Kevin Kwan's Sex and Vanity
So here is Kwan's first book since his very fun Crazy Rich Asians series, and it’s a fairly typical second-chance romance novel. It’s centered on Lucie, a half Chinese-American, half New York white WASP, who falls for a handsome young man at a weeklong wedding extravaganza. But things go awry, as they are wont to do. Several years later she's engaged to a very eligible bachelor (a character who is beyond cartoonish) when she encounters the young man again. What will happen?? Well, it’s pretty obvious what will happen. Parts of this were great—Lucie is a (mostly) likable character, and her struggles with her white relatives' racism and people being weird to her because she is mixed race are pretty compelling. I loved her relationships with her mom and brother. But the central romance is underbaked, the hero is too good to be true (and we don’t see enough of him), and there aren’t really any side-plots to distract from the weaker points. I mean, it’s still pretty fun, just not as satisfying as his earlier series. B/B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on June 30th.
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