I've never written a review before so I'm not sure how it goes however, I do know that it's a crime against humanity to include spoilers so fear not, I won't be giving away the goods.
I think I first found out about this novel during one of my very frequent Instagram feed-refreshes. I didn't even bother reading the caption of the post because the book cover was already enough to rope in my interest for a new light read (I had been reading The Tudors). Crazy, rich and Asians: how can one not be intrigued? Being two-thirds of that criteria (can you guess which ones), I think I'm already quite well-acquainted with the lives these dubbed crazy rich Asians but I decided it was still worth buying from the Kindle store as I wanted my imagination to get a clearer picture of the reality of the excess the book promises. Also, I scored it for 67% off on Amazon. You don't say no to a book that's practically for free.
The story basically revolves around the couple Nick and Rachel who are traveling to Singapore for the summer to attend what is heralded as the wedding of the year. The setting bounces a lot, as the characters do, all over the Pacific. Nick comes from a family "richer than God" who has relatives and extended family privy to his personal life (not to mention everyone else's). Meanwhile Rachel is what they look down on as the "typical ABC" which stands for American Born Chinese, well-educated, over-achieving, middle class. If you've watched any Asian drama along the lines of rich-meets-poor, then I guess you can already grasp what the conflict is. But take that and throw in ridiculous occurrences of designer name-dropping and Singaporean expressions--lah. It would also be worth-mentioning that this book could double as a menu for Singaporean-Chinese-Malaysian dishes and that reading will toy with your appetite for satay, kuehs and scones even. I'm pretty sure I was starving the whole I was reading.
What I like about the book is that it maintains a clear and easy plot that shows what could be very real problems of these crazy rich Asians (aside from deciding which properties to flip and not having enough karats on their diamonds) and the problems by association. Much like a gossip magazine, very addictive. I felt the need to ration the pages so it could last longer. I can't say I liked the ending very much but I will say that if ever Kevin Kwan decides to write a sequel, I would pay for a copy, but only the Kindle edition, of course.
