Armchair travel to beautiful Capri and another insider peek in the world of the wealthy make for another thumbs up read from Kevin Kwan.

I absolutely loved the Crazy Rich Asians series, and was thrilled to see a new book by Kevin Kwan. I was NOT disappointed! The book is a modern retelling of A Room With a View, in which main character Lucie meets George at a wedding in Capri. She doesn’t like him at first, but is drawn to him for some reason. Eventually, they hook up but are pulled apart until they meet again 5 years later under different circumstances. The first half or so of the book takes place in Capri in 2013, and the rest takes place 5 years later in New York. Overall, Kwan’s wit shines in his writing. I loved the footnotes in the story and enjoyed the details about designers and lifestyles of the rich. If you loved Kwan’s writing in Crazy Rich Asians, you will also adore Sex and Vanity.

This is just as escapist as Crazy Rich Asians, but covers a slightly different world. The WASP world is so coded and regimented, it feels like Kwan really did his homework! The only thing that keeps this from being a completely fun experience is the series of microaggressions (and outright aggression) that Lucy experiences or witnesses throughout (though of course that is essential to the plot).

Highly recommend, an extremely fun read!

Overall, this is a very quick and enjoyable book. Perfect for a summer/beach reading list. It is easy to see the similarities between it and Crazy Rich Asians (the excessive wealth, the amazing food and exotic destinations, the crazy situations), but, don't go into it expecting it to be another CRA, the books are different. The plot is predictable, and for the most part, the characters are very likable but not very well developed. All in all, this is a good read.

Fans of Crazy Rich Asians will enjoy this new set of dramatic characters. Similar themes like old vs new money, racism & classism, and family expectations are also found here. The decadence is fun to vicariously experience. and the New York setting gives this a modern, adult Gossip Girl feel. Readers who enjoy Kwan's distinct name-dropping style will find this new novel and world enjoyable.

Full disclosure, I’m Taiwanese American. That said, I loved this book and I especially loved having them going to Capri for a Taiwanese heiress’s wedding. Per a Kevin Kwan novel, we zip around to some amazing locales and get all the amazing g fashions and jewels!!! I enjoyed George being so zen and secure about himself and his mom, and I understood that Lucie was still young enough to be unsure of everything. And I super rejoiced that Charlotte was a good cousin!

Kevin Kwan takes us into the world of uber rich Asian-American families. A wedding on the isle of Capri with ten days of events leading up to the wedding itself leaves plenty of time for guests to create drama. Lucie Tang Churchill is new to this world and escorted by her older cousin, Charlotte Barclay. Charlotte promised Lucie's mother that she would keep Lucie out of trouble at which she fails on an epic scale. Kwan bring us into a world where breeding and school status determine your social worth by highlighting each character's pedigree. The luscious descriptions of the island, the events and people just beg to be shown on a theater screen. Will Lucie do the "sensible" thing and follow family protocol or will she finally find the inner strength to admit to herself what she has been denying all along and change her life's direction?

The Crazy Rich Asians books had diminishing returns for me, but the reason the first book worked so well was that there was heart behind all the conspicuous consumption and name dropping. Rachel was a normal person among all the glitz and Nick might have been ridiculously wealthy, but he was relatively unaffected - it was just the people around him who were insane. This book works less well because there's little normality. The only normal people seem to be Lucie's mom and brother and there's not much of them and they don't show up into late into the story. Lucie is too passive to be truly compelling and George is a cipher.

This was fun enough, but not memorable.

Kwan's writing has an addictive quality. This is escapist literature, similar to his previous books, that will make you feel like you've stepped into a world of designer shoes and lavish vacations. Exactly what I expected and wanted.

This update to EM Forster’s A Room with a View contains all of the name-dropping and glitz of Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. Though the decadence of his previous books is present, the humor is noticeably lacking. While it was fun to read about the glamorous lives of the characters in his trilogy, it was the humor that made them so memorable. I missed that lightness in this book. The snark and snobbery was unleavened by jokes or farcical narration, which left it feeling distasteful, somehow. It could be that this book is not suitable for the moment in which we find ourselves, through no fault of the author.

Fans of Kevin Kwan won't be disappointed by his latest. It is full of exotic locations, over the top characters and unbelievable (yet so much fun to read!) storylines. The author has a talent for describing people and places in great detail and he aptly uses gossipy footnotes to give the reader a little extra something to think about. This story contains just the right amount of camp and its pacing makes it the perfect beach read, especially for fans of the "rich people's problems" genre.

I had to read this book when I saw Kevin Kwan had written a new book. I have smiled, laughed and thought "Oh my G-D" through the "Crazy Rich Asian" series. Wonderful, amusing and awe inspiring with the outlandish antics of the tuber-wealthy. I could hardly put the books down wondering what crazy or over the top thing was going to happen next. The best balance to the constant over the top luxury was the well developed and written characters. Adding to that the Chinese and other Asian cultural references made the book so much fun to read. As I read I was waiting for Lucie to come to her senses and realize what was really going on. Endearing and fun to read.

Sex and Vanity is a romantic comedy set in the ultra-rich society world. The plot is inspired by A Room With A View; the core couple, Lucie and George, meet when George and his mother switch rooms with Lucie and her aunt so they can have a room with a view. The first half of the book takes place on a wedding weekend in Capri, where George and Lucie get to know each other; the weekend ends in scandal, and the second half of the book flashes forward five years, when George and Lucie meet again in NYC, under very different circumstances. Will romance reassert itself? (I feel like we know the answer, right?)

Kevin Kwan has become one of my favorite authors, and a real go-to for romantic comedy. He said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he writes to create joy, and mission accomplished. His books are just like taking a vacation in a completely different world, where everyone is kind of deranged and silly, and shenanigans ensue. Half the fun of these books is being given an insider's tour of how the ultra rich really live; where everyone is introduced with the pedigree of their schooling, where the books on one's shelf have to be pre-approved by a decorator to have distressed spines, where homes come equipped with an in-house infinity pool. There is a level of frivolity in the writing that comes straight from the lives of the characters; the stakes are never too high, but in a way that's part of the fun. You can just relax into the experience and trust it will turn out just fine.

The Crazy Rich Asians trilogy was my favorite set of books in years, and Sex and Vanity doesn't quite hit those heights. The stakes are really pretty low; there aren't any adversaries or conflicts that make the outcome in doubt, as happened with Crazy Rich Asians. Without stakes, the plot is kind of lacking in urgency; but honestly, it's so delightful, so funny, and such a relief to escape into this world that I'm not going to complain. Treat yourself to this book, and get out of the real world for a while.

Kevin Kwan does it again! Perfectly dishy and sometimes acerbic descriptions of the crazy rich, with a healthy dose of down to earth characters. Sex and Vanity has a little bit more sweetness and light to it than any of the Crazy Rich trilogy. Lucie and George are lovers to root for. And I am dying to know who the real-life Cecil is!

Well Kevin Kwan is back!

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this one prior to publication.

While Sex and Vanity doesn't have the same international flair as Crazy Rich Asians (was it just me or did everyone else drop everything to start planning a trip to Singapore?), this was a very enjoyable read. The destinations highlighted in this book are Italy's island of Capri (when will the quarantine end?!?!) and good, old New York City.

Lucie Churchill, a half-Chinese, half-super WASP, college student travels to Capri to attend the wedding of her good friend Isabel. Since she's young (and rich, you know), she is accompanied by her much older cousin, Charlotte (this book definitely had an "A Room With A View" vibe). At the wedding she meets and falls for George Zao, who is immediately dismissed as not suitable for her. After a scandalous incident at the wedding, Lucie is whisked away never to see George again. Until...

Flashforward, 5 years later, Lucie becomes engaged to the entirely acceptable Cecil Pike. But who comes sneakily back into her life? George. Hilarity ensues as only Kevin Kwan can write it.

As expected, you are thrust into the sphere of the uber-rich (buying an Aston Martin is compared to buying Cheetos) which makes for some outrageous situations. The social commentary in this novel pushed the boundaries on racism and identity. Lucie, being half-Chinese and half-White struggles with both sides of herself and it makes for some very interesting storytelling.

The biggest difference from Crazy Rich Asians is that Kwan sticks really close to his main characters. While CRA has a whole incredible cast (of which my favorite weren't even the main characters - Astrid forever! (view spoiler)), S&V sticks close to Lucie for the entire book. Other people float in and around her, but the story is pretty soundly set in her perspective.

All in all, a great read.

It's not you, Kevin Kwan, it's me.

I read the "Crazy Rich Asians" books in 2016, not long after the disastrous presidential election, looking for escapist reading, and I loved them so much - they were just the escape I needed, a love story of an ordinary woman battling for love among awful people in beautiful houses.

But I had to stop reading "Sex and Vanity" after 25%. It might be the book - where the previous books invited me to be horrified at how terrible extremely wealthy people are, as well as fascinated, this one seemed to expect me to simply like them and sympathize with their problems, and I found that I didn't. Not even Lucie, the one I was clearly supposed to like.

Or it might be me - since i read the "Crazy Rich Asians" series, I've lived through most of a Trump administration, and had more time to learn to dislike extremely rich people in a different way. And now, I'm attempting to read this in the midst of a global pandemic which is being massively mishandled by extremely rich people and... I just can't.

I still like you, and appreciate the joy you brought me after the election, and maybe I can try this book again, some day when this kind of escapism works for me, but this isn't the year for it for me.

I don't know if this feedback is helpful to you or your publisher, but here it is, and since I didn't finish the book, I won't copy this to Goodreads or other sites.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I found this book to be very disappointing. The first part, set on Capri, was mostly fun, but even there the problems that would persist throughout showed. Lucie, around whom the story revolves, was bizarrely naive and sheltered for a rich American city girl in college in 2013 and her companion/cousin Charlotte was likewise bizarrely fusty and prim. Eventually realizing that this is a modern retelling of "A Room With A View" didn't help, because Charlotte's concerns about proper behavior and decorum and Lucie's inexperience seem incredibly out of touch for 21st century women not raised in convents.
All of the other characters are unlikable, except Lucie's mother Marian who appears late in the story and Mrs Zao, who is painted as flamboyant and embarrassing but clearly just has a good heart. If you're familiar with "A Room With A View" there are no surprises in the plot. If you're familiar with typical romance novel tropes, there are no surprises in the plot. If you're a fan of the over-the-top rich people nonsense from CRA, you'll enjoy the even more over-the-top rich people nonsense here. But if you're looking for a repeat of the fun of Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians series, look elsewhere.

Sex and Vanity
A Novel
by Kevin Kwan
Doubleday Books
Doubleday
Romance | Women's Fiction
Pub Date 30 Jun 2020 | Archive Date 28 Jul 2020

Kevin Kwan does it again!! Great book! Loved the characters and the descriptions of the setting.
Thanks to Net Galley and Doubleday books for the ARC. I will recommend this book.

No one writes the rich quite like Kevin Kwan! This book is the perfect summer read - it's got romance, it's got opulence, and it has a wonderfully grounded female lead.

This book takes place in two times and places: 2013 in Capri, and 2018 in New York. Honestly, I wish it were two separate books, because I would read about Lucie and George endlessly. Lucie is a wealthy New Yorker, the daughter of a Mayflower-descendant and a Chinese geneticist. She doesn't feel quite at home with either side of her family. She meets George at the wedding of the year in Capri, and is drawn to him but resists thinking her family won't approve.

Overall I wish we'd spent more time with George. He is drawn with broad strokes and we read everything from Lucie's perspective. But it's a delightful read, and I can't wait for the next!

Let me be the first to say I adored the CRA series on audio and have such vivid memories of the listening experience. And I was super excited for this one. And I really did enjoy the first part when they were in Capri - 4.5 stars for that. Then it fell off a cliff for me, I'm sorry to say. Oh well, I'll read future works by Kwan and hope for better next time.