I enjoyed the writing style and wanted to like this book more than I did. It was a little too slow moving for me. Usually that would not be an issue, as some books are more of a journey than others and I can appreciate that. I did have trouble getting "into" the portions that centered around Aleksandr. It took me until well halfway into the book to gain enough interest in the book to want to finish and find out what happens with Irina. I can tell that this author has the ability to weave an interesting story and to write intelligently but what I didn't love was was how the style had a touch of being almost forcibly descriptive. Everything seemed to have/require an obvious, uninteresting adjective or adverb ahead of it. It became tiresome and eventually irritated me. I did like the connection between her childhood with her father and the game of chess. I liked how chess was the thread that connected all the facets of the story. At the end of the day, it was an entertaining enough read that I would possibly recommend it to certain friends.

The story sucked me in (to a degree) from two different angles. The saga of Cate's life falling apart and needing to start over is what drew me in as the summer read I was craving. It was light-hearted, dramatic enough to keep me interested, and it featured some fun characters (her love-to-hate daughter-in-law and her quirky aunt). Prior to reading the book, I was not familiar with Porgy and Bess--not at all actually. I felt I was kind of clued in to why it's considered an important play, because Cate brought it up several times, but it still didn't interest me fully. Something a little more along the lines of "mainstream" history would be better, so I could feel a little more connection to it and better appreciate its significance. I, for one, enjoyed the back and forth with the "flashbacks", because it at least tied Dottie and DuBois into the story. The end was disappointing and cheesey.

I can tell that Ruiyan Xu has a knack for words. Her prose creates a pleasurable read. While I can appreciate the message she is trying to create with the storyline (isolation created by language barriers, inter-personal relationships, communicating without the right words, etc.), the plot was predictable and often cheesey. It didn't read as believable when Li Jing loses his fluency in Chinese. It read as a bad sitcom. I look forward to more of Ruiyan Xu's books, but I hope that she doesn't try so hard the next time. I hope she lets the story develop and doesn't try so hard to shape it in a way that doesn't read smoothly.

I really wanted to thoroughly enjoy this book! Instead I only got about halfway there. I loved how the story was told through the eyes of the old witch, and how it weaved in the lives of the children. The writing style gave it a fairy-tale/folk-tale feel that drew me in, but the story jumped around in a way that didn't feel cohesive. Sometimes jumping around can add to a story line, but in this case it took away from it. Not 5 stars, but an interesting and different read.