When Nick Young invited his girlfriend Rachel Chu to Singapore for the summer holidays, she expected a calm getaway attending Nick’s best friend’s wedding and meeting his family. She didn’t realise that the wedding was going to be the biggest event of the decade, and that Nick came from a family of billionaires.
Will Rachel live up to the Youngs’ extraordinarily high expectations of being Nick’s girlfriend, or will she be scared off by the Crazy Rich Asians?
**
I picked up Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan for two reasons – firstly, I want to diversify the books and authors I read, and secondly, I wanted a light-hearted and easy read.
Crazy Rich Asians is mainly about Nick Young, who happens to be the son of one of the wealthiest families in Singapore. I liked Nick as a character and his humbleness, but he was also extremely naïve and oblivious to his family’s sometimes vicious ways. The fact that he didn’t warn Rachel about his family or his wealth was very irritating.
Nick’s family, on the other hand, were sometimes unbearable. They often cared more about their reputation than anything else and took on an immediate dislike to Rachel. Through this book, I learnt more about the tensions between mainland Chinese people and Singaporean Chinese people, which explains their dislike to Rachel – not only was she mainland Chinese, but she was brought up in America. It was fascinating to read about their billionaire lifestyle, but their plotting, gossiping and scheming were truly intolerable at times. I admired Rachel as a character a lot, especially with how well she dealt with such an intimidating family.
There are a lot of different characters in this book – half the time I kept flicking back to the drawn-out family tree to remind myself who was who. However, I really enjoyed reading about the different characters’ lives, even if it was at times a bit confusing.
I absolutely loved reading about Asian culture. From the food, fashion and architecture, Kevin Kwan describes things in such vivid detail that I could picture scenes like the wedding or Astrid’s outfits perfectly. It’s made me want to travel to Singapore so badly!
Crazy Rich Asians is a fabulous and glamorous summer read, and I’ll be reading more of Kevin Kwan’s books soon!
Favourite quotes:
“It was as if she were sleeping beauty – only, she never asked to be awakened by a prince.”
“Remember, every treasure comes with a price.”