Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
does not reflect well upon the creative writing department at duke.
this is such a sad review for me to make because the book legitimately sounded so interesting and like something i would really enjoy. you dangle in front of me themes of colonialism in relation to art and ownership, the conflicting feelings that come from being chinese and something else(i’m chinese canadian, so it would feel weird to specify american here LMAO), and also wlw, and then give me such a disappointment. this book proves that an interesting premise does not a good book make.
firstly, i want to address thoughts going into this review. when i was at around 20% into the book, i was like okay. this isn’t… very good. the pacing is kind of… not great and the characters aren’t that distinct. but i was only 20% into the book! so, valiantly, i trod on. after the halfway point, i was like um. this is getting worse than not very good. so i went online to look at some author interviews because i wanted to know what li thought of the book. well, it certainly was not optimistic. throughout the rest of the book, i periodically looked at interviews because i needed to know. i needed to be able to compare. so as you read this, just know that a lot of things i address also are related to things the author said in interviews. i will indicate when i’m doing this, because i don’t want anyone to need to read through a bunch of them just for one review, if you’re reading this massive body of text at all. i’m here instead of studying or going to bed, but look. i don’t get angry anywhere except for books and my province’s horrible horrible politics, so i think i deserve the opportunity to be a fucking hater.
i found this book because i looked specifically for chinese wlw novels, because i am nothing if not starved. within that pitch, there was mention of how this book explores that not all chinese americans are the same. i wondered if it was fair to bring this up because it’s not like the author pitched that, but when i looked at interviews, she also talked about how she wanted to address that not all asians are a monolith, so i think this is a fair point to bring up because, personally, i think that was a monumental failure.
however unfortunate, it was hilarious that i opened a book pitched the way it was to find all the characters at these highly regarded schools — harvard, duke, ucla, mit(formerly), you name it. all the characters are excellent scholars and students, all highly competent at what they’re doing, etc, etc. regardless of what the author claims to want to achieve, there are many traits of the characters that are just based on stereotype. many people of chinese diaspora are all these things, of course, but there’s also so many that… aren’t? when people think of asian people as a monolith, i don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine the traits i listed as part of that monolith of assumption. we’ve likely all heard the whole asians are good at math thing, after all. it’s just the whole model minority thing.
additionally, in spite of these statements, li tends to paint things in broad, broad strokes. for example, saying asian when she means chinese. additionally, assuming many things about the chinese diaspora that everyone is just… expected to understand as part of it? you can’t be like i wanted to portray a wide range of experiences, and then speak as if they’re all the same. one of the worst instances of this i can think of is whendaniel’s dad finds out that it’s them who have been stealing artifacts and will is like. aren’t you chinese? doesn’t the old summer palace mean something to you too? like all chinese people would let you get away with international art theft if you brought up the old summer palace.
it’s also kind of ironic how the author spent almost no time on the character appearances, besides repeating that they all have high cheekbones or whatever. today i will demonstrate that Asians are not a monolith by making them physically indistinguishable.
the characters all lacked depth, with the exception of daniel, I GUESS, though it’s like comparing the difference between a first grader’s math skills to a second grader’s. he’s better, but it’s not like he’s good. it’s hard for me to elaborate on what makes a character superb to me, compared to just okay, but he was solidly just okay. we danced around his daddy issues so much that i’m STILL not sure what exactly he needed to heal from. so that doesn’t give me hope for everyone else, which is good because i have none!
everyone else can basically be described by One key trait, and also their major or something. they all had the same relationship with their culture and yearning to be closer, despite the differences in their background. personally, i think there’s more than one way to relate to your culture as a member of the diaspora but, continuously, we saw only one. the book says each of them are looking for connections to it, so what efforts have they made in the past before jumping straight to international art theft?? will could’ve been interesting if he went into art, specifically chinese art, as a way of connection, but instead mf just liked art and happened upon this. boring. uninteresting. i would rather have read an article.
on the topic of the wlw relationship, i am so disappointed. i was reading and realizing oh my goddd. this is not a good book. but i was ALSO like at least there’s the wlw <3 i love die girlies!! and then it just came out of NOWHERE?? like alex and irene dont even like each other. irene is straight up mean, being like oh you’re fucking useless, why are you even here. all you are to me is my brother’s ex. and alex is rightfully like dude wtf? and suddenly, at the end, they’re into each other. like where did that come from? where is the chemistry? it’s not that the author doesn’t know how to show people being into each other, because lily and will were PAINFULLY OBVIOUS, i was suffering through their flirting, but for alex and irene she was just like “now kiss”. who said comparison is the thief of joy. it’s expecting your anticipated reads to be good.
the plot is crazyy to me. and by crazy i mean unbelievable. there’s no situation in life where i would be able to train my suspension of disbelief enough to enjoy this book. firstly, the author said she researched for the book by watching ocean’s eleven..? and apparently liked that so much, she made her characters do it too. actually, that makes a lot of sense. that’s probably why it was so bad.
my favourite part was the part with daniel’s dad that i already mentioned above. what is happening.
the ending was also infuriating. it’s like nothing the characters did actually mattered. the solution to all things in books that haven’t been plotted that well is a PR scandal, obviously. firstly, does anyone who cares about museums not know that a lot of the artifacts were stolen? i feel like repatriation is a big conversation in the museum sphere, it’s just that they don’t care. i don’t understand how simply revealing that they’re oops! all stolen! and the museums knew is good enough to cause enough of a scandal that they’ll immediately repatriate the art. like girl… you think the museums don’t know? who thinks the museums don’t know?? i don’t think museum curators, historians, or archaeologists are that stupid. i think people know. logically, it doesn’t even make sense that all these super important artifacts and arts were just “”gifted”” when you KNOW about a country’s history of colonialism. be fr with me. who doesn’t know.
now the writing style. i hated it. at first i was like oh, this is kind of pretty. but you can’t have things be pretty in the EXACT SAME WAY and expect it to have the same impact the hundredth time. i don’t have that many “it began like this:” in me. i don’t have that many “the practiced knife of her smile” in me. i don’t want to hear about the line of their jaw, the hollow of their throat, etc a hundred million times. at their big age of almost done with university, they should have more descriptors in their minds.
the thing is, the writing style of the book is “quotable”, and i hate “quotable” writing styles. i think all books probably have a section that’s quotable, but that’s different than it being the style. in the former, the intention is to look pretty. in the latter, it’s to tell a story.
it’s also severely repetitive. the amount of times we fell back on the same descriptors, over and over, legitimately made it hard to read the book. i would stop reading and, when i came back, i’d have to reread like, the last 2 pages to make sure that i hadn’t read this part already. have you ever run into something like that??
this is a combination of all the issues in this book, but one of the worst things for me was the fact that the narration would never change throughout the book. the writing was the same, it kept revisiting past events(that happened WITHIN the book, like when they were first recruited by china poly), the characters didn’t change, so even while the plot progressed, the writing didn’t. the story moved without moving. i honestly think the plot went by pretty quickly, but it felt like it dragged soo much because of this.
finally, all the conversations within the book just felt very shallow. i didn’t gain any new insights into colonization and its intersection with art, the diaspora experience, or anything, really. it felt like i could learn everything the book introduced through one or two good articles, which would probably have been better written too! the extent to what the book had to say about colonization and art was basically just colonization bad. repatriation good. which is true, but is that all? a whole book just to say that? what was the point. truly, what was the point.
all i wanted to read was some chinese WLW because i am LONELY and STARVED but, in return, i probably got my worst read of 2024. i could probably say something nonsensical about desire right now, and have it mean more than all this.
this is such a sad review for me to make because the book legitimately sounded so interesting and like something i would really enjoy. you dangle in front of me themes of colonialism in relation to art and ownership, the conflicting feelings that come from being chinese and something else(i’m chinese canadian, so it would feel weird to specify american here LMAO), and also wlw, and then give me such a disappointment. this book proves that an interesting premise does not a good book make.
firstly, i want to address thoughts going into this review. when i was at around 20% into the book, i was like okay. this isn’t… very good. the pacing is kind of… not great and the characters aren’t that distinct. but i was only 20% into the book! so, valiantly, i trod on. after the halfway point, i was like um. this is getting worse than not very good. so i went online to look at some author interviews because i wanted to know what li thought of the book. well, it certainly was not optimistic. throughout the rest of the book, i periodically looked at interviews because i needed to know. i needed to be able to compare. so as you read this, just know that a lot of things i address also are related to things the author said in interviews. i will indicate when i’m doing this, because i don’t want anyone to need to read through a bunch of them just for one review, if you’re reading this massive body of text at all. i’m here instead of studying or going to bed, but look. i don’t get angry anywhere except for books and my province’s horrible horrible politics, so i think i deserve the opportunity to be a fucking hater.
i found this book because i looked specifically for chinese wlw novels, because i am nothing if not starved. within that pitch, there was mention of how this book explores that not all chinese americans are the same. i wondered if it was fair to bring this up because it’s not like the author pitched that, but when i looked at interviews, she also talked about how she wanted to address that not all asians are a monolith, so i think this is a fair point to bring up because, personally, i think that was a monumental failure.
however unfortunate, it was hilarious that i opened a book pitched the way it was to find all the characters at these highly regarded schools — harvard, duke, ucla, mit(formerly), you name it. all the characters are excellent scholars and students, all highly competent at what they’re doing, etc, etc. regardless of what the author claims to want to achieve, there are many traits of the characters that are just based on stereotype. many people of chinese diaspora are all these things, of course, but there’s also so many that… aren’t? when people think of asian people as a monolith, i don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine the traits i listed as part of that monolith of assumption. we’ve likely all heard the whole asians are good at math thing, after all. it’s just the whole model minority thing.
additionally, in spite of these statements, li tends to paint things in broad, broad strokes. for example, saying asian when she means chinese. additionally, assuming many things about the chinese diaspora that everyone is just… expected to understand as part of it? you can’t be like i wanted to portray a wide range of experiences, and then speak as if they’re all the same. one of the worst instances of this i can think of is when
it’s also kind of ironic how the author spent almost no time on the character appearances, besides repeating that they all have high cheekbones or whatever. today i will demonstrate that Asians are not a monolith by making them physically indistinguishable.
the characters all lacked depth, with the exception of daniel, I GUESS, though it’s like comparing the difference between a first grader’s math skills to a second grader’s. he’s better, but it’s not like he’s good. it’s hard for me to elaborate on what makes a character superb to me, compared to just okay, but he was solidly just okay. we danced around his daddy issues so much that i’m STILL not sure what exactly he needed to heal from. so that doesn’t give me hope for everyone else, which is good because i have none!
everyone else can basically be described by One key trait, and also their major or something. they all had the same relationship with their culture and yearning to be closer, despite the differences in their background. personally, i think there’s more than one way to relate to your culture as a member of the diaspora but, continuously, we saw only one. the book says each of them are looking for connections to it, so what efforts have they made in the past before jumping straight to international art theft?? will could’ve been interesting if he went into art, specifically chinese art, as a way of connection, but instead mf just liked art and happened upon this. boring. uninteresting. i would rather have read an article.
on the topic of the wlw relationship, i am so disappointed. i was reading and realizing oh my goddd. this is not a good book. but i was ALSO like at least there’s the wlw <3 i love die girlies!! and then it just came out of NOWHERE?? like alex and irene dont even like each other. irene is straight up mean, being like oh you’re fucking useless, why are you even here. all you are to me is my brother’s ex. and alex is rightfully like dude wtf? and suddenly, at the end, they’re into each other. like where did that come from? where is the chemistry? it’s not that the author doesn’t know how to show people being into each other, because lily and will were PAINFULLY OBVIOUS, i was suffering through their flirting, but for alex and irene she was just like “now kiss”. who said comparison is the thief of joy. it’s expecting your anticipated reads to be good.
the plot is crazyy to me. and by crazy i mean unbelievable. there’s no situation in life where i would be able to train my suspension of disbelief enough to enjoy this book. firstly, the author said she researched for the book by watching ocean’s eleven..? and apparently liked that so much, she made her characters do it too. actually, that makes a lot of sense. that’s probably why it was so bad.
my favourite part was the part with daniel’s dad that i already mentioned above. what is happening.
the ending was also infuriating. it’s like nothing the characters did actually mattered. the solution to all things in books that haven’t been plotted that well is a PR scandal, obviously. firstly, does anyone who cares about museums not know that a lot of the artifacts were stolen? i feel like repatriation is a big conversation in the museum sphere, it’s just that they don’t care. i don’t understand how simply revealing that they’re oops! all stolen! and the museums knew is good enough to cause enough of a scandal that they’ll immediately repatriate the art. like girl… you think the museums don’t know? who thinks the museums don’t know?? i don’t think museum curators, historians, or archaeologists are that stupid. i think people know. logically, it doesn’t even make sense that all these super important artifacts and arts were just “”gifted”” when you KNOW about a country’s history of colonialism. be fr with me. who doesn’t know.
now the writing style. i hated it. at first i was like oh, this is kind of pretty. but you can’t have things be pretty in the EXACT SAME WAY and expect it to have the same impact the hundredth time. i don’t have that many “it began like this:” in me. i don’t have that many “the practiced knife of her smile” in me. i don’t want to hear about the line of their jaw, the hollow of their throat, etc a hundred million times. at their big age of almost done with university, they should have more descriptors in their minds.
the thing is, the writing style of the book is “quotable”, and i hate “quotable” writing styles. i think all books probably have a section that’s quotable, but that’s different than it being the style. in the former, the intention is to look pretty. in the latter, it’s to tell a story.
it’s also severely repetitive. the amount of times we fell back on the same descriptors, over and over, legitimately made it hard to read the book. i would stop reading and, when i came back, i’d have to reread like, the last 2 pages to make sure that i hadn’t read this part already. have you ever run into something like that??
this is a combination of all the issues in this book, but one of the worst things for me was the fact that the narration would never change throughout the book. the writing was the same, it kept revisiting past events(that happened WITHIN the book, like when they were first recruited by china poly), the characters didn’t change, so even while the plot progressed, the writing didn’t. the story moved without moving. i honestly think the plot went by pretty quickly, but it felt like it dragged soo much because of this.
finally, all the conversations within the book just felt very shallow. i didn’t gain any new insights into colonization and its intersection with art, the diaspora experience, or anything, really. it felt like i could learn everything the book introduced through one or two good articles, which would probably have been better written too! the extent to what the book had to say about colonization and art was basically just colonization bad. repatriation good. which is true, but is that all? a whole book just to say that? what was the point. truly, what was the point.
all i wanted to read was some chinese WLW because i am LONELY and STARVED but, in return, i probably got my worst read of 2024. i could probably say something nonsensical about desire right now, and have it mean more than all this.
adventurous
hopeful
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Where do I even begin...good news and the things I liked first: I love heist stories, especially when they feature an ensemble cast, so the premise was promising. I appreciate the attempts to reflect on Chinese heritage and identity although most of them, aside from maybe Daniel, fell pretty short (more on this later). The pacing was OK. The first chapter was pretty good or at least good enough to rope me in.
Unfortunately it's all pretty downhill from there. Several small writing clichés that I consider sinful because of their similarity to Wattpad fanfiction, primarily unnecessary descriptions of what clothes and how much makeup a character is wearing even though it adds nothing to the imagery or story, also the amount of self-insert details (but I'll let that slide). I think the reflections on identity were all pretty superficial and uninteresting. Not saying every book with a Chinese character has to have a truly revolutionary reckoning but a lot of this stuff has been said in books that were published 10 years ago. If we want people to take Chinese-American narratives seriously in contemporary fiction then we have to offer something actually thought provoking and the whole "I'm not Chinese enough for China and I'm not American enough for America" is tired and unoriginal at this point.
Found myself peeved by the references to COVID, it didn't add anything to the story or any of the characters' narratives so all it really did was date the author and highlight the immaturity of her writing. Reflections on Chinese heritage felt half baked because while there were casual references to a lot of zillennial Asian culture (boba, etc) there were a lot of dissonant moments that really took me out of the setting and story. The one I'm thinking of is Daniel remembering his life in Beijing where he lived in a fourth-floor apartment (I've always treated the 4th floor/tower/etc with more superstition than most Americans do with 13). And it's more annoying because Daniel's whole thing is his mom dying prematurely of a mysterious unnamed illness and it's like, there was an opportunity to give him superstitious belief that living on the 4th floor was an omen. I was also confused by someone (maybe Irene?) remembering frequent dimsum outings while in Beijing. Why her primary memories of Beijing feature dimsum, a famously southern/Cantonese dining practice, instead of northern Chinese cuisine, is beyond me. Either way it's just lazy writing—because the opportunities to take advantage of these little loopholes by fleshing out characters are never realized, it just comes across as failing to complete the setting. (Even worse, it betrays the editors as being completely out of touch with the narratives that they are supposedly investing in.)
All 5 characters somehow felt the same. None of them had any real flaws aside from getting into hot-headed arguments here and there. But like...whenever anything remotely negative was associated with a character it never went anywhere. Will has a heartbreaker kind of reputation but you never see it actually interfere with his life. I'm struggling to come up with something that is genuinely negative for any of the others. I guess maybe Lily has a little bit of hubris but again, it never results in any real consequences. On and on and on. Worse yet, their relationship to Chinese identity is again flat and lacks any thought-provoking aspects. They all overachieved and got into highly respectable schools and now they have to live up to some expectations and provide for their families! But the internal conflict (do I serve myself or my family or my country) is the same for all of them, which is another example of how incredibly boring this reflection on Chinese identity is. None of them really branched out. What little character development happened, happened across the board for all of them. It feels like there is nothing to these characters except for their Chinese-ness. And because so much time and energy was focused on reminding the reader at every step of the way that they have an internal conflict that is culturally significant, every other aspect of the characters falls flat. The best and most exasperating example is Irene and Alex's queerness, which is tiptoed around and lightly hinted at, never for more than 5 words at a time, for about 85% of the book, then suddenly because I guess the book has to wrap up with a tidy ending Irene and Alex are dying to get it on with each other. idgaf if there's a relationship or even a love triangle subplot in a heist narrative but so much wordpower is spent on Chinese identity conflict, which ends up suffocating the hope for any other reckonings about personal relationships, flaws, traits, etc... When Irene and Alex do start making moves it feels like it comes out of nowhere so instead of being a slow burn it just reads as an insincere attempt to squeeze queerness into an ensemble cast because it sells.
By far the most annoying aspect of reading was the constant POV shifts, I get that changing POVs is a stylistic thing and it works in some cases but when the chapters are so short it becomes exhausting. It's also weird because again, every character is way too similar (I mean seriously, changing what top-tier school they go to and their major doesn't change the fact that they're all basically aces at what they do and again, their internal conflicts are all the same), so even though you're changing POVs and settings, nothing actually has changed. And then there's the added fact that for some reason the author has decided to remind you at the start of every chapter what each character's full name is. Again, if we got some backstory on these characters and understood what their surname means to them I'd be all for restating the character's full name every other page but the surnames are all empty and meaningless without that context and it just feels like an annoying reminder that we have shifted POVs yet again. Same thing goes for the schools they go to.
It's been a while since I've been so pissed off reading a book, never thought it would be while reading a book about figuring out your identity as an Asian-American which is usually my bread and butter. There's a lot of other things that made me roll my eyes but I'm trying to tone down my hater personality in 2024.
Unfortunately it's all pretty downhill from there. Several small writing clichés that I consider sinful because of their similarity to Wattpad fanfiction, primarily unnecessary descriptions of what clothes and how much makeup a character is wearing even though it adds nothing to the imagery or story, also the amount of self-insert details (but I'll let that slide). I think the reflections on identity were all pretty superficial and uninteresting. Not saying every book with a Chinese character has to have a truly revolutionary reckoning but a lot of this stuff has been said in books that were published 10 years ago. If we want people to take Chinese-American narratives seriously in contemporary fiction then we have to offer something actually thought provoking and the whole "I'm not Chinese enough for China and I'm not American enough for America" is tired and unoriginal at this point.
Found myself peeved by the references to COVID, it didn't add anything to the story or any of the characters' narratives so all it really did was date the author and highlight the immaturity of her writing. Reflections on Chinese heritage felt half baked because while there were casual references to a lot of zillennial Asian culture (boba, etc) there were a lot of dissonant moments that really took me out of the setting and story. The one I'm thinking of is Daniel remembering his life in Beijing where he lived in a fourth-floor apartment (I've always treated the 4th floor/tower/etc with more superstition than most Americans do with 13). And it's more annoying because Daniel's whole thing is his mom dying prematurely of a mysterious unnamed illness and it's like, there was an opportunity to give him superstitious belief that living on the 4th floor was an omen. I was also confused by someone (maybe Irene?) remembering frequent dimsum outings while in Beijing. Why her primary memories of Beijing feature dimsum, a famously southern/Cantonese dining practice, instead of northern Chinese cuisine, is beyond me. Either way it's just lazy writing—because the opportunities to take advantage of these little loopholes by fleshing out characters are never realized, it just comes across as failing to complete the setting. (Even worse, it betrays the editors as being completely out of touch with the narratives that they are supposedly investing in.)
All 5 characters somehow felt the same. None of them had any real flaws aside from getting into hot-headed arguments here and there. But like...whenever anything remotely negative was associated with a character it never went anywhere. Will has a heartbreaker kind of reputation but you never see it actually interfere with his life. I'm struggling to come up with something that is genuinely negative for any of the others. I guess maybe Lily has a little bit of hubris but again, it never results in any real consequences. On and on and on. Worse yet, their relationship to Chinese identity is again flat and lacks any thought-provoking aspects. They all overachieved and got into highly respectable schools and now they have to live up to some expectations and provide for their families! But the internal conflict (do I serve myself or my family or my country) is the same for all of them, which is another example of how incredibly boring this reflection on Chinese identity is. None of them really branched out. What little character development happened, happened across the board for all of them. It feels like there is nothing to these characters except for their Chinese-ness. And because so much time and energy was focused on reminding the reader at every step of the way that they have an internal conflict that is culturally significant, every other aspect of the characters falls flat. The best and most exasperating example is Irene and Alex's queerness, which is tiptoed around and lightly hinted at, never for more than 5 words at a time, for about 85% of the book, then suddenly because I guess the book has to wrap up with a tidy ending Irene and Alex are dying to get it on with each other. idgaf if there's a relationship or even a love triangle subplot in a heist narrative but so much wordpower is spent on Chinese identity conflict, which ends up suffocating the hope for any other reckonings about personal relationships, flaws, traits, etc... When Irene and Alex do start making moves it feels like it comes out of nowhere so instead of being a slow burn it just reads as an insincere attempt to squeeze queerness into an ensemble cast because it sells.
By far the most annoying aspect of reading was the constant POV shifts, I get that changing POVs is a stylistic thing and it works in some cases but when the chapters are so short it becomes exhausting. It's also weird because again, every character is way too similar (I mean seriously, changing what top-tier school they go to and their major doesn't change the fact that they're all basically aces at what they do and again, their internal conflicts are all the same), so even though you're changing POVs and settings, nothing actually has changed. And then there's the added fact that for some reason the author has decided to remind you at the start of every chapter what each character's full name is. Again, if we got some backstory on these characters and understood what their surname means to them I'd be all for restating the character's full name every other page but the surnames are all empty and meaningless without that context and it just feels like an annoying reminder that we have shifted POVs yet again. Same thing goes for the schools they go to.
It's been a while since I've been so pissed off reading a book, never thought it would be while reading a book about figuring out your identity as an Asian-American which is usually my bread and butter. There's a lot of other things that made me roll my eyes but I'm trying to tone down my hater personality in 2024.
adventurous
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I felt like this was a movie. It was very fun and a quick read. It also touched on being Asia and the disconnect between being part of America and China. I really enjoyed the discussion of the different feelings each character had on this.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
God awful.
Really wanted to like this book bc chinese, but after the 400th description of the light hitting every characters high cheekbones or sharp jawline i wanted to kms.
Overall a very corny rendition of the chinese american experience. No character development beyond “i will never be enough for my parents” —> “i am enough” (spoiler alert!!) Bad writing, poor pacing, silly plot, absolutely excessive use of the word “diaspora”
I did like the lesbian cameo though. Slay mamas
Really wanted to like this book bc chinese, but after the 400th description of the light hitting every characters high cheekbones or sharp jawline i wanted to kms.
Overall a very corny rendition of the chinese american experience. No character development beyond “i will never be enough for my parents” —> “i am enough” (spoiler alert!!) Bad writing, poor pacing, silly plot, absolutely excessive use of the word “diaspora”
I did like the lesbian cameo though. Slay mamas
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
not me googling if this book is YA or not after reading it
Portrait of a Thief is a fun, high-stakes book about art heists undertaken by a group of young Chinese-Americans. The young twenty-something characters are offered $50 million dollars if they can obtain 5 priceless artifacts from different museums that were stolen from a Chinese palace in the 1800s. The story revolves around five characters, so it can be a little difficult to keep straight at times. They are all highly intelligent and successful, largely living their parents' dreams. I loved the discussion of who owns artifacts from other countries. The story is sometimes very glittery and flashy and entertaining. A perfect summer read if you're looking for a thought-provoking adventure.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.