Genre: People want to marry into money except one person.
Basic Summary: Rachel thought she was just going on vacation with her boyfriend to a wedding. SHE THOUGHT.
Rating: 3/5
Warnings: There is mentions of spousal abuse and people will to endanger children. Not really too many warnings. Most of it is told in dialogue with no graphic imagery.
Review:
So, as I said in the review of Someone Else’s Fairytale, I don’t read a lot of romantic comedy sort books and Crazy Rich Asians falls directly in that category. There were loads of parts I was laughing or smiling at. Plenty of ridiculous characters and situations that happened.
It’s refreshing to have a story centered around Asian characters and (some of) the culture in Singapore. It was nice to have the descriptions of the places the characters went and the houses. It was nice to have an accomplished main character in her own right.
So, why the three stars? I think my expectations of this book were too high. I think I went into this book wanting it to be something a little different. This isn’t the author’s fault and certainly I don’t think it was singularly written for me. It’s just…a few of the choices made in this book weren’t to my tastes.
For example, a lot of the (especially female) characters were stereotypes of gender roles. So many of the women in the book held money in such high esteem and wanting to marry the rich guy. If the characters were older, they wanted to hoard money. It was hard to see characters as individuals unto themselves.
Also, I liked a lot of the plot lines the author had going on (Rachel’s family plot line, for instance) but there wasn’t, for me, a satisfying resolution to it all. It felt open ended in a way that relies on the second and third book. It did leave me intrigued to read the next book and that’s probably what it was supposed to do! However, it would have been nice for something a bit more conclusive than how it ended.
As said, I think I wanted this book to be something else. I think I wanted it to go in a different direction than it did. I actually feel bad because it’s pretty funny and the writing was good.
Chrissy