Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating, unreliable narrator
Review: I give this book high marks not for the objective truthfulness of the story, which I think other reviewers here rightly question, but for the power of Mah's presentation. Her story is completely subjective; Mah has no gift for climbing under the skins of others or seeing life through their eyes. What she tells is most definitely her own story, but she tells it without self awareness or insight. The overall effect is one of a feather in a hurricane. There's no moment where she stops to look within or analyze; she simply blows madly along the currents of her own emotion and need. Mah is driven by the ghosts of her childhood, in particular by the love she never received from her extremely wealthy parents or her siblings. Because she never really reaches any resolution (the ending attempts to do so, but it's not convincing) or achieves any self awareness, the book comes across as more of a tool to get widespread sympathy than a means to exorcise her ghosts. This is the book's ultimate disappointment, and it's very unfortunate, because the story itself is highly compelling and Mah herself tells it with gusto. But I can't say that the book is a failure, even though the author herself disappoints. "Falling Leaves" is a fascinating glimpse into the thoughts of a powerful, needy woman with an interesting past. It's well worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: good book with a few flaws
Review: I liked this book because of the uplifting message (the author rose above adversity in the form of psychological neglect); the way each chapter began with an insightful Chinese proverb; and the author's sharp eye for detail. On the negative side, the author makes awkward transitions between sociopolitical chapters and more personal chapters, which could have been better integrated (for example, history and autobiography could be blended together in a single chapter rather than being relegated to separate chapters). Also, the stepmother's actions were often difficult to justify, but that may have been due to her unreasonable personality. The section relating to the parents' wills is the weakest in the book; the author protests that she is unmotivated by greed, but witnessing her anxiety over the wills, the reader might question her. In summary, I would say that the author was mostly unmotivated by greed, since she is giving all the royalties from her sales to a Chinese foundation modeled on the Rhodes Scholarship foundation. All in all, the book is worth reading and the author comes across as an admirable person.
Rating: 
Summary: Whining At Its Worst
Review: This book was a disappointment. I received it as a gift. The title led me to believe it would be a memoir of a girl, an only child, growing up in China during a time when male children were desired and female children considered a burden. I couldn't have been more wrong. Instead this book deals with one woman's dysfunctional family and her role in that family. The writer suffered at the hands of her father and step-mother and felt more unwanted than her siblings. I found it to be self-pitying rubbish. Reading it was a chore rather than a pleasure. In reality she suffered far less than several of her siblings. She wasn't "married off" and didn't live in main land China during the Cultural Revolution like her sister nor did she get "stuck" in the family business earning next to nothing like two of her brothers. Instead she was sent to England for a top class education paid for by her father. An education that provided her with a solid future in a country of her choice. The book did give some good historical information about China but not nearly enough. It only skimmed the surface of pretty much every issue brought up. It is the story of a family with some real "control" issues. However, the main character endured a lot less than many children do. Many children who don't grow up to write books whining about it. She did have an unhappy childhood but I found it difficult to care. I quickly grew tired of reading about her making the same mistakes over and over and never seeming to learn from them. She made no attempt to analyze her behavior past claiming that she just wanted to be loved. I didn't buy this at all. After her own experiences and after witnessing the treatment her aunt and grandfather received from her father and step-mother she should have known there was no love there to be had. I would recommend instead, "The White-Haired Girl : Bittersweet Adventures of a Little Red Soldier" by Jaia Sun-Childers, Douglas Childers and "Red Azalea" by Anchee Min
Rating:
Summary: Dignity and courage
Review: I didn't read all the reviews, but the first ones missed what I see as the point of the story. This child seemed to have an inborn sense of dignity and courage. Her powerful genetic heritage - the wonderful Grand Aunt who founded the Women's Bank, her Ye Ye (grandfather), her loving Aunt Baba encouraged her to study hard and make something of herself outside the family. She was treated abusively by her stepmother and father because she refused to grovel to them, which her other siblings did, with the exception of her kind brother, James. The story is not just about a "poor little rich girl" who survived emotional abuse and deprivation, but about a human being who somehow knew that, bottom line, what matters is surviving with an inner core of Self intact, clean and dignified.
Rating: 
Summary: Take the time to read this
Review: Despite what some have said about this book in the review section, this is an excellent book. I was almost brought to tears when Adeline recounted her troubled childhood. Ultamately, this book is about a child's struggle for the one thing money cannot buy. Love. Several people who reviewed this didn't like the book because she was rich and had all her basic needs provided for growing up. True she was lucky enough not to have been one of those babies wrapped in a newspaper and left for dead, or one of the children caught and sold into prostitution like so many other unlucky Chinese girls. The point is that all she wanted was love and acceptance from her family, even her stepmother who treated her like dirt, and she became a success in spite of that. Even after becomming a success she still wanted to feel loved and accepted by her parents and did all she could to try and achieve it. The fact that her parents where rich and she turned out to be well off herself has nothing to do with the story when you break it down to its simplest componants. She was the youngest daughter in a Chinese family in the early 1900 peroid of China where men were westerners and Chinese men were considered far superior to Chinese women. That was one strike against her. Her mother died from giving birth to her causing her to be looked down upon even more. Second strike. Her father remaried a woman who wanted nothing to do with her newly inherited step children. In spite of this and all her hardships and troubles she encountered, she made it, that's all that matters, and that story, which is beautifly written and will touch your heart, is what makes this a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Poor little rich girl
Review: I was extremely disappointed in this novel, and I can't imagine Mah getting much sympathy from those Chinese who really suffered through the political upheavals or the denial of females' rights. She was always fed well, never had to work physically hard a day in her life, and was granted a world class education as well as the freedom to leave for a future of her own choosing. This was not the case for many Chinese girls who truly can be called "unwanted" and who were sold into slavery or left for dead. Mah seems a bit whiney to me -- the poor little rich girl who had to walk to school and didn't get any pocket money. By the end of the novel I was thoroughly disgusted with her account of how her father's estsate "dwindled" to 30 million dollars. DWINDLED! Money, in fact, seemed rather important to Mah throughout since she mentioned writing large "cheques" for people all the time, complained about her aunt being reduced to one maid, and was so concerned about her cold father's and hated stepmother's wills. Spare me!
Rating:
Summary: Get ready for tears!
Review: I bought the book because I'm always interested in what Chinese people have to say in books. My favourites being Amy Tan and Jung Chang, I thought I'd give Adeline Yen a try. Her story is very touching and I must've wondered for days on end how her father could treat her like that. Incredible. I'm glad for her that she put everything on paper, maybe a better way to put it all behind her and move on. I agree with other reviewers that the Chinese sayings were very original.
Rating: 
Summary: Memoirs
Review: Being of Chinese descent and a female child to boot, I felt compelled to read the point of view of a "sister". The book was quick moving and mimicked what my grandmother told me as a child that little girls were not as good as little boys. Adeline clarified that was true. I was a little dismayed about how her life came to be as an adult. Yes, I was proud that she excelled and was able to overcome the childhood hardships. But, I felt she had no compassion to continue her relationship with her siblings as an adult. In my family, I was raised with the idea that family sticks together - especially siblings. To this day, though we argue and don't talk to each other for a few weeks at a time, we maintain a close relationship. Guess the saying blood is thicker than water is true. Overall, a good book and worthy of reading.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent autobiography. Touching.
Review: I loved this book. What attracted me to it in the beginning was the title. I was curious to what it meant. Although I saw the treatment of Adeline, and her siblings, as horrendous, I could see, through the way she wrote, why they continued to stay loyal to their parents. Striving for acceptance causes people to do unusual, in the eyes of others, things. Brava Adeline Yen Mah for telling your story. I loved the used of the Chinese sayings. It added to the authencity of the autobiography.
Rating:
Summary: "Falling Leaves"
Review: While ultimately disappointing, I will never forget this book for its fascinating panorama of China's 20th Century turmoil(European extraterritoriality, Japanese occupation, World War II, the Communist takeover, Hong Kong's metamorphosis etc)and its effect on ordinary Chinese citizens. This alone is worth the price. Many excellent books can arise out of topics only lightly touched on by Dr. Mah's memoirs. I relished the glimpses her book gave of British(and American)racism towards Asians, the links between mainland and overseas Chinese(much more extensive and detailed than I would have thought the Communist government would have allowed) and occupied China under the Japanese. What I disliked, intensely, was the lack of clarifying details. Was or was not her son physically abused by her first husband? How, exactly, did Lydia and Samuel blackmail her parents? If Dr. Mah went to such unbelievably extreme lengths to win her parents' love as an adult, what happened to that wonderfully willful tram-fare-rejecting headstrong child who, alone among her siblings, stood up to them? The reaction I wanted from Dr. Mah came,not from her, but from Susan in a glorious confrontation with her mother.
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