China Rich Girlfriend & Rich People Problems

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan, 479 pages

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan, 397 pages

In these sequels to Crazy Rich Asians, we find Rachel and Nick finally ready to settle down, despite all of the Nick's family's worst intentions. While Nick's controlling mother and grandmother are persona non grata with the happy couple, that doesn't stop Eleanor Young from trying to weasel her way back into her son's life. And this time she has the trump card — she found Rachel's biological father, a man that Rachel's been searching the globe for since she learned about him in the first book. And in the final book of the trilogy, Nick's faced with a dilemma, as his estranged grandmother is dying. While their recent relationship has been rough, they were quite close when Nick was younger, to the point that EVERYONE knew that Nick was Ah Ma's favorite. Should he try to mend fences before it's too late? And if he tries, will his materialistic cousin Eddie even let him into the house?

While the first book was centered on the Youngs of Singapore, in these books, we also mingle with the uber-rich of Shanghai and Hong Kong, including Rachel's biological father and half-brother, social-climbing former porn actress Kitty Pong, and Nick's lovely and stylish cousin, Astrid. As always, the books are full of Kwan's trademark footnotes full of frothy gossip, slang translations, and jaw-dropping pricetags, all of which make this series fun and, to me at least, infinitely rereadable.

Rich People Problems

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan, 544 pages

OK, so Christa and I are apparently on the same reading brainwave, as she just posted about this one too. I'm not going to rehash what she posted here, though I will echo her resounding endorsement of this series. It's so much fun to read!

China Rich Girlfriend

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan, 479 pages

My thanks to Christa for recently reading and blogging about this book, which came a perfect lull in my crazy reading schedule this year and reminded me that I still had two books to read in the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. I'll not go over the plot, since it's a bit all over the place with stories following the elegant Astrid Leong, crazy Kitty Pong, and the reserved Rachel Chu, but I will say that while Kwan offers up his undeniably snarky peek at the multi-billionaires of Asia, this one suffers a bit from the traditional second-in-a-trilogy slump. Fingers crossed that there's a clearer story in Rich People Problems, which I'm going to start reading today.