White Gardenia cover art

White Gardenia

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

White Gardenia

By: Belinda Alexandra
Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
Try Premium Plus free

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $24.99

Buy Now for $24.99

About this listen

 Beginning in a small village on the Chinese-Russian border in the final days of World War II, White Gardenia tells the story of a mother and daughter separated by war. In a district of the city of Harbin, a haven for white Russian families since Russia's Communist revolution, Alina Kozlova must make a heartbreaking decision if her only child, Anya, is to live. White Gardenia sweeps across cultures and continents, from the glamorous nightclubs of Shanghai to the harshness of Cold War Soviet Russia in the 1960s, from a desolate island in the Pacific Ocean to a new life in post-war Australia. Both mother and daughter must make sacrifices, but is the price of survival too high? Most importantly of all, will they ever find each other again?©2002 Belinda Alexandra (P)2003 Bolinda Publishing Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction China War Russia

Critic Reviews

"Deidre Rubenstein's well-modulated contralto voice brings empathy and compassion to Alexandra's first novel....Powerful dramatization." (AudioFile)
All stars
Most relevant  
I loved this story and to find out how this tied into the authors family history is very special.

Very interesting story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Enjoyable story, and captivating, and the narrator was fabulous. However, the music bursting randomly and suddenly throughout was just seriously awful. I could not even hear the authors notes at end, due to music coming over top of narrators voice. This really needs to be changed for a more enjoyable experience with this book!

Great story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed travelling along with Anya and the other characters in the White Gardenia and found it quite compelling on the whole. However I found Anya’s angst at times over dramatised and repetitive which distracted me from the story. I began to feel less sympathetic towards her character and by the end when sympathy was needed, less able to understand her choice to risk her child and husband lives. Having said this it was still a good read and “almost” great.

Almost

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.