All the Flowers in Shanghai by Duncan Jepson William Morrow
There's a good novel in this book, but first you need to unpack it.
Once you get past the soppy romance title and the cover (with its simpering 1930s Shanghai poster girl in front of a lotus pond) you encounter a novel in the form of a memoir of a woman whose struggles and heartbreak mirror the turbulent years of China's modern history. Sound familiar?
The plot hinges on a highly melodramatic lost-and-found child theme. It starts in the garden of the heroine's innocent childhood in Shanghai, and ends in the starvation and terror of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
At the back of the book there are discussion questions. There is a short memoir of the author's Chinese mother, which includes his views on the cultural pressures that bear down on Chinese women to this day. Finally and educationally, there's a list of suggestions for further reading.
The good news is that in the midst of all this, there is an interesting, moving, and quite ambitious novel. It is, yes, Shanghai in the 1930s. As a child, Feng frequents an idyllic garden with her beloved grandfather, and falls for the son of a humble seamstress. Her glamorous older sister is engaged to marry the son of the rich Sang family, but when she dies, her parents offer Feng as a substitute. Still a teenager, Feng is married to the unprepossessing Sang Xiongfa.