China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

China Rich Girlfriend review comes from the script of the podcast by Living a Life Through Books. For more episodes by Living a Life through Books, click the link to her podcast.

Hello everyone and welcome to living a life through books reviews.  I’m your host Dr. Shahnaz Ahmed and my friend Monique who talked about ARCs made me think about reviews.  I figure, if a publisher wants to send me their ARCs, why should they?  What would they benefit from sending an ARC to somebody who just wants to read a new book.  Well, it’s all symbiosis really.  You scratch their back and they’ll scratch yours.  So, while I’m still processing this concept about contacting publishers and getting on net galley, I figure I should get my feet wet with a few reviews, and so here goes with my first podcast review.

Disclaimer.  This is not going to be like a literary review.  This is going to be a review that is more my style.  Basically a bit crazy and bit whatever.  Let’s see how it goes.

We are talking China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan. This is the part 2 of the Crazy Rich Asian book series.  I did the audio of Crazy Rich Asians and to be honest, I was not blown away by that book but then after a while, and after letting all the richness sink in, I re-thought the whole thing and decided to try the second book.  First off, half the book is all about richness and brand names and who wore what and what century that jewelry was manufactured in and blah blah blah.  The thing is that listening to part 2, I was able to overlook all the superficiality and go for the story.  The cute stuff.  Yes, there’s Nick and Rachel.  Still very much in love.  Rachel is looking for her father, in true continuation of book 1.  Of course, Nick’s mother Eleanor gets involved and a whole bunch of other richy rich folks who are miserably rolling in it.

The story with Asrid/Casian/Michael continues and of course there’s Charlie.  There’s always Charlie.  Very cute story there.

I was thinking about China Rich Girlfriend and the term first world problems.  What would this be called?  Crazy rich Asian problems? China Rich Girlfriend problems?

OK,  we’re still talking book.  So in general, I think I liked this more than the first one.  For me, once I got over the richness, I was able to just dissect into the story and appreciate the fun elements of relationships,  I could settle into the book.  

Oh and China Rich Girlfriend is what I would call a palate cleanser. When you read a lot of heavy intense books and WWII historic fiction that just gets you and you are crying half the time, this book is a great in between to just forget about life and enjoy the craziness of a world that is just different from our own.  Yes.  Read it.

I would give it a solid 4 stars.  And I am looking forward to listening to book 3.  It’s on my audio holds on Libby.

That’s it for this time.  I’m Dr. Shahnaz Ahmed with Living a life through books reviews.  In spirit of the book, have a rich one!

If you want to read more of Living a life through books, book thoughts, here’s one that you might be interested in: can’t sleep, can’t put down