Happy Families: The heart-warming and hilarious winner of Richard & Judy's Search for a Bestseller 2020

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A nice story, with the narrator and her grandfather being the most interesting characters - I would have liked it to be a little more 'in-depth'. I was thoroughly entertained and I wish Julie Ma every success with Happy Families and her future writing. I’d seen a bit of a buzz about Happy Families by Julie Ma recently, so I picked up a copy from Sainsbury’s. Why Amy has left her job, and why Ah Goong and Amy's father TC Li haven't spoken to each other in 30 years, are two of the main secrets the story centres around.

The descriptions of late nights in the takeaway should be familiar to many readers, as should the very British school fete. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives.

Shame really, as the source material was there for something that could have been heartwarming, if only there'd been more focus and a clearer idea of what the book wanted to say. The book certainly illustrated the closeness of Chinese family life and the expectations it puts on them but reading about their daily life and the secret that was obvious from early in the book just made the story too drawn out and light-weight. Each has a story to tell (with a gentle rippling of Cantonese and Welsh) and a mystery to reveal, as Amy gradually and lovingly unravels the secrets that surround her. Miss Josie Jump the jockey can't wait to gallop in a race like her mum, her brother and even her grandma, but everyone says she's too young. Julie Ma's descriptions of the Li family relationships are moving and comedic at times, and there's an ooze of charm and relatability to small village life found in the interactions with those around them.

I would have been interested to understand more about the experiences the first generation to arrive faced given they are now an accepted part of the community and the takeaway regarded as something of a local institution. Mr and Mrs Brick are builders, just like their mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers.There was a slight pull of wanting to know what the secrets were, but both "big reveals" were massively disappointing. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. There's a debate as to whether the takeaway can survive as it's no longer run by that generation of Hong Kongers, but now perhaps by immigrants from Mainland China. I must be losing my brain cells, found the second half hard to keep up with the people and their connections to each other. Registered address: Unit 5, Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, LE5 3EF, United kingdom.