A lush portrayal of Singapore life filled with vibrant characters and a lovable leading lady readers will root for.
A woman in her 30s contends with her family's expectations as she navigates career and romance in Singapore.
Andrea Tang is 33 and single, much to her mother’s chagrin. Andrea knows her family expected her to be married with children by now, but she’s still reeling from a nasty breakup with her long-term boyfriend, Ivan, and is more concerned with making partner at her law firm than getting engaged. Readers who enjoy their heroines booze-soaked and battle-worn—especially when the battle is being waged against society’s expectations of women, unfair treatment of women in the workplace, and judgmental aunties—will fall hard for fierce yet flawed Andrea. While the diary entries sometimes rely too heavily on dialogue and not enough on Andrea's own thoughts, her inner monologue is the perfect combination of hilariously brash and undeniably honest. She navigates a disastrous one-night stand, her mother’s outspoken disapproval of her lifestyle and relationship status, and her best friend’s soap-operatic dalliance with a married man with snark levels reminiscent of Bridget Jones herself. Of course, despite clocking 15-hour days at the office and eschewing Tinder, Andrea soon finds herself in a romantic entanglement or two. She unexpectedly connects with extremely eligible bachelor Eric Deng at a lavish book club meeting (complete with outlandish cocktail attire, overflowing champagne flutes, and sashimi freshly sliced by a smiling chef) hosted at his Architectural Digest–worthy home. Eric courts Andrea with fresh bouquets, pricey handbags, and fancy dinners, but she isn’t sure whether she can truly commit to the much older, much richer businessman—especially since she still hasn’t figured out why she is so drawn to her engaged work rival, Suresh Aditparan, and his popular webcomic series.
A lush portrayal of Singapore life filled with vibrant characters and a lovable leading lady readers will root for.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-18781-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Haphazard and undemanding.
A sports agent’s first official client is the man she dumped years ago in college.
After two years of hard work as an underling, Nora Mackenzie is finally being promoted to full-time sports agent. She’s worked hard, kept quiet, and allowed men in the office to call her Mac—a nickname she hates—all to show she’s a team player and “one of the guys.” Unfortunately, her boss instructs her to sign Derek Pender, a football player coming off an injury, who happens to be the man she heartlessly dumped in their senior year of college. Derek signs with her for revenge, seeing it as his opportunity to pay Nora back for callously breaking his heart eight years earlier. He insists she be at his beck and call: answering his emails, running his errands, cooking dinner for his dates. He also refuses to let her explain why she broke up with him without warning or explanation. Nora feels she has no choice but to acquiesce to Derek’s humiliating demands, since she’s worked too hard to let him ruin her dream job. She hopes he’ll thaw and they might become friends, but Derek’s bad behavior is designed to hide the fact that he’s still in love with her. Nora’s characterization is uneven, veering between anger at how she’s treated in the male-dominated field to immature bickering and bantering with Derek. Although Adams likely meant for Derek and Nora’s interactions to have an enemies-to-lovers vibe, the characters instead seem juvenile and stuck in the past. The novel is fueled by a string of tropes—second chance romance! married in Vegas! only one bed!—each randomly deployed to keep the book going despite thin characterization and wan plotting.
Haphazard and undemanding.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723678
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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