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TITLE: The Fire Horse Girl
AUTHOR: Kay Honeyman
FORMAT: Digital ARC, 339 pages
According to the Chinese zodiac, girls born under the sign of the Fire Horse are destined to be everything a girl in China shouldn’t be. Willful, stubborn, and bold, Jade Moon seems to fulfill this prediction to the letter. She has never felt like anything but a burden and a curse to her family, an outsider in the village of her birth and with slim prospects for a happy future in her homeland. So when a stranger named Sterling Promise arrives to offer her father an opportunity to immigrate to the United States, Jade Moon finds herself drawn to the possibility of a new beginning. She could be someone else in America: a girl with the freedom to break the storm clouds hanging over her head since the day she was born. This deep desire for freedom and independence sparks a connection between Jade Moon and the clever, silver-tongued Sterling Promise — a connection that is severed by betrayal. Jade Moon arrives in 1923 San Francisco and is forced to find her own path, one that will require all of her passion and will to ensure survival.
I applied for an ARC of this book via NetGalley way back in October 2012, and didn’t think I would be receiving a copy since it released on January 1st and I hadn’t heard anything back yet. I was excited to find out that I was approved for an ARC earlier this week because I’ve been wanting to read this one very much. So, a big thank you to Scholastic for letting me read & review! If you’re a fan of Lisa See and appreciate a brave, strong-willed heroine, then you’ll probably enjoy it as much as I did.
Yes, Please:
The story is well written and well paced. I appreciated that Jade Moon was such a solidly defined character; she’s brash, headstrong, and has a fiery temper to match her zodiac sign. But she has a side to her that is also very fragile. She’s a dreamer at heart, possessed of high ideals beneath her tough exterior. And what she wants is something many girls can identify with: the freedom to be herself, instead of what the world wants her to be. The book’s setting is 1920′s China and San Francisco — a time of huge conflicts in immigration laws, but also a time of enduring expectations when it came to girls and young women. Jade Moon is expected to be docile and essentially silent in her native China, and the same is required of her when she arrives in America. There seems to be no place where she can be a woman both free and independent. Forced to dress as a man in order to conceal her identity, Jade Moon ends up carving a place for herself in a man’s world. But still, she can’t shake her dream of being Jade Moon, and no one else. She holds on to who she is. I loved that about her.
(Confession: while reading, I was totally bouncing around going OMG SHE’S LIKE 1920′s MULAN IT’S SO AWESOME)
(Don’t hate. As an Asian girl, you have no idea how much impact Mulan made on my life as Disney’s first Asian heroine. *cries*)
I liked that the book took so many twists and turns that weren’t immediately predictable. We follow Jade Moon from rural China to Angel Island, the western equivalent to Ellis Island. From there, we plunge into the dark underbelly of San Francisco’s Chinatown during the waning years of tong domination. The tongs at their most innocuous were simply groups of men sharing the same trade; at their worst and most dangerous, they were gangsters embroiled in illegal drug and human trafficking. I didn’t expect the book to go in this direction, and I liked learning about a point in history that I have little experience with. It’s a facet of immigration that isn’t often explored. As an immigrant myself, I could identify with Jade Moon’s wish to find a place for herself in this country.
I think, though, that what really won me over while reading this story was the growth in Jade Moon’s character and her extremely complicated relationship with Sterling Promise. I was thrilled to discover that there would be more between these two than just a standard cut and dry romance. You know from the beginning when they meet that there’s something there, but as the story unfolds, you start to wonder if they’ll ever be able to work anything out or if they’ll even see each other again. It may seem odd that I appreciate this uncertainty, but you have to understand that I like to be pleasantly surprised. I didn’t want something predictable for two people who were so compelling. I loved that they were so wrong for each other, and yet so very right. The author handled it brilliantly.
Not So Much:
Well, I kind of wish certain characters didn’t “coincidentally” appear everywhere Jade Moon went. I guess Chinatown is a small world though, so it would be plausible for Jade Moon to meet familiar faces at every corner. I think it might have added more depth if pivotal moments in the story didn’t have anything to do with people she’d already met, I guess this took away some of the realism for me. But it’s a minor complaint at best.
As an adult, I would have been fine with exploring darker themes in this story — the book tackles some really tough topics such as prostitution, but glosses over them at best. I’m not saying I wanted more blood, sex, or violence, but I wouldn’t have been bothered if there was more because it would have added more dimension to the story for me. The dangers would have been more real and immediate rather than a lingering menace in the background.
I was disappointed that Harry’s character was not explored further. True, I was extremely glad that the love triangle I thought I saw brewing on the horizon did not, in fact, happen… but there was so much I wanted to know about Harry, both during and after the story. The same goes for Neil, a character I really liked and whose past I wanted to know more about.
But I guess my biggest complaint about this book isn’t even really a legitimate complaint, or any kind of criticism really — and I think that’s a good thing. What I really wanted from The Fire Horse Girl, once I turned the final page, was to know more. I wish I could find out what happened beyond the happy ending. And I feel like that’s a great thing to complain about when it comes to a book, to want more of the characters and their stories.
RATING: 4/5
Fans of Lisa See and Amy Tan will enjoy this, as well as anyone interested in the history of immigration to the U.S. The heroine is a likeable, believable strong female lead and the story is paced well. The story is well-paced and extremely readable. I recommend this one!
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About Paola
Paola is a teacher, blogger, and book devourer currently living in Las Vegas, NV. She has an unhealthy obsession with popcorn, office supplies, and Target.
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