Bookish Thoughts

I enjoyed this series, but it's also been one of diminishing returns. Kwan can't really mess with Nick and Rachel, so they've gotten a bit boring. Astrid has fun drama, but the attempts to keep her likable result in her seeming mostly passive in her own life. And Kitty is just exhausting. I don't even know whether I should be rooting for her or not. Still, this book is filled with ridiculous drama and extravagant parties and luxurious clothes. It's fun to watch these lives, knowing I'll never have them. And by the end of the book I didn't even want them. I guess this series was the perfect length. I got exactly what I wanted out of it. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm ready to move on to something else.

China Rich Girlfriend  was pretty much exactly what you'd expect the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians  to be: an almost successful attempt to recreate the magic of the first one. It had all the entitled, big spenders, their manufactured problems, and their constant attempts to one-up each other. It was somewhat clunkier, almost like they skipped the last editing pass to get it to the presses on time. Throughout the book I kept thinking to myself that this or that scene could have been tighter, shinier, more polished. The first book glittered so brightly, maybe this one couldn't help but look a bit dull by comparison. There are three main storylines: Rachel and Nick's return to Asia after their wedding to get to know her father, Astrid's crumbling marriage, and Kitty Pong's attempts to win the respect of high society. The three storylines never quite come together, so the book ends up feeling a bit schizophrenic. Maybe that will be resolved in the third book. (Though I...

Lately I've been seeking out books that don't require too much mental energy from me. I finally picked up the rest of this trilogy at a used book sale, so it seemed like the perfect time to revisit this fun, frothy book about people with more money than sense. Really this book is just fun. I love seeing the ridiculous things the super rich choose to spend their money on, the ways they determine how they're better than everyone else, and the ever-practical every-girl Rachel navigate everything. It was also great to go back and see the things they had changed for the movie. I'm excited to get to the rest of this trilogy now and live vicariously through people who spend freely on absurd things.

This was a light, fun, ridiculous book that was exactly what I wanted to be reading over the holidays. It basically centers on Rachel, who is traveling to Singapore with her boyfriend to attend his friend's wedding. Unbeknownst to her, he's basically the richest bachelor in the area, and his family is already deeply disapproving of her. She finds herself in over her head while his family colludes and conspires to get rid of her, all while dealing with their own petty problems against a backdrop of jaw-dropping opulence. There's something so fun about reading about the problems of the stupidly wealthy. It's the reason shows like Gossip Girl  and The OC  (and their forerunners and descendants) are as popular as they are. Something about these problems doesn't quite seem real. After all, how bad can it be when you can just hop on a private jet to go get coffee in Australia? The insanity of these rich snobs is nearly as fun as reading about all the designer clothes ...