Crazy Rich Asians

Wonderful hilarious overstuffed ridiculous candy in novel form. A beach read crossed with a little Edith Wharton and maybe some Jane Austen, even. I devoured this in barely a week and had trouble putting it down when I needed to go to bed. Great fluffy distraction and exactly what I needed right now. Can't wait to read the sequel!

(Read Harder 2017: #2 Read a debut novel; #11 Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location; #24 Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color.)

Consider this 1.5 stars - 1 star bc the book was terrible but half a star bc it got me back in the reading swing.

The end of this book actually enraged me. About 75% of the way through I realized this book was bad (I'm a late bloomer) and it just continued to get worse as I got to the end. It's fun to meet a bunch of characters but then absolutely nothing interesting ever happens. Moments that should be dramatic get glossed over and recapped quickly, and the ending is barely an ending. Another reviewer said the book doesn't do much end as stop having more pages and I couldn't agree more. Rare instance where the movie is WAY better, with the exception of not featuring Astrid as much. Every other character is barely a character.

Having seen the movie adaptation already, I went in knowing well that not everything would be the same and I wasn't expecting some deeper meaning behind the stories being told. This is a fantastic book to lose yourself in and enjoy some drama. Thumbs up for a nice fun book, which is easy to blow through in no time! Kwan certainly has a way with setting up the book, stories, and of course leaving cliffhangers that keeps you returning for more.

This really isn't my usual thing, but I was like hey, let's mix things up.

Rachel is a college professor of economy in New York, with her also-a-professor boyfriend, Nick. Stuff is good. Nick is a lovely guy. Except, he is also the heir of a billionaire big deal family in Singapore. Well, technically they have connections in China, Hong Kong and all over that corner of the word. He has a million cousins and Aunties and everyone who matters there is connected to him, in one way or another.
And they are NOT happy some no name woman from America is dating the most eligible guy from their circles.
So when Nick decides to take Rachel home for his best friend's wedding, shit hits the fan big time.

This book is satire. I've seen many people take it too seriously, talking about Asian representation and how this is offensive, “problematic” and stuff. If you have half a brain, you will notice that the whole thing is just so over the top, the author surely did not mean to say this is realistic and how real life people act, totally unironically. Now, I get it, some rich people can get over the top. But also, this is comedy. People need to RELAX.
Saying that, there are also unrealistic things I enjoyed much less than the hilarious banter and freakout sessions over ridiculous stuff. While Rachel and Nick are sweet... sometimes the way certain characters interacted felt super weird. Rachel gets bullied, which she takes with no issue at all, until she freaks the fuck out. No build up. Just pleasant to ballistic. Why? In a book so thick, you HAD the space to develop her beyond the most superficial expressions. Same with the nice people in the book, like Astrid or Sophie. The moment they meet Rachel, it's like BBF central. Why?
They also go from serious topics to “UWU, let's grab a drink” at the very end. Weird. Just tonally... what the hell?

What I really enjoyed was the fact we were expected to think these people are nuts. It's not Sex and The City, where people act like pampered assholes, but you are meant to wish the best for them. No no, this one is juicy and drama-filled in the fun way. You know that even the nicer characters (like Araminta or Astrid) act ridiculous.
Now Astrid, one of the more prominent characters is painted in a sympathetic way, but then she also realises her mistakes. You are not meant to feel she is normal and infallible.

I will be brutally honest. Half the time I had no idea about the EXACT nature of the things they talk about in this one. Sure, I knew some of the designers and fancy stuff. But as a person who never experienced being rich... I just filled in the rest. Still a fun experience.
Another thing with extensive mentions is the food. Is Kevin Kwan a foodie? Because man, he made me hungry multiple times, even though I am not even familiar with a lot of the foods he described. I had to stop 30 pages from the end to grab a plate of creamy shrimp and mushroom pasta, because this was the book equivalent of a Ghibli movie with piles of amazing food everywhere.

All in all, this is fun for people who like some juicy drama for fun. I think I will be reading the rest of the series eventually

Not for me, though I'll probably still see the movie version at some point. The book felt like a ridiculous list of extremely wealthy people doing what extremely wealthy people do. Very hard to like any of the characters. I skimmed entire chapters, especially the many sections that detailed how many karats were in someone's jewelry, or how much they paid for their outfit. This is where I suspect the movie would outdo the book, using an item's purchase cost or name dropping a designer is a poor substitute for actual descriptions. I felt like I was continually rolling my eyes at the level of excess and over the top characterizations. The humor/satire of it just didn't do it for me. Pros were that it made me want to travel to Singapore and eat a bunch of yummy satay.

Also thought the ending was weird and abrupt, but then I realized there are two more books that I probably won't read.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan isn't a novel for everyone. It is set in Singapore, and I think it helps to have some familiarity with that country to really grasp what's happening in the book (although maybe the movie would work better). The book deals with an American woman who is in a relationship with a Singaporean in New York, where they are both academics. He invites her to join him in Singapore for summer vacation, but he doesn't tell her that he's from a very wealthy and powerful family. Even when she arrives and starts experiencing the absurd extravagance of the lifestyle of his family and friends, she doesn't fully understand that she's basically now on another planet and there's no way the natives will ever accept her. Having lived in Singapore for almost ten years, I'm very familiar with the landscape Kwan is describing here, although I had no dealings with the people he's describing. I lived and worked on planet earth, I'm happy to say. In the end, I found the book to be kind of silly—a farcical soap opera of the rich and powerful—but I actually did enjoy it in the end. Kwan is a very good story teller. I gather there are several sequels, and right now I don't feel compelled to read on, but that may change.

45%-nál tartok, de annyira szar volt, hogy kitesz egy teljes könyvet.
azt hittem, végigszenvedem kíváncsiságból - a hosszas és dögunalmas márkanévsorolásokat meg aranyozott szobák leírását és egyebeket átugrálva -, de a kutyaviadalnál azért meghúzom a határt.

csak remélni tudom, hogy a filmet tehetségesebb emberek adaptálták, mert amúgy nemcsak a sztori, hanem az írás maga is förtelmesen gyatra. elképzelésem sincs, mi a tücskömet élveztek ezen mások. ennyi felszínes szardarabot egy rakáson igazán képtelenség elviselni, pláne ha még a stílus sem szórakoztató.

It took me a little while to get into this but ended up reading it on holiday and it was a great holiday read. It's fluffy and funny so keeps you entertained. My only real issue was that it could have been trimmed down a bit, it was overly descriptive at times with all the brands and name dropping, so could have easily cut a good few pages. I may continue with the series, perhaps for my next holiday!