isn’t too familiar with, but it made for an educational as well as an appreciative read. This started really heavy and for the most part the plot was emotionally heavy throughout. The pacing was done just right because the reader had no problems flipping the pages wanting to find out what would happen next. They really liked the pace in which Lily goes to look for her mother; it’s not done so fast that it felt rushed, but it also wasn’t drawn out so that it felt like an endless crusade – it was the perfect length. The reader wasn’t prepared for how this was going to end, they truly didn’t see that ending coming, from both her mother or her auntie; it was like two gut punches, one after the other. But it felt like it needed to happen that way to get the closure that Lily needed. Lily as a character was so well developed, she was strong yet she had so many flaws and watching her grow and learn to adapt was really beautiful to see. Her relationship with all the other characters was really well done because they weren’t perfect they were complicated and as she navigated through them as she changed and grew was nice to see. All the characters in this felt so dynamic and complex; none of them were black and white, they were all grey in their motives and reasoning’s and that is what really worked for this story. If all the characters had been so clear cut, then the plot wouldn’t have worked. Characters had their own causes for why they did things that made sense to them, even if it didn’t make sense to others around them. It definitely made things interesting and true to real life. For a debut this was phenomenally done; it created a space for Chinese Canadians to feel seen and as a reader who isn’t Chinese, but is Canadian, it was an informative read that opened up a part of Canada they wouldn’t have known before reading. This was well written and told, highly recommended.