This is not an unmitigated five-star review, but any time I cry at the end of a book I feel obligated to give it five stars for moving me so completely. I rarely cry when reading, so when an author can move me to tears, I have to respect them. Before the last quarter or so, this book was sitting at a comfortable four stars, so my emotional outburst did not cause a sudden reversal of my opinions; it was just a supremely pretty bow on an already pretty nice package.

The book follows the lives of two high school lovers, separated by a fateful decision due to the whims of history, only to be reunited in their eighties. The pair grew up in Shanghai and the various occupations, revolutions, de-colonizations, and immigrations send the two down very different life paths, trying to make the most of the lives they've been given. Their choices often matter little when standing face-to-face with the force of history, but they have to keep making decisions nonetheless. This was definitely the most relatable part of the book to me; not that I have lived in a war zone or grown up in an occupied city but that we are constantly making decisions without knowing even a fraction of all the factors involved. From our point of view, we can look back in time and ask why someone did something at some time because "couldn't they see what would happen soon?" Well, maybe they didn't. Or maybe they did and wanted to live in denial. Or maybe they did and just wanted to taste freedom and happiness before everything came crashing down on them.

One of the conceits of the book is that the story is being told in two timelines; Suchi is telling her story chronologically while Haiwen is telling his story backward. For the musical theater nerds out there, you've probably already spotted this is the same narrative structure as The Last Five Years. Unfortunately, the musical pulls this off much more effectively. I'm left wondering if Chen is familiar with the show because there are some neat narrative solutions there that would've helped the novel quite a bit. Ultimately the dual time-line point of view narration mostly served to just structurally reinforce the pair's differing life philosophies rather than serving a narrative function, unlike in The Last Five Years.

I've made you wade through my other yapping to what you really want to know: Why did I cry? An epilogue I didn't see coming that is told from another point of view entirely. Both characters are burdened by the guilt of who they've left behind, and the end of the book leaves us with some small balm for that wound. I won't say more than that so you also can have the unique pleasure of feeling pain for fictional characters.