Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians takes the scary "meet the parents" scenario and turns it up to 11. Rachel Chu and Nick Young, both professors in New York, have been dating for about two years when Nick's best friend invites him home to be the best man in his wedding, and he decides to bring Rachel along. Rachel knows that home for Nick is Singapore, but knows precious little else about what she's getting herself into. You see, Nick isn't just another guy from Singapore. He's the scion of an incredibly, obscenely rich family, and when you combine that with his good looks, he's one of the most eligible bachelors in Asia. And his mother's plans for him don't really feature a future with an Chinese-born but American-raised daughter of a middle-class single mother.

The focus of the book is Rachel living a deeply fish-out-of-water scenario among the jet set elites of the island, but it's structured in an alternating-chapter format, so we see the perspectives of Nick, his mother Eleanor scheming, and his best friend/cousin Astrid struggling with the decline of her own marriage to someone outside their class, and other players in the drama as well. There are twists and turns and more designer name-dropping than you can shake a stick at as the action propels toward the central wedding and its aftermath. While this does keep the plot moving forward and keeps any one storyline from getting too bogged down, it also makes it hard for there to be much character development, especially of our leads Nick and Rachel.

While this novel has some great satiric elements, it indulged far too much in one of my least favorite plot devices: relying on people not talking to each other to fuel the drama. In order to buy into the entire premise of the book, you have to believe that Rachel knew virtually nothing at all about Nick's family before she landed in Singapore...which means you'd have to believe that after two years in a serious, committed relationship, they've never actually discussed his family once despite the fact that he'd met her mother long before. And while I could buy that someone coming from a rich, private family wouldn't have splashed out all the details to his latest weekend fling, the idea that he wouldn't tell (and she wouldn't push, frankly) doesn't really hold up. There's another giant plot hole where we're meant to believe that even though Rachel has been seriously bullied by a group of girls at a weekend retreat, that she never told her boyfriend because they were boning and she didn't want to "spoil the mood". That is not a healthy relationship and I do not want those people to end up together.

I know that this trope doesn't necessarily bother everyone though, and besides my own personal beef, it's a fun, sharp, biting spin on the lifestyles of extravagantly wealthy people. And as much money as those people have, they're still at the end of the day dealing with the same problems anyone is: figuring out family, wrestling with love and heartbreak, trying to find happiness. They're just doing it in outfits that cost more than most of us make in a year. I actually found Nick and Rachel's story pretty boring (which is why I doubt I'll pick up any of the sequels) but did really enjoy Astrid's parts of the narrative. The movie version of this got great reviews over the summer and even though I did not love the book, I'm interested in seeing it! It sounds like the virtues of the book translated well to the screen. While it didn't work for me, this would be a great book for someone that wants something fluffy that does hit some emotional points but never too hard. ( )

So good! Highly, highly, highly recommend reading the book before (or in place of) seeing the movie. There's no way the movie can be as layered as the book! ( )

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Singapore

Crazy Rich Asians is a satirical rom-com about the Asian rich elite by Singaporean author Kevin Kwan. When Nicholas Young decides to take his ABC (American Born Chinese) girlfriend Rachel Chu home to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding she is excited, and also puzzled that she knows so little about them. What Nick has failed to mention is that his family is ridiculously wealthy (not quite sure how this detail failed to emerge in a two year relationship) and that his mother Eleanor has no intentions of allowing him to marry this commoner. Rachel faces all the jealousy and pettiness that a group of women flying private jets and partying in paradise in Armani, Dior and Jimmy Choo’s can muster. They also uncover that she was in fact born in mainland China, and some salacious details about Rachel’s birth. Can Rachel and Nick survive all that is set against them to tear them apart?

In the meantime Nick’s cousin Astrid is dealing with her marriage to Michael falling apart, revealing the nasty underside to all this wealth. Although this book is an eye-roll a minute, with many of the characters being superficial, petty and money obsessed, I think this is Kwan’s point, and his satirical style puts this lifestyle under a microscope. There is a fierce undercurrent of class-consciousness and snobbery, between rich and poor, old money and new, and even between the Chinese abroad and those born in mainland China. Part of me wonders whether this is Kwan’s dig at the Western obsession with exoticism, in particular the suffering kind. With so many international books focused on poverty, war and hardship-trauma porn to some degree-maybe this is his portrayal of a totally different kind of life in Asia, and maybe challenges our preconceptions. If you can stomach the huge excesses of wealth and superficiality this is a fun and colourful ride. I haven’t seen the movie yet but I might have to. ( )

Crazy Rich Asians is certainly a page turner. The first few chapters are a little hard to follow because you're being introduced to an expansive cast of characters all at once. Once you get past that, the author reels you in with captivating descriptions of the outrageous lifestyle of Singapore's uber-rich, until you get gut-punched at the very end with a whole lot of drama.
The main characters were the worst part of my experience, and I blame them for how the final chapters came off as totally ridiculous. Nick is just unbelievably clueless, which blows any attractive qualities he claimed to possess out of the water. I actually stopped rooting for him early on because he was such a terrible excuse for a mature and well-educated adult, so I didn't care when his relationship with Rachel was jeopardized. And Rachel is a bland doormat until the very end when she snaps for like 2 whole minutes before going back to boring. Still, despite stupid characters and way, way too many name brand mentions, I enjoyed the experience of reading Crazy Rich Asians. Probably won't read the rest of the series - I feel like I got the point. ( )

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