CRASH INTO ME

After moving to Los Angeles, a biracial photographer navigates the complexities of celebrity, wealth, race, and her own past.

It starts with a bang—literally, as Cecilia Chen is rear-ended and smashes into the parked car of another woman who was just about to step through the vehicle’s open door. Thankfully, the woman is uninjured; she turns out to be Anouk Ferrand, a superstar French model and actress. Cecilia worked with Anouk decades earlier, when she was a 25-year-old assistant on a glamorous, edgy photo shoot in Cabo San Lucas for a fragrance campaign. We are quickly made aware that something problematic occurred on that trip, though after numerous flashback chapters set back in 1996, detailing the action on and off, it’s a bit frustrating that we never learn exactly what happened. These sections are presented in third-person, while the present-day action in 2015 is narrated by Cecilia herself. "Black, Asian, female, over forty, an outsider," she is doubtful that her experience in Los Angeles, where her white, French film director husband will be shooting a high-profile, big-budget project, will be as pleasant or welcoming as his. Among the most disturbing aspects is adjusting to the realities of raising non-white children in the United States, where Julien, 13, and Lucie, 11, are going to school with the offspring of one-percenters. After Cecilia delivers an apology gift to Anouk’s home, the actress gradually remembers who she is and how she was connected to The Bad Thing That Happened. In the meantime, the two have embarked on an intense and intimate new phase of their relationship. As in her debut, The Idea of You (2017), Lee’s sex scenes artfully blend the explicit with the romantic. The drama escalates as both a beloved old boyfriend of Cecilia’s and a starlet mistress of her husband’s arrive on the scene. Readers who relish an insider view of what people say and wear at gatherings of the Hollywood in crowd will find Lee’s observations sharp and often slyly funny.

Thoughtful social commentary meets sensual queer awakening among the Beautiful People.