Harrowing ... Beautiful tale ... Le did not give the stereotypical romance story; rather, she made a unique and personalized tale just for them, one that stood out to me in quality and content. She did not shy away from adding details of their fights, disagreements, and even possible separation, adding to the authenticity ... The story of her agony is one that will have you weeping on her behalf ...
Le does an exceptional job capturing all the stages of grief ... Overall, Invisible Orphan was an exceptional read.
A moving story ... The author includes so many fascinating details and descriptions of food, travel, and family life that the story almost seems like a work of non-fiction. I loved that she was able to feel at home in Asia, give tantalizing descriptions of recipes, and also describe a typical home in middle America ... I like that the story was told from Viv’s perspective, but I wish the author had used her name more often ... The author created two characters that I cared about, and that kept me turning the pages to find out how the story would turn out. I finished Invisible Orphan knowing that I would love to read more stories by Jade Moon Le.
Unflinching...a powerful recounting ... A meditation on memory ... The descriptions of nature and geography in Invisible Orphans are vibrant and compelling ... The settings of the various scenes...are often portrayed more strongly than the characters who feature in them, particularly the numerous supporting players who pop up to relate something expositional and then quickly fade away. The structure of the story also makes it difficult to fully grasp the characters, as the sudden scene endings and frequent time shifts sometimes result in a lack of character depth and an inability to focus on key issues, even particularly poignant ones. Still, as a whole Invisible Orphans is a captivating story ... Vivi is an absorbing main character and her all-too-human struggles...draw the reader in.
I really enjoyed the descriptions of the beautiful scenery in China. The author does a wonderful job of describing the Yangtze River and the immense mountains and large gorges that surround it ... One of the things I had a hard time with while reading this book is that the story would skip timelines ... This made the book a bit difficult to follow. There are also many side characters ... The stories would often go on a tangent ... The story was a powerful one ... I would have loved the book to have read a bit more smoothly in terms of chronology, however. Invisible Orphans is a heartfelt story that will make its readers think about life and the good and bad we all experience.
Affecting ... Strong descriptions of place enhance the sweetness of their early love, and the author’s choice to add Chinese characters and meaning to the Pinyin spelling of Chinese words adds a pleasing dimension to the differences the couple are bridging ... There are shortcomings in the telling: a confusing timeline, background character work that could have been left out, and a static quality ... The novel loses tension as the strands of yarn work loose ... [Le] delivers a finely detailed depiction of love and marriage, revealed at last to Vivi and us.
Potent but uneven ... The narrative amounts to a drawn-out meditation on grief, and the prose is, at times, elegant in its heartbreaking simplicity ... Le frankly and thoroughly delves into the impact of mental illness and suicide ... But these fail to distract from structural issues such as confusing time jumps and abrupt chapter endings. It’s a strong effort, but one that unfortunately doesn’t quite cohere.
