The Wangs vs. the World

Started this in August 2017 and somehow didn't get back to it till January 2018 - I'm not sure whether I would have liked it more if I'd managed to read it over a shorter time frame, but it was pretty easy to pick up again. The story kind of lost focus for me after the road trip ended and the last 15% or so of the book kind of meandered around with no real resolutions to most of the character arcs. The non-translated Chinese, which a lot of reviews have commented on, was a little difficult, but usually not essential to understanding (or when it was, it was pretty easy to figure out the gist from context). The strongest parts of the book to me were the characters of the children and their relationships with each other, particularly Grace. I could've read the entire book from her POV and possibly enjoyed it even more.

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley. I went into this thinking it'd be a fun, silly, humorous road-trip novel, and while it hits some of those points, I felt the story was trapped between wanting to be funny and wanting to be dramatic. Most of the story focuses on the Wangs - there's Charles, Barbra, Saina, Andrew, and Grace. Some chapters are dedicated to one character and his/her thoughts, and others will jump around between characters. There are even two chapters that are from the car's point-of-view, which was definitely strange. There is tension between the family members, but then the story falters because it wants to be amusing. Absurd scenarios take place throughout the novel, and I was particularly annoyed with the third and final leg. If the author had focused on one or the other - either humor or drama - the story would have been much more successful. I did decide on a three star rating because the writing, at times, was very poetic and moving. I believe this is Chang's debut novel, and I would definitely pick up her next book, especially if it were more subdued and didn't strive to be humorous. Additionally, I did keep reading it! I wanted to know how it would all turn out. However, around the 70-80% mark, I was getting very frustrated and considered putting the book down. At that point, though, I figured I'd come far enough. I might as well finish it. I don't know if I would recommend this book to anyone, though. Like I said, it's trapped between two worlds - the family drama and the absurd, humorous plot devices. I suppose if you interested in both of those things, you can check this one out.

A fun romp of a road trip novel as multi-millionaire, cosmetics mogul Charles Wang loses everything during the financial crises and decides to load up his second wife into a borrowed Mercedes and set out from his seized BelAir mansion to pick up his two youngest children and descend on the eldest daughters farm in upstate New York.

These kids are second-gen, monied, white-adjacent, trainwrecks. Andrew has dreams of being a stand-up comic, Grace is an emo, style-blogger and Saina is an exiled New York art-monster. Theirs is the story of being part of a coherent and unique identity that is defined neither by their ancestors country of origin or their father's adopted home. Even Charles is stuck between worlds and finds himself immigrating to both countries in search of something better. They all uniquely personify what it is to be Asian-American.

They are messed up, capable of incredibly bad decisions based on questionable justifications and victim to the mistakes they invariably make over and over again. Human, imperfect, still trying.