Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

My goodness this book had a lot of characters. Reading Crazy Rich Asians oddly brought me back in memory to the time when I was reading A Song of Ice and Fire for the first time. It felt like there were just about as many POVs and family trees to remember as in A Game of Thrones. 

While the world-building and way that the characters interacted with one another was quite interesting, I do feel like the book lacked a bit of a plot. So many chapters were focused on introducing new characters and exploring the vast realms of describing the overly luxurious world in which the Singaporeans lived in - that not a lot of plot was added into the pages of the book. The random jumps between POVs also made this book quite hard to read - which is the only thing that I have to complain about in terms of writing style. 

Rachel and Nick were an adorable couple, of course and I very much shipped them right to the end of the book. However, I think that Astrid and Michael's story was actually more interesting and had a lot more potential and I do hope that they expand more upon them in the sequel. Overall, most of the characters weren't super interesting and I didn't really feel myself getting invested in them. Most of what made the characters interesting was being able to peek into their extravagant lifestyles but after chapters upon chapters of reading designer labels, I found my mind drifting away from the book.

I think what really brought out the book's true potential were the last few chapters. I found myself getting really invested in what was going on (especially because there was finally something going on in the plot) and just absolutely could not put the book down until I had finished it. That plot twist was quite intense and I did not see it coming. 

Overall, I think this book was pretty decent, although it definitely was a bit lacking in the plot-department. I think that what this book does best is present an entertaining, humorous, satirical world of rich people which lets the reader experience some pure escapism for a few hours. And I actually learned quite a bit about Singaporean culture whilst reading it (thanks to the many footnotes added in at the end of the chapters which help the reader navigate the rich culture within this book). I definitely did enjoy reading Crazy Rich Asians but I do believe the storyline could have been told a bit faster and hope that the sequel definitely makes up for what this book lacked in plot and pacing.