Happy Family by Wendy Lee

Usually I don't like to read books about Chinese immigrant women and their families. All the stories seem the same - the families have a Formica table in their kitchen, the mothers hold deep, dark secrets about their lives in China. The daughters have this moment of realizing that their mothers hold this unspoken grief and are actually deep sources of strength.

Anyway! I picked up this book because it seemed like it might be a bit different from the above formula. And it actually was.

Hua is an immigrant from China. She's in her 20s and lives in New York City. She works first as a waitress and then as the nanny of a Chinese baby adopted by a white couple.

This book touches on a lot of different topics: adoption, immigration, socioeconomics, expectations, grief, finding a new life. I found the book to be gripping, yet light, and just complex enough without being too heavy. There were moments of depth in Hua's observations and then some more just honest details that were true, but heartbreaking. The story just seemed to work.