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A review by noirverse
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
2.0
This book ended up being a disappointment, unfortunately. I was thrilled to hear of a Gatsby retelling with an Asian female main character that also included LGBT elements and couldn't wait to see how it played with the original plot. I thought I was going to get something extremely special when the early chapters explicitly nodded towards Jordan, Nick, and Gatsby all being bisexual, but it took me hitting the midway point before I realized that this book wasn't going to pull off its themes.
The prose was beautiful and the sole reason why I read it to the end despite my growing sense that the story wasn't working for me. My biggest letdown was that for a book that was almost double the word count of the original Gatsby, it didn't truly dive into the concepts that it brought up. Jordan was adopted, but we only visit that a handful of times in the story, and while there's extra backstory for both Daisy and Jordan, it didn't really impact anything in the end even if the scenes themselves were enjoyable.
A red flag popped up when I realized that it took half of the entire book to get to Daisy finally meeting Gatsby at Nick's house. Everything before that was a fun diversion, but was ultimately a long chain of Jordan thinking about her past or meeting up with Nick or other people without any true sense of plot. I liked that she was LGBT, but I didn't care for how much the book focused on her and Nick as a couple the way I could tell the book wanted me to.
Ultimately, the book's biggest flaw in my eyes is that it was too distant from the original Gatsby to be a satisfying retread, but was also too married to the original plot to explore Jordan having a full-fledged narrative of her own that wasn't tagging alongside Daisy and the others until much too late in the story. I did greatly enjoy Khai, but even as I read about him, I couldn't help but wonder why we didn't see him show up much earlier in the book as previously, the magic in the narrative seemed sprinkled in to distract from the questionable pacing and was extremely vague in description. I'm sure it worked for some people, but it didn't for me.
There was a big reveal with Nick at the end that was...okay, I guess? It felt so thrown in there that I couldn't muster any sense of surprise about it. All that being said, I did enjoy the prose, Jordan being adopted, along with her feelings about being transracial. There was also the moment of Jordan realizing she had one-sided feelings for Daisy that landed really well for me, along with the moments of Nick having feelings for Gatsby. I only wish that those things had been expanded on more instead of being impressive elements placed into a disappointing whole.
The Chosen and the Beautiful had a beautiful sense of atmosphere and prose, but without enough substance to it to truly get out of the shadow of the original Gatsby. I realize that my high expectations for this book in relation to the original story likely set me up for my enjoyment being let down in the end, so I have hope that readers who are unfamiliar with Gatsby will take away something more positive from it. I've settled on giving it two stars for the concept of the story, even if it didn't properly come together the way I wished it did.
The prose was beautiful and the sole reason why I read it to the end despite my growing sense that the story wasn't working for me. My biggest letdown was that for a book that was almost double the word count of the original Gatsby, it didn't truly dive into the concepts that it brought up. Jordan was adopted, but we only visit that a handful of times in the story, and while there's extra backstory for both Daisy and Jordan, it didn't really impact anything in the end even if the scenes themselves were enjoyable.
A red flag popped up when I realized that it took half of the entire book to get to Daisy finally meeting Gatsby at Nick's house. Everything before that was a fun diversion, but was ultimately a long chain of Jordan thinking about her past or meeting up with Nick or other people without any true sense of plot. I liked that she was LGBT, but I didn't care for how much the book focused on her and Nick as a couple the way I could tell the book wanted me to.
Ultimately, the book's biggest flaw in my eyes is that it was too distant from the original Gatsby to be a satisfying retread, but was also too married to the original plot to explore Jordan having a full-fledged narrative of her own that wasn't tagging alongside Daisy and the others until much too late in the story. I did greatly enjoy Khai, but even as I read about him, I couldn't help but wonder why we didn't see him show up much earlier in the book as previously, the magic in the narrative seemed sprinkled in to distract from the questionable pacing and was extremely vague in description. I'm sure it worked for some people, but it didn't for me.
There was a big reveal with Nick at the end that was...okay, I guess? It felt so thrown in there that I couldn't muster any sense of surprise about it. All that being said, I did enjoy the prose, Jordan being adopted, along with her feelings about being transracial. There was also the moment of Jordan realizing she had one-sided feelings for Daisy that landed really well for me, along with the moments of Nick having feelings for Gatsby. I only wish that those things had been expanded on more instead of being impressive elements placed into a disappointing whole.
The Chosen and the Beautiful had a beautiful sense of atmosphere and prose, but without enough substance to it to truly get out of the shadow of the original Gatsby. I realize that my high expectations for this book in relation to the original story likely set me up for my enjoyment being let down in the end, so I have hope that readers who are unfamiliar with Gatsby will take away something more positive from it. I've settled on giving it two stars for the concept of the story, even if it didn't properly come together the way I wished it did.