Pearl Moon ANNOTATION
Photographer Allison Whitaker has embarked on a grand journey to exotic Hong Kong. Maylene Kwan is the architect of the Jade Palace. As the Palace begins to take shape, the lives of these two gifted, beautiful women--and their men--collide in powerful ways.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Publishers Weekly called it a "vivid narrative" with "glamorous settings." Booklist said it's a "can't-miss combination of multigenerational romance and international suspense, financial rivalry and family secrets." Now updated in this tenth-anniversary edition, Pearl Moon is the book thousands of readers have been asking for!
It's the year before Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese control — a year of danger, betrayal . . . and romance. Allison Whitaker and Maylene Kwan, two sisters who don't know of each other's existence, meet there for the first time. They also meet two extraordinary men: the aristocratic and powerful James Drake, developer of luxury hotels, with whom Allison falls in love, and Sam Coulter, the Texan builder who captures Maylene's heart.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Contemporary Hong Kong is the exotic backdrop for Stone's (Happy Endings) romantic story of two sisters separated by fate but reunited in the construction of a sumptuous hotel. As Maylene Kwan lavishes her architectural skills on the Jade Palace's design, she skirmishes with its builder, an arrogant chauvinist who has more than a business interest in Maylene. Elsewhere, photographer Allison Whitaker is handed a golden opportunity to escape her smothering Texas family-an assignment to decorate a new Asian hotel with her murals. (That the hotel is the Jade Palace, and that Allison and Maylene are the long-separated siblings, will hardly surprise readers.) While Maylene struggles with her conflicted past and romantic present, Allison is falling for the hotel's developer, who is still consumed with thoughts of his dead wife (the Jade Palace will be a monument to her memory). Lurking in the shadows, meanwhile, is a madman set on destroying the Jade Palace and all who stand in his way. Stone's vivid narrative and glamorous settings energize this melodramatic tale, though her somewhat superficial characters seldom strike any real sparks. 100,000 first printing. (Apr.)
Library Journal
Pearl Moon begins with an account of a young Chinese girl and an American flyer on leave from the Vietnam War and their week of wondrous love. Because of their different backgrounds, they conclude that a relationship is impossible. A female child is born of this union. The flyer returns home, marries, takes over the family business, celebrates the birth of his baby daughter, and dies. On to the present day, when two girls meet in Hong Kong in connection with the building of Hong Kong's newest luxury hotel, the Jade Palace. They soon discover that they share the same father, our flyboy. They each meet the other parent; find true loves; survive a car bombing, an evil villain, and a typhoon; and live happily ever after. This is light and fluffy formula reading in the vein of Danielle Steel and Sandra Brown. If you have trouble keeping these authors on the shelf, then this makes a good purchase.-Dawn L. Anderson, North Richland Hills P.L., Tex.
BookList - Mary Carroll
A can't-miss combination of multigenerational romance and international suspense, financial rivalry and family secrets, "Pearl Moon" places its multiculturally beautiful, fabulously talented, star-crossed lovers in Hong Kong as the city-state approaches 1997 and the end of British rule. Handsome English developer James Drake is obsessed by the need to avenge his aristocratic wife's murder, but he still takes care of business, hiring Marlboro Man Sam Coulter to build his posh new hotel, the Jade Palace. The hotel's young architect, Maylene Kwan, a native of Hong Kong, is estranged from her mother (whose fashion business gives the novel its title) and hates her father (a Vietnam-era U.S. naval officer she's never met). Meanwhile, the Texas photographer Drake retains to capture Hong Kong vistas for the walls of his magnificent new hostelry is that former naval officer's "other" daughter, Allison Whitaker. Readers who haven't spotted the villain by midbook should take a reading comprehension course, and anyone who doubts that the appropriate twosomes (including a pair of middle-aged, multiethnic, long separated lovers) will get together by the final page isn't paying attention. Still, with nearly three million copies of Stone's nine previous novels in print, and Fawcett planning a 100,000-copy first printing and a strong ad and publicity campaign, libraries can expect "Pearl Moon" to expand Stone's loyal readership.
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