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

4 stars. This book was a Richard and Judy Book Club (UK) Selection for Summer 2021 and that's how I came to have it on my radar. Amy is a young woman from a Chinese family living in Wales and working in the family restaurant and living with her grandfather. But she once had dreams of leaving the Welsh town and making a life for herself apart from her family. Something happened and she moves back home and resumes her old life. Her grandfather is someone she loves but she doesn't understand why he and her father TC have not spoken to each other in years despite living and working together. Neither will tell anyone in the family why they fell out. Things change. Her parents move into a bungalow and it's Amy and her grandfather. But when he collapses in the street, Amy decides it's time to try to find out the secrets in her family. This was a quirky and warm read and I enjoyed it.

The story is simply wickedly funny .

It was great fun reading Happy Families, and visiting the Yau Sum takeaway in small town Wales. The author brings the characters in the family and the town to life with her well-observed depictions and humour. 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.

this was our monthly book club read and not one from choice. 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. Not for me i’m afraid..

I finished this book quickly waiting for the big reveal... but after we discovered the big secret, everyone just carried on with their lives and seemed quite content - so why the big build up? 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'.