Aiyi Shao is a young heiress and the owner of a formerly popular and glamorous Shanghai nightclub. Ernest Reismann is a penniless Jewish refugee driven out of Germany, an outsider searching for shelter in a city wary of strangers. He loses nearly all hope until he crosses paths with Aiyi. When she hires Ernest to play piano at her club, her defiance of custom causes a sensation. His instant fame makes Aiyi's club once again the hottest spot in Shanghai. Soon they realize they share more than a passion for jazz—but their differences seem insurmountable, and Aiyi is engaged to another man. Well, I’ve already written I’m not a great fan of World War 2 fiction. But if you are, then chances are good you’ll like The Last Rose of Shanghai. Especially if you want something from outside of Europe. Jewish people certainly had a terrible time of things in the 1930s and 1940s. So, if you like stories where the Jewish people don’t all end up dead in a concentration camp, this book might look good to you. Another attraction is the setting in Shanghai. In part, books exist to take readers to unfamiliar places, and 1930s Shanghai will be unfamiliar to most readers. There's only one Japanese guy who keeps harassing them almost throughout the book. Seriously, only one. Every time. No matter what the scene or location.

My thanks to The Last Rose of Shanghai and NetGalley for the DRC of “Lake Union Publishing”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. A skippable book. Read if you must, move on if you can. (Also note, this is an outlier review. So feel free to ignore all I said and give this a go. A majority of readers loved this book.) Shanghai. Twenty-year-old Aiyi is the owner of a successful night club. Rich and beautiful, she appears to have firm control over her life, but she knows her future path. She is engaged to another rich Chinese, and she knows she'll be expected to give up her business and settle into the life of a glam wife. When a young German Jewish refugee named Ernest Reismann joins her club as a pianist, her life changes, her dreams change. But can she change her future, risking it for an impoverished refugee who'll never be accepted by her people? Add to this the increasingly unstable local environment, thanks to the Japanese occupation. How will life turn out for Aiyi and Ernest?

The story comes to us from the first person perspective of Aiyi and the third person perspective of Ernest, with brief interludes from Aiyi in 1980. A passion for Chinese history shines in the fictional works of Weina Dai Randel, who earned praise for her award-winning historical duology -- The Moon in the Palace and Empress in the Moon -- spotlighting the epic rise of China’s only female emperor, Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). She has since turned her attention to the World War II era in her forthcoming book The Last Rose in Shanghai, which will be published on Dec 1. Set in 1940 under the shadow of Japanese occupation, the novel brings to life Shanghai’s history as a haven for Jewish refugees as well as its dynamic jazz scene, all through a heart-rending love story. Aiyi is a young Chinese woman from a prominent family who has arranged her upcoming marriage to Cheng, a controlling man with traditional values. She defies Chinese customs by owning her own jazz club, One Hundred Joys Nightclub. With Cheng’s opposition and a wartime economy, Aiyi struggles to keep her club from failing. Ernest, a pianist, and his young sister arrive in Shanghai from Berlin, destitute and hungry. With so much antagonism against the refugees, no one will hire a foreigner, let alone a Jew. After Ernest gives Aiyi an audition playing her favorite song, “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” she takes a chance in hiring him, hoping her patrons will overlook who he is and allow his piano to enthrall and entertain. Ernest, after suffering under Nazis in Germany, is subjected to brutality from the club’s patrons, a jealous Cheng, and cruel Japanese soldiers. Ernest and Aiyi find solace and happiness together, but that changes when they are separated after Germany persuades the Japanese to take action against the Jews. One of the chapters contains a few paragraphs in excruciating detail about Japanese torture of prisoners; this is very gruesome to read. What bugs me is that this sequence has absolutely no bearing on the main plot. It's just that one character goes to that location, we get a few paragraphs of horrifying information, and the character is out. What was the point of that segment? Just to create some kind of impact of the brutality? It felt so out of place!

This should have felt like a rollercoaster but because I never connected with the characters, the exciting and tragic moments didn’t have any impact on me. It felt very long and I started to skim about half way through. I loved, loved, loved this book. I have been completely immersed in wartime Shanghai. It has been an educational, emotional, rollercoaster of a read.

There are quite a few metaphorical bits that seem to take inspiration from Chinese sayings. These were thought-provoking. But as the rest of the book was straightforward in its writing, these felt forced in.