Red Oblivion by Leslie Shimotakahara

Publisher: Dundurn
Publication Date:  September 21st 2019
Pages: 304

Jill Lau, who lives in Canada just like her sister Celeste, receives a call from Hong Kong one day from her dad's housekeeper Rina that he has fallen gravely ill and is in hospital,Jill and Celeste travel immediatialy from Toronto to Hong Kong to see their father probably for the last time.
Rina tells them that for the last couple of weeks, a few mysterious letters and photograps arrived in the mail. The sender of the letter blackmails their father to send money so their son can afford to go to college, this because according to them, they owe him some favor. 

This is the first link in a chain of events that led Jill and Celeste to learn more about their father's past, in which he escaped Ghuangzou in China during the cultural revolution to find a better live in Hong Kong as a business owner.Someone from the old days has returned to haunt him — exposing the terrible things he did to survive and flee one of the most violent periods of Chinese history, reinvent himself, and make the family fortune. Can Jill piece together the story of her family’s past without sacrificing her father's love and reputation?

This is a an entertaining book that gives the reader a nice glance into the lives of two sisters, they are strained with each other, and also both strained with their ninety four year old father. When they discover that the succes of his peanut oil business is due to dark and to unscrupulous dealings during the Cultural Revolution, both women have to make decisions, especially when they learn about the money-demanding threat letters.
Jill travels to China to find this specific person who send them, this is also the part you expect the most from as a reader, this could have been the start of a nice mystery pasrt in the book, and at some points in the story it was, but the further unraveling and end where a bit thin, I truly expected more from this part. Further on though, the characters where nice, but this book's main selling point is the setting; it is a nice mix of the modern glitzy and expensive Hong Kong, versus the China during the Cultural Revolution, and the travel of Jill to China, where she finds herself in the middle of an old hutong part of a town. So if you are interested in books set in Asia and in this case, China in particular, this is the book for you!!