Book Review: Rich People Problems (Crazy Rich Asians #3) by Kevin Kwan

Review 2.32

 

**contains minor spoilers for Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend**

The final installment in any trilogy has a lot to live up to. Over the course of two novels, author Kevin Kwan has created a fantastic, opulent, fast-paced, and ultimately charming universe for his increasingly large cast of characters. Now he has to find a satisfying conclusion for all of them.

While RPP doesn’t have the breathless originality of the first novel, it definitely manages to rise above China Rich Girlfriend in terms of plot development. Things begin happening very quickly from the beginning of this book, and from page one I was sucked right back in to the complicated, extravagant lives of the Young/Shang/Leong family.

Rich People Problems does one thing right from the very start. It recognizes that Rachel Chu, the main protagonist from Crazy Rich Asians, has more-or-less played her role as the naive observer. She is largely absent from the bulk of the novel and, due to her complete lack of personality, is hardly missed. This allows Kwan to focus more of his time and attention on more interesting characters such as Astrid, Kitty, and Shang Su Yi, Nick’s grandmother.

The bulk of the plot is focuses on Su Yi, clan matriarch and the current owner of Tysersall Park, the family’s palatial Singapore estate, as she begins plans to draw up her last will and testament. And if the first two books gave us an insight into the behavior of wealthy people at the best of times, woah buddy just wait until a possible inheritance is thrown into the mix. There is also a very Godfather-esque feel to parts of the narrative, as the reader learns more about Su Yi’s danger-riddled youth under Japanese occupation.

Kwan seems to have learned from some of the mistakes of China Rich Girlfriend, and I was glad to see that the obnoxious label-dropping at dropped off to a reasonable amount. That’s not to say that there aren’t numerous glittering descriptions of the splendor surrounding these characters; Kwan knows his readers and continues to embrace the rampant materialism of the first two books. It’s just that this time none of this stands in the way of actual plot development.

It took me almost five years to get around to reading Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians series, and once I began it took me less than two weeks to read all three novels. Afterwards, I was consumed by that strange empty feeling that true readers occasionally experience. It’s that weird kind of bittersweet melancholy, because on one hand I had so much fun spending time in Kwan’s world, but it’s mixed with sadness because never again will I be able to enjoy these books for the first time.

I highly recommend the series.

My rating: 4.5/5  (5/5 for Crazy Rich Asians as a complete series)

You can find Rich People Problems here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

Book Review: China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians #2) by Kevin Kwan

Review 2.31

 

**contains mild spoilers**

Being the second novel in a trilogy is a thankless task. The freshness and originality of the first installment has worn off, and the author needs to lay groundwork and build exposition before the final chapter can answer all the open questions. This is why for so many trilogies, both in literature and film, the second chapter is the weakest of the three.

China Rich Girlfriend sadly falls into this “middle child” sinkhole; it gets bogged down trying to resolve all of the plotlines from the first novel while introducing all the people that will become more important in the finale. That isn’t to say that Kevin Kwan’s second novel isn’t fun; it definitely is. But there’s something missing.

For one thing, there are a lot of new characters to acquaint ourselves with. Having just managed to gain a general understanding of the complicated Shang/Leong/Young/ family tree, now the reader must also get to know Rachel’s newly-found extended family (this is not a spoiler, it’s revealed in the prologue) as well as an absolute entourage of new supporting characters.

Perhaps it is that the “label-dropping” reaches a saturation point in China Rich Girlfriend, though it’s possible that someone who actually knew something about fashion would heartily disagree*. The numerous descriptions of luxurious locations gets a bit ridiculous as well; at one point the male protagonist Nicholas Young notices that a yacht’s barstools were upholstered in “genuine whale foreskin” and I actually burst out laughing. Also, turns out that’s a real thing that actually exists in the world.

China Rich Girlfriend also does an incredibly efficient job of tidying up all of the unresolved plotlines from Crazy Rich Asians. The enmity between Rachel and Eleanor Young is swept away in the first fifty pages as if it never really mattered and is never again mentioned in any real capacity. Considering that I just spent four hundred pages watching Eleanor systematically destroy Rachel’s life, this easy resolution was unsatisfying.

Things aren’t all bad, and Kwan’s delight at bringing this secretive and showy world to life is both obvious and infectious. At the very least, I think we can all agree that no matter what happens to Nick and Rachel (who remain almost painfully milquetoast) it is Astrid who truly deserves her happy ending.

My rating: 4/5

You can find China Rich Girlfriend here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

*full disclosure-my annual clothing budget is somewhere in the range of seventy-five dollars

Book Review: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Review 2.30

I’ve been putting off writing this review for ages, because I can’t think of the best way to describe Kevin Kwan’s debut bestseller, Crazy Rich Asians. There’s been a ton of hype around this book since it was released in 2013, and it’s already been adapted into a film starring Constance Wu and Henry Golding.

So what can I say that hasn’t been said by a thousand readers and reviewers before me? Not much really. But I can say it again, and in slightly different words. What fun!

Speaking of fun, Crazy Rich Asians was a runaway bestseller for a reason; it’s pure unadulterated escapist fun. Instead of trying to avoid all of the cliches associated with the “chick-lit”* genre, it revels in them. At one point, a character literally pulls out an unlimited AmEx card and utters the words, “This is a fashion emergency!” (or some paraphrase thereof).

Crazy Rich Asians is shamelessly capitalist, and I spent the entire novel in a weird swirl of awe and envy that was nonetheless highly enjoyable. The name-dropping and label-obsession went completely over my head most of the time, but it was certainly an education  For example, I had no idea that “Hermes-orange” was its own color.

The thing that really sets this book apart from the myriads of forgettable chick-lit is that it is also opened my eyes to a culture I previously didn’t know much about and will, in all likelihood, never experience. I imagine this novel will do wonders for the Singaporean tourist industry, already a huge part of their economy. Personally, the numerous descriptions of delicious Hokkien street food were enough to have me poking into flights.

The central plot of Crazy Rich Asians is breathless, exciting, silly, and self-indulgent. The central character, Rachel Wu, isn’t terribly interesting at all and serves mainly as our introduction to this world of extravagant wealth. The bustling, busying, nosying, prying members of the Young family are the highlight of the book, and rarely have I enjoyed soap-opera-esque plot developments so much.

I loved spending time in Kevin Kwan’s world of extreme opulence and backstabbing family members. I also feel like I learned a lot about a culture completely different from my own, which is always a good time.

My rating: 5/5

You can find Crazy Rich Asians here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

** Personally, I find this term odious but it is a highly-effective description of the genre.

Book Review: The Only Girl in the World by Maude Julien

Review 2.28

 

In the tradition of The Glass Castle and A Child Called It, this memoir by Maude Julien is filled with such heartbreaking and harrowing detail that on more than one occasion I had to put it down and walk away. How such people come to abuse their children, and how such children find the strength to survive, are questions often explored in autobiographies and memoirs. But not since Tara Westover’s Educated, which I read and reviewed last year, have I encountered two people less deserving of the word “parent”.

It is obvious from the beginning chapters of The Only Girl in the World that Maude’s father is severely mentally ill. Of course that is just a polite term for “bleeding batshit crazy”, which is closer to the actual definition of Monsieur Julien’s affliction. Years before his daughter was born, he “adopted” a five year old girl from a family that was unable to provide for her. This young girl was groomed in the worst possible sentence of the world; she was indoctrinated to believe that her purpose on Earth was to bear a daughter for her adopted father. She went on to marry Mr. Julien, and bore his child in 1952.

This was a hard read. The entire stomach-twisting saga is narrated in a matter-of-fact manner, as if such things are standard practice. Sadly, the child abuse seen in the introduction it is but the merest inkling of the horrors to come. From the time she was able to walk and speak, Maude Julien was isolated away from the rest of the world in a manor home in Northern France where she was subjected to torture, molestation, starvation, sleep-deprivation, and a childhood deprived of love and affection from any other human.

Thankfully, Maude was born with a deep sense of compassion. Her love for animals and her connection to nature offered some consolation from the rigors of daily life. The second half of the memoir, in which Maude begins engaging in defiance and plans for escape, are much easier to read than the first half. The countless scenes of a small girl being treated with such cruel neglect were often too much, especially combined the rather deadpan narrative work by Elisabeth Rodgers in the audiobook edition. As I said earlier, I often had to pause and resume the story at a later time.

One thing that remains unexplained in The Only Girl in the World is exactly who was Monsieur Julien? With enough money it is said that one is never crazy, only eccentric, and that must have been the only thing keeping him from a mental asylum. But where he was getting all of this money from is never fully explained. I would have liked a little more detail on exactly how someone comes to the belief that their urine has magical properties, but it is more likely that the author simply doesn’t know.

My rating: 4/5

You can find The Only Girl in the World here on Amazon or here on Book Depository. The Audible edition is narrated by Elisabeth Rodgers and is available here.

Happy reading everyone!

 

Book Review: The Lost Man by Jane Harper (2019)

Review 2.19

Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland, in this stunning new standalone novel from New York Times bestseller Jane Harper

They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects… [Source]

About ten years ago, I found myself on a cattle station in northern Queensland. The exact details of my many misadventures over the course of my four month stay could fill a book, and I won’t go into them at this time. Suffice to say when Jane Harper describes the Australian outback as a brutal, unforgiving environment, I know from experience that she is absolutely correct. And I was only a twelve-hour drive from Brisbane, which doesn’t even count as “outback”.

The impossibly arid climate of Western Australia is the primary antagonist of The Lost Man. The merciless sun, which can kill a grown man in less than a day, shines on bare rock and scrub grass. Poisonous snakes lurk in the shrubs. The nearest neighbor might be three hours away. The isolation of this environment is a character unto itself as well.

In this harsh world live three brothers. The middle brother, Cameron, manages the family cattle station with his wife Ilse. Bud, the youngest, helps his brother but also resents him for keeping him from pursuing larger ambitions. The eldest, Nathan, lives alone on his own property, a recluse who hides from society after being ostracized for a long-ago sin.

I read and reviewed Jane Harper’s Force of Nature last year, and I remember feeling almost relieved that it didn’t suck. I had a bad run of luck with the mystery/thriller genre for awhile, and I remember her novel as a light of  hope in the darkness of trite foreshadowing and clumsy backstory. One thing that Harper improves upon with The Lost Man is keeping her narrative perspective to one character. In Force of Nature, each chapter was narrated by a different women of the group, which led to none of them getting enough attention. Here, Nathan has our focus from page one. We feel his intense loneliness and the fear of rejection that has caused him to huddle, like a turtle within its shell, on his meager acres.

The only thing I would say in critique of this novel is that Harper may have forgotten that if you limit your narrative to a single perspective, you need to ensure that your protagonist is there to verify important events. One character’s descent from decent person to violent manipulator rang strangely false, almost as if there was a section detailing more of this behavior that was somehow missing.

That said, Harper does manage to avoid what I call the “plot-twist ripple effect”, in which a book’s climax contains multiple sudden reveals simply for the sake of shock value, and which make very little sense when viewing the book as a whole. This is just another reason while I will continue to keep Jane Harper on my look-out list, where so many thriller authors fall by the wayside.

My rating: 4/5

You can find The Lost Man here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

 

Guest Review: Letter to My Daughter by George Bishop (2010)

by Elizabeth Schlueter

 

After yet another terrible argument, fifteen year old Elizabeth slams the front door, having to get away from her mother who obviously has no clue what it’s like to be a teenager. Her mother, Laura, begins to pen a letter to her daughter, explaining that she does indeed know what it’s like to be fifteen years old. Laura’s letter details many of the questions that her daughter has quizzed her about over the years. Why did you get that tattoo? Was Daddy your first love?

As day fades to evening and evening well into the night, Laura focuses all her pent-up tension on writing an open and honest letter about being fifteen. She remembers her first time, being the outsider at school and losing her first love in an unpopular war. Paragraphs become pages and pages become chapters as Laura anxiously awaits and prays for Elizabeth’s safe return.

I enjoyed this novel. As a mom, our children pepper us with questions about our past, some we are hesitant to truthfully answer, and some questions that will remain secret. This novel made me reflect on my own child-rearing. How much should we really tell our children? Is it possible to be too open and honest about your own past? There are some moments and memories that we cling to and want to be just ours, not willing to share with anyone.

The author did a surprisingly good job of narrating from a mother’s point of view, but perhaps that is not all that difficult as a father. Raising children regardless of sex, the job itself is very similar, only the details may differ.

My rating: 4/5

You can find Letter to My Daughter here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

 

Book Review: Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala (2013)

Review 2.17

 

On December 26, 2004, an earthquake of record proportions struck off the coast of Indonesia, triggering a series of tsunamis that swept through the Indian Ocean, ultimately killing more than 200,000 people in fourteen countries.

Two hundred thousand people.

Our brains aren’t quite capable of making sense of it. Two hundred thousand is simply a very large number, and our minds try to view it as such. It’s difficult to imagine two hundred thousand individual voices, with hopes and families and dreams and fears, being simultaneously snuffed out by a wall of water on a cloudless day.

Wave tells one of those stories. On the day of the tsunamis, Sonali Deraniyagala lost both her parents, her husband, and both her sons to the wave. She herself was swept two miles inland after being separated from her family. In her memoir, Deraniyagala gives voice to the pain, confusion, and grief that she has felt since the wave, and asks whether or not it’s possible to truly recover from such a loss.

I will say this for the author, she is brutally, unflinching honest. The rawness of her pain was almost unbearable to listen to, and I don’t know if I would have been able to get through a print copy of the book. Wave is a swirling maelstrom of grief. Deraniyagala is frank about her contemplation of suicide, her descent into binge drinking, her wish for madness to relieve her of the continued burden of life. Given the circumstances, one could expect little different. This was a book that made me want to hug my husband a little closer at night. I paused on one occasion to call my mom. Wave works as a reminder to never take our happiness for granted.

This is not a story of grief and healing in the wake of loss, it is an outpouring of grief from a woman who has been struck by unfathomable sorrow. It’s difficult to criticize a book like this without looking like an asshole. After all, this person is baring her soul to the world, who am I to deign even to reply? That said, Deraniyagala was difficult to connect with. She is self-centered and self-absorbed. At no point does Deraniyagala ever extend her grief to include any of the other two hundred thousand people who died that day. She never bothers to thank the friends and family who rallied to support her. She doesn’t seem to recognize that not everyone who suffered that day could then take the next seven years to recover, grieve, travel, and go whale-watching.

Deraniyagala mentions that actually, at some point in Wave. The enormity of her loss is simply too great, and people react defensively when faced with such uncomprehending sadness. Listening to Wave was difficult and imperfect and gut-wrenchingly painful, and that is what makes stories like this so important.

My rating: 3.5/5

You can find Wave here on Amazon or here on Book Depository. The Audible version is narrated by Hannah Curtis and can be found here.

Happy reading everyone!

 

Book Review: Homegoing by Ya’a Gyasi (2018)

Review 2.14

How far back can you trace your ancestry? I can go back four generations on my mother’s side, to my great-grandmother whom I was lucky enough to know for twenty-five years before she passed. On my father’s side, I can go back only three generations to my grandfather, who fought on the side of the Allies during World War II and passed away when I was in high school. I imagine this is more or less normal. People can trace their ancestry back somewhere between three to five generations before the trail becomes difficult to follow. Of course you always have outliers, like the haughty New Englanders who can prove their ancestors came over on the Mayflower, but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.

How interesting would it be to know the full story? How did your family come to be your family? What strokes of luck and trials of fate determined their lives and hopes and happiness? At least I can say that my family came to the United States deliberately, in hopes of creating a better life for themselves and their families. This is part of my privilege.

Homegoing seeks to tell just one story among millions of people whose ancestors had had no say in their own futures, and were instead torn from their home countries and thrust into a life of labor on faraway shores. It also tells the story of those who stayed.

This debut novel by Ghanaian author Ya’a Gyasi will draw inevitable comparison to Alex Haley’s groundbreaking Roots. Both tell a generational story, one that stretches over four hundred years and the span of an ocean. Both highlight the injustices of slavery, and the constant backsliding struggle for former slaves to succeed under Jim Crow and segregation. The one huge difference is that while Roots focused solely on the lives of the slaves taken across the Atlantic,  Homegoing keeps half of its plot on the shores of Africa; and also tells the story of the changing political landscape of the region as it is torn apart and knitted back together again and again by war and colonization.

Gyasi does something else very striking with her novel. She acknowledges that the tribes of Africa were actively complicit in the slave trade. Warring tribes often kept captured rivals as slaves in their own villages, and they began selling these prisoners for a profit to the white slavers who came to the shores of the Gold Coast. Homegoing sugarcoats none of these unpleasant details, and presents its characters as flawed and fallible, and they are all the more memorable for their flaws and fallacies.

Every chapter of Homegoing is set from a different perspective in a different time period and setting, generally following the story of the previous character’s offspring. Gyasi shifts her narrative from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and tells the story of concurrent generations as they face the problems dealt either by being African or by being African-American. These stories are sometimes filled with sorrow, sometimes joy. Sometimes I would need a few pages to remember the characters from the previous “generation”, so that I could place myself in history.

If I read this novel again, I will begin by writing the two names of the supreme matriarchs of this generational tale, and draw a family tree as I explore the different members of this one very, very extended family.

My rating: 4.5/5

You can find Homegoing here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

 

Guest Review: All is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker (2016)

by Elizabeth K. Schlueter

In the small, affluent town of Fairview, Connecticut everything seems picture perfect.

Until one night when young Jenny Kramer is attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But, in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. Her father, Tom, becomes obsessed with his inability to find her attacker and seek justice while her mother, Charlotte, prefers to pretend this horrific event did not touch her perfect country club world.

As they seek help for their daughter, the fault lines within their marriage and their close-knit community emerge from the shadows where they have been hidden for years, and the relentless quest to find the monster who invaded their town – or perhaps lives among them – drive this psychological thriller to a shocking and unexpected conclusion. [Source]

The concept of this novel was extremely interesting.  God forbid that you had experienced a terrible physical assault or were the lone survivor of an horrific attack while serving your country.  Doctors came to you or met with your loved one’s to inform you that they were able to erase those horrible memories.  Keep in mind that only the memories were erased, the physical scars remain.

That’s what Jenny’s family  decided to do, but the erasing of the memories only seemed to make things worse, the psychological trauma was with her, even to the point of wanting to commit suicide.

A therapist steps in to help Jenny go back and attempt to remember the memories of that horrible night, but while treating her finds that her memories may threaten his own family.

Should the therapist continue helping Jenny to remember the events of that fateful night, or could he plant false memories that would take the eye’s off of his own family.

I highly recommend the book!

My rating: 4.5/5

You can find All is Not Forgotten here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

Book Review: Beartown by Fredrik Backman (2017)

Review 2.5

People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys. [Source]

Only someone who has played as part of a sports team can describe the seemingly psychic connection that exists between well-trained players working towards a common goal. A good coach can pull astounding results out of a talented player, but not without pain and sacrifice both mental and physical. Complete and total devotion is required if the unit as a whole is to succeed. The character traits born by playing sports: loyalty, determination, selflessness, and stamina can serve children well into adulthood. But there is a darker side to those sterling qualities: arrogance, recklessness, and a disregard for authority also breed when star players are told from a very early age that they are perfect and invincible. Beartown tells the story of one youth ice hockey team as they prepare for the semi-final championship and bear the entire weight of a community on their shoulders.

Beartown is a novel about the power of competitive sports to bring people together and to tear people apart. The introspective, omniscient language used by Fredrik Backman (translated here from Swedish by Neil Smith) is simultaneously haunting and joyful. We delight in the vitality and joy that the boys of the Beartown junior league find out on the ice, while never forgetting that those shining moments are few and fleeting. Backman manages to capture the almost addictive hold that these sports have, both on the players and the people in the community who place all their hopes on the slim shoulders of seventeen-year old boys. The pressure that these students are under would buckle the knees of most adult men, and game-day nears, the cracks begin to show.

Halfway into Beartown came an event that I definitely did not expect, but in retrospect I should have seen it coming a mile away. Another side effect of sports culture is the attitude instilled in the members of a winning team that they are entitled to whatever rewards they desire and that “winning” is something that must be obtained at all costs. This event sets off a series of repercussions that wind through the remaining half of the novel until building into a tight, page-turning conclusion that had me glued to the screen of my Kobo.

I loved that this was a novel about sports culture that didn’t require me to know or care anything about ice hockey going in. It’s a novel about sports that will appeal to people who don’t like sports very much. And people who love the game. Probably because Beartown isn’t about ice hockey. It’s about teamwork. Friendship. Sacrifice. Loyalty. Honesty. Bravery. And a little bit ice hockey.

My rating: 5/5

You can find Beartown here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.