I requested the audiobook of this debut novel by Lauren Ho after Nerdette picked it for their July book club. Prior to that I hadn’t even heard of it, but I’m so glad they brought it to my attention because I absolutely loved it! It’s a delightful rom-com and I enjoyed every minute of it.
SPOILER ALERT! This review contains all kinds of spoilers for the plot of this book, so if you have not yet read it and you care about spoilers, you’ve been warned.
The book is written in the form of a diary, which, honestly, stretched the limits of my imagination because we were getting hourly updates on what had just happened in her life. Even when I was keeping a diary, I would be lucky if I had time to jot down the happenings of my life once a day – sometimes even finding one time a week was a stretch. I can’t imagine carrying my diary around with me everywhere so I could write down every, single thing that happened to me, including work, weddings, clubbing, etc. I understand Ho wanted to make the reader feel like we were right there with Andrea as everything was happening to her, but that just shows the limits of this particular writing style, which makes me wonder why Ho chose it.
The main character/narrator is Andrea Tang. She’s a single, 33-year-old Chinese woman living in Singapore and the book starts with her description of what it’s like to attend Chinese New Year as a single woman in her 30s and have to face all the aunties and extended female relatives she only sees once a year, all of whom are intent on demanding why she’s still single and asking if it’s because she’s too focused on her career.
Andrea is very focused on her career. She’s a senior associate at a top law firm on track to make partner, so she spends literally thousands of hours at the office – much of which she admits is just “face time”, meaning she’s just there to be seen at the office and get credit for long hours, even when she doesn’t have any actual work to do. She regularly gets to the office shortly after 8 am and doesn’t leave until midnight, with a few exceptions, and somehow she still has time for a social life that includes dating, going out with friends, and watching TV.
Andrea doesn’t hate her job, but she doesn’t love it, either. She’s stuck in the rat race and has yet to figure out how unfulfilling that is. She thinks once she makes partner, she’ll be happy because she’s very goal-oriented, but what she really wants to be doing is practicing law that’s more oriented towards human rights, but that doesn’t pay as well.
You know how American women are expected to have high-powered careers and still get married, have kids, and be the primary caregiver in their families? Turns out those same ridiculously high expectations are also laid on Chinese women, but worse. The only acceptable careers are the most lucrative ones (doctor and lawyer), and they’re expected to excel, but they are also under a lot of pressure to get married and start having kids in their 20s. Sheesh!
So, at the start of the book, Andrea and her cousin/BFF, Linda, are getting their stories straight about their very eligible, but also very fictional, boyfriends who couldn’t make it to the celebration of the biggest Chinese holiday of the year because they’re so busy at their very lucrative, high-powered jobs. At the party, Andrea learns that her lesbian cousin, whose name I can’t remember, is getting married … to a man. That leaves Andrea as the last Tang standing, and she refuses to let that happen.
Andrea finally gives in and creates a profile on an online dating app called Sponk, which I’m pretty sure is made up, but since I don’t pay attention to these things, I could be wrong. It seems like it’s going well, but of course it goes horribly wrong, just like Linda told her it would. Meanwhile, Linda has created a profile for Andrea on Tinder, which even I know is used for hook-ups and not actual romance. That doesn’t go anywhere at all.
Then Andrea meets an older man at a party who just happens to be into her and also a billionaire. Can’t go wrong, right? Except it can because that would just be too good to be true. Nevertheless, Andrea does get engaged to him, and as the end of the audiobook drew ever closer, Ho really had me wondering if she had left herself enough time for Andrea to end the engagement and get together with Suresh.
Suresh is Andrea’s coworker/”the enemy” because they’re competing for partnership. He’s just moved to Singapore from London, and has a fiancee back in London, but given the way Suresh’s physical attributes are described the first time we see him, we know he’s the one Andrea is going to end up with, but like I said, she sure makes us wait for it.
I’ve heard Ho is working on a sequel, but that it hasn’t been accepted by a publisher yet. I really hope some publisher comes to their senses and buys the rights to her second book because I would love to spend more time with these characters!