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A review by daumari
Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
2.0
Eh, it was ok... my mom picked this up at the dollar store but couldn't get into it (about 20 pages, and she had DNF'd other books in the past for language and bad behavior, so it's probably just as well due stopped) and gave it to me to read.
Sarong Party Girls feels like Crazy Rich Asians' classy betch cousin from another part of town. Told in first person, Jazzy (Jazeline, because as many Jasmines and Celines are out there, there's only one Jazeline) feels pretty ripe at the age of 26, making it a goal for her and her girlfriends to get white husbands or at least boyfriends within the month. The bar/club scene probably isn't the best marriage market, but it's the hunting ground she knows. As I read, it didn't feel like she was getting anywhere, though? There's some self realization at the end in the literal last pages but ehhhhh.
The thing SPG has going for it is that it is entirely I'm first person Singlish, the hodgepodge dialect of English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay. I had my phone at the ready to look up slang every other paragraph or so, but the narrator's voice is consistent and unmistakably Jazzy. I liked Ms. Tan's nonfiction work, A Tiger In the Kitchen much better, so I dunno.
Sarong Party Girls feels like Crazy Rich Asians' classy betch cousin from another part of town. Told in first person, Jazzy (Jazeline, because as many Jasmines and Celines are out there, there's only one Jazeline) feels pretty ripe at the age of 26, making it a goal for her and her girlfriends to get white husbands or at least boyfriends within the month. The bar/club scene probably isn't the best marriage market, but it's the hunting ground she knows. As I read, it didn't feel like she was getting anywhere, though? There's some self realization at the end in the literal last pages but ehhhhh.
The thing SPG has going for it is that it is entirely I'm first person Singlish, the hodgepodge dialect of English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay. I had my phone at the ready to look up slang every other paragraph or so, but the narrator's voice is consistent and unmistakably Jazzy. I liked Ms. Tan's nonfiction work, A Tiger In the Kitchen much better, so I dunno.