A review by babewithabookandabeer
Real Americans by Rachel Khong

emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Thank you Knopf and Netgalley for my copy of REAL AMERICANS by Rachel Khong, out 4/30/24! 

Rachel Khong blew me away with her novel GOODBYE VITAMIN a few years ago, so when I got the chance to read her new novel early, I jumped at the chance. And to no one’s surprise, this was my favorite novel I read last year. It is beautiful. Khong has created a sweeping generational novel that goes from China to New York to the West Coast and I never wanted it to end.

She makes the reader ask the question, “How far would you go to shape your own destiny?” Are our futures inevitable? What makes us who we are? With a dash of medical drama and science fiction thrown in, I couldn’t put this book down. It starts on the precipice of Y2K with Lily, an unpaid intern at a media company. She meets Matthew. He is easygoing, attracgtive, a native East Coaster, white and a rich heir to a huge family fortune from a pharmaceutical empire. Lily was raised in Tampa, by two scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China, and she’s flat-broke. Alas, they fall in love.

Then, we swing to 2021 and follow Nick. He is isolated and lives with his single mother. He can’t shake the sense she’s hiding something. The opportunity comes up to find his biological father and this journey causes a massive disruption and changes everything he thought he knew.

The final narrator and sweeping story is incredible and I don’t want to spoil anything, so please just read this amazing novel! Khong is marvelous at creating characters with so much tenderness. She makes unique feelings become universal. Her prose is so immersive, you feel like you are existing right along these characters. And she packs so much into a book: class differences, political hardships, anxiety, lonliness, love. 

I cried multiple times and wanted to live in this story. I hope you read and love it as much as I did! I am buying a copy to keep on my shelves forever.