A review by longbeachyreads
Wanting by Claire Jia

4.25

Lian and Wenyu were unlikely best friends - Lian the good girl and Wenyu the mischievous girl from the wrong side of the tracks. A lover of English, Lian dreams of going to the United States, but as fate would have it, it's Wenyu who moves to America and becomes a YouTube influencer engaged to a rich white man. Time and distance and a secret push the two apart, though they each voyeuristically follow the other's path. When Wenyu returns to Beijing to build her dream mansion, Lian finds herself questioning whether the ordinary life she's living is what she wants. 

I really enjoyed this exploration of friendship, belonging, identity, and living in America. Although architect Song Chen was tied to the storyline, his POV felt a bit out of place and I didn't quite care for his plight as much as Lian's.  Also wow

that stuff with Freddie was nuts!

Sourced: IG

"One thing leads to another. And suddenly you've taken so many steps and changed in all these tiny ways and you look in the mirror and you don't recognize yourself anymore."

"But now I realize that my mother was right all along. Greatness is elusive. It is not meant to last long. Even when you attain it, you spend the rest of your life trying to keep it. I chased you because I thought you were extraordinary. Then I chased Robert because I thought he was. Greatness always ends -- with time, with distance, with death. But ordinary is everlasting... My mother wanted me to be proud of who I was already - someone ordinary. She did not want me to wager the worth of my life on what I could achieve, on who I could become. I was already her beloved daughter, her ordinary daughter. And now I finally understand this."

He wondered if there were any winners at all. Why was it so hard to leave a mark on that country?Despite every struggle, every victory, every concession you made, in the end, America was always unchanged by you and yet you held the years inside like a cancer. Just like a cancer, until it spread over your entire body, and in the end took you for its own. America didn't swallow you whole. No, it chipped away at you, tiny nibbles at a time, until you were gone. 

Lian knew now to thrive in America meant to tell a constant lie. Tell it until you believed it to be gospel.