I know I'm not the only one that got caught up in the gaudy madness that is the Crazy Rich Asians movie adaptation. It isn't an exaggeration when I say at one point I watched this movie a couple times a week. If I couldn't decide on something to turn on before bed or use for background noise, Crazy Rich Asians became the default. I'm going to say something that you won't hear from me often...the movie was better than the book.
Let me set this up for you. When Rachel Chu's boyfriend, Nicholas Young, asks her to spend the summer with him in Singapore, she imagines a laid back vacation full of sight seeing and eventually meeting the family of the man she loves. What Rachel didn't bargain for, and what Nick neglected to tell her, is that his family is among the richest of the rich in Asia. Rachel is thrown headfirst into a world she doesn't understand, where Nick's relatives and their friends swarm like sharks, waiting to tear her apart. While Rachel struggles to keep her head above water, the rest of Nick's relatives face their own struggles in order to keep up with appearances, and keep up with each other. I'm going to begin with my overall impression of the book. I can't deny it was entertaining, and at times ridiculously funny. I never cease to be amazed by how consumed wealthy people are with protecting their image, even if it comes at the expense of being a terrible person. Kevin Kwan really went all out to illustrate the lengths rich socialites are willing to go to in order to cement their status among others and stick to the status quo. There was plenty of glitz and glamor, but beneath the gossamer sheen of wealth lies a persistent sadness, the result of working tirelessly to maintain a façade of perfection. I was most disappointed by the shift in focus from Rachel and Nick to a growing group of characters caught up in the madness of high society. Kwan sets us up to believe Rachel and Nick's relationship will be the main narrative of this story, the thing we will become invested in by the conclusion, yet I never found myself genuinely rooting for them. They got lost among the lengthy descriptions of opulent shopping sprees, drama between other characters, and explanations of how Singapore developed over centuries (mostly relating to economic prosperity). The characters weren't fleshed out enough to connect with, except for Rachel, though there were moments I felt sympathetic to their personal struggles. Kwan was working with a few storylines that collided instead of coming together to tell a complicated story of how familial expectations and societal rules can affect individual and their relationships. What the movie got right was putting Rachel and Nick at the center of everything, placing emphasis on their development while subtly including bits of other characters' stories. Less time could have been dedicated to the fine details of how the crazy rich spend their money, which made a lot of them unlikable almost by default. It functioned in the most basic sense to show us all the ways in which the characters were attempting to live up to the expectations of others. Their faults and sins were exposed as a product of the environment they were brought up in, painting them as both victims and inadvertent perpetrators. Maybe I'm being a little harsh because I tend to lean toward character driven stories, and I wouldn't consider this one of those by any means. A lot of the first half of this book read like filler to set up the events in the second half, when the plot picks up considerably. That being said, there still weren't many moments later in the book that stuck out to me or made it anything extraordinary. My final verdict for this one is a 3/5. I didn't hate it and I didn't love it; this is the kind of book you can pick up on a vacation and devour fairly quickly, but probably won't think of much after. Go watch the movie if the premise of this book interests you because it captures the glamor, drama, and relationships in this story the way I hoped the book would.
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