Book Club: March 2018

Welcome to the first edition of Book Club! Each month I'll spotlight a book that I read and give you my honest opinion on it. One of my goals for 2018 was to get back into reading books more frequently, since I used to be a voracious reader for my entire pre-college life. This month's book is.......

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Unimaginable luxury, vivid descriptions and laugh-out-loud humor are just some of the reasons why this is one of my new favorite books (and why I'm stoked about the upcoming movie adaptation). Crazy rich is literally the only way to describe the extreme wealth of the world Kwan uncovers in this romantic dramedy, the first book in the trilogy.

Everything seems to be going great between 20-something NYU professor Rachel Chu and her professor boyfriend Nicholas Young. So great, in fact, that Nicholas invites Rachel home to meet his family. Unbeknownst to Rachel, Nicholas' family is one of the richest families in Singapore, and they're not pleased that their crown jewel is bringing home a regular degular American-born Chinese girl. Drama (and craziness, duh) follows everything Rachel does after she arrives in Singapore, and it's one of those stories where you question what the hell you would do if you were in her situation.

The writing is excellent, and the storytelling pulls you in. I'm actually a big fan of footnotes in books, and Kwan makes good use of footnotes to translate, explain and make jokes. Of course, the book is fiction, but I feel like I learned something new about another part of the world that I knew very little about. If you're looking for something entertaining that's a pretty easy read, this is a great choice.