Kate Zeng

I received this book through the GoodReads First Reads giveaway program.

A single mom with a dead end but with a good heart finds a Prada bag filled with money. This discovery leads her to her dreams.

This book started off with so much promise. It starts off with the main character I (I don't think we ever learn her name) having a hum drum day and then she discovers a huge bag of money! Unlike a typical chick lit book, she spends about $2000 on frivolous things and then feels bad about it. She show more then decides to invest the money in CDs and...well, I will leave that as a surprise. She also spends the book worried about where the money came from. Sounds exciting, right? I don't read books for this much realism.

The back of the book clearly states that this book is not a romantic fairy tale. This is a book about a woman who gets the money to solve her problems, not a guy. The problem is that money can't solve all your problems either. Money can definitely solve a lot of problems, but driving off into the sunset with a stack of cash works just as well as driving off with the guy (both can run out on you).

One last concern about this book: the typos. Throughout the book there are typos. They mainly involve using the wrong verb tense or the wrong preposition. This book did not appear to be a galley, but it may be.

Let's end this review on a positive note. One thing that I enjoyed was the protagonist's voice. It was fun and sounded like a real person. show less

Disclosure: I received a free copy of All the Gold in China by Kate Zeng courtesy of the author, via GoodReads First Reads.

All the Gold in China tells the story of the China's Communist Revolution, through the eyes of an interlocking set of characters, but mainly focusing on Jong Lin, the aide and adopted son of General Han. Jong is mainly a passive narrator, in the style of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, and his own story does
not become particularly compelling until close to the end of show more the narrative. The other characters are almost entirely selfishly motivated, by greed for either money or for power, so they are difficult to connect with. The plot gets off to a very slow start, and then after an unrealistic climax, the ending tapers off as slowly as the beginning. Despite the length of the novel and its drawn-out denouement, there are still questions left unanswered.

Throughout this novel, the sentence structure is simplistic, and other than where the action is fast-paced, this makes the narrative somewhat stilted. The number of typographical and grammatical errors, although not so overwhelming as to hamper the story's readability, are nevertheless glaringly noticeable and unfortunate in a published volume. All the Gold in China could have used additional editing for linguistic style and narrative flow. show less