Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy, #1)

by Kevin Kwan

[gmcgregor]

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.