The story of a cursed family of Vietnamese women, this book takes you on quite a journey. Intergenerational family stories are right up my alley, and this was a satisfying one. Full of heartfelt relationship struggles, messy characters (in the best way), and plenty of humorous moments, this was a fun and entertaining read. One thing to note: there are quite a few characters, which can be hard to keep track of but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment. For fans of Crazy Rich Asians and The Many Daughters of Afong Moy.

This was an amazing debut and I loved every minute of it. The multiple POVs really add to the story and I liked that the multi-povs weren't first person it was more the narrator telling the story and how they were thinking and including the foreshadowing. Overall, this was fantastic and I love reading about different cultures and viewpoints and their experiences in America and this had all of that, plus romance, family drama and more. Will definitely recommend to those looking for a good book this fall.

Read this book in just a few sittings, and it was engaging and joyful even when tackling topics like loneliness, family conflict, and death.

The women of three generations of the Duong family are doubly jaded--literally, in the jewelry they wear, and emotionally, as they look for love despite being cursed in the romance department. Mai, the (sort of) oldest sister of the middle generation represented here, finds out during her annual visit to her psychic that this estranged family will experience one death, one wedding, and one pregnancy over the course of the next year. With this prophecy hanging over them, Mai begins the process of reuniting the geographically and emotionally separated women in this family. Chaos ensues, and it's delightful to watch.

This debut author did a marvelous job of illustrating how you can love someone you could gleefully strangle--in other words, mothers, daughters, and sisters. While there was a wide cast to balance (a mother, her four daughters, and their eight daughters), each family dynamic was mapped out and its unique dysfunctions comedically illustrated. Still, with a cast this big, you'll appreciate the helpful family tree at the beginning. I wish we'd learned more about some of the Duong women who were more sketches than real people and a little less about the jerks the women were dating. And while I appreciated the fantasy elements, I was less sold on the coincidental romances.

Overall, I enjoyed the time I spent with the Duongs. Highly recommend.

This is a beautiful story of several generations of Vietnamese women grappling with... Well, everything. I loved the characters and the way the story unfolded. I just wish we had more time with some of them--with so many characters, it's inevitable that we just didn't get to know some as well as the others. In this case, that's a shame.

I really liked this book! The characters felt well fleshed out and complex, even when annoying. I think this book could have been too maudlin under a different hand, but the tone struck a good balance.

A multi generational story of strained mother-daughter relationships, a family curse and a cast of dramatic, expressive and passionate women that will have you giggling throughout the story - this is a do not miss read!

Breaking with tradition, Oanh Duong left her marriage to follow love, and to punish her, her mother-in-law was responsible for setting a curse on the Duong women for generations. When we visit present day, Mai Nguyen (of the Duong line) has her yearly visit her trusted psychic. She is told to expect one funeral, one marriage, and one pregnancy this year. The catch being, in order for this prophesy to be realized, the relationships within her fractured family must first be mended, and past hurts resolved. Sounds simple enough - but in this family of strong and resilient mothers - it will be far from easy to accomplish.

This story is an intimate look into the lives of these Vietnamese-American families, the struggles they have overcome, the constant stereotypes they face, their beliefs about the afterlife and the power of a mother's love, however misguided. The first half of the story focuses on 3 Mothers, Mai, Minh and Khuyen - known as the Duong sisters, their background stories and the role they play in the family. The second half concentrates more on the daughters - the next generation of Duong women. Old hurts continue to have a hold over the mothers and they spill over into the daughter's relationships with their mothers, their siblings and their cousins. There was such insight shown with the feisty moms and the expectations they placed on their daughters in connection with jobs, money, success and marriage. There were many women to keep track of and that was a tad difficult, but there is a chart at the front of the book which proved very helpful.

The many characters each had distinct personalities. I loved seeing the growth arc in several of the character's realization of self worth and confidence. Most of the men in this story were hilarious characterizations of what must be common issues when Vietnamese women date. The player, the man who only dates Asian women and the one too good to be true. I loved all these women. I loved their different weaknesses and strengths, but most of all I loved their resilience. And I loved that what ended up being the feeling I was left with - was the lengths at which a mother will go to be sure their children's lives are better than their own, no matter the cost.

Can this fractured family find forgiveness and reconciliation? You'll have to read to find that out! I highly recommend this smart, sassy, entertaining and explorative look at Vietnamese culture and family dynamics. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for the advance copy to read and review. Pub date: 9/6/22.

Atria books, thank you for this review copy! This is a strong read, a great option for many readers looking for q.diverse reads and perhaps for fans of Amy Tan's take on Asian women's lives/family relationships and Jessie Sutano's Dial A for Aunties (though this is not as light and campy as those books!). There is cultural significance in the examination of a family curse, of the feelings of being a woman/daughter who is less valued and expected to produce a male child (can you imagine carrying all of those internalized feelings? jaded is an apt word), and the daily subtle and not subtle ways racism and bias are part of Asian women's lives.

I enjoyed and appreciated this book, it was for me a bit slow at the beginning as I tried to process the sisters and daughters lives and interactions (a lot of names and stories to keep track of) and to understand the, for me, intense sadness that was underlying the story. There are also the deft moments of humor and insight that many will recognize from other books that offer readers a chance to embrace Asian culture, language, and family relationships. There was also for me important themes on the constancy of pressure to succeed, excel, and achieve within and between families... it can be easy to write off such stories as typical but as an educator I am learning more and more about the very realness of these pressures, how individual actions and achievements are collective reflections on family and community/culture and it is important to read these stories and learn about these feelings.

For me though what stands out is the theme on being a woman/daughter. these are strong, interesting women with fascinating lives but so much internalized belief that not being a son/not bearing a son is a curse. How do you move forward with anything but some degree of hurt when this is a message that persists across generations? Reading this story allows insight into what this feels like and also what it means to learn to see value in who you are and how to love those around you. For me the story hit its stride when it moved more into the second half of the story, giving more voice and growth to the characters and allowing some movement towards change and process.

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this book. I am typically a fan of books that circle family dramas, and Asian family dramas just add that extra level of *chefs kiss.* (maybe because of my own experience in my own sometimes dramatic Asian families. I thought that each character in this story, each generation, was very well thought out. The moms, the kids, it was funny drama, it was emotional drama, it kept me engrossed throughout the book.

This is a hard book to rate. I love the multi layered story that features multiple generations of Vietnamese women and their battles with one another. As a mom of three girls I related on so many levels. This book is chaotic and fun and filled with Vietnamese culture. However, I did find I got lost a bit with so many characters going back and forth, and the tension between the mothers, daughters, sisters was a bit much for me. All in all it has a great message and I’d still recommend it!

Oanh Duong left a marriage for love and her ex mother in law cursed her to only have daughters. Oanh's direct descendant Mai Nguyen knows this curse well. Three daughters and sisters who haven't spoken in years. She goes to Hawaii to see a psychic to find out what's in store for family. The psychic predicts a marriage, a funeral, and a new baby boy. The end of the curse.

The cover of this book is beautiful as with the book. I really enjoyed the book. A family drama amongst a vietnamese family.

The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a book about mothers, daughters, and sisters; about cutting ties and coming together again; and about expectations - having them, running from them, and letting them go (or not?).

When a Vietnamese woman leaves her husband for another man, her mother-in-law has a curse cast upon her as well as all future generations of her family. They will marry poorly, never know love, have no sons, and wander their afterlife alone.

Three generations later, Mrs. Mai Nguyễn goes to her annual visit to her psychic in complete distress. Her family is broken. She hasn't spoken to her mother or sisters in ten years and now all three of her daughters have cut off contact. Her psychic has a prophecy though; in the next year, her family will experience a death, a marriage, and the birth of a grandson.

With this news, Mai becomes determined to make things right with her family. Readers are introduced to a hilarious cast of characters one by one (the family tree at the beginning of the book helped me keep them straight) as she tries, fails, and tries again for reconciliation.

The tone of the book hit just right for me. I loved how the narrator lovingly poked fun at the characters. It's funny, light-hearted, sweet but not overly sentimental. High recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing an advanced copy.

Mai Nguyen and her sisters are living with a curse put on their ancestor, which precludes them from love or happiness. They haven't spoken to each other or their mother for a decade after they had a fight following a surprising revelation. Mai and her sister Minh spend much of their time worrying about their daughter's love lives. The their third sister Khuyen, has forced her own two daughters to work with her since they were children.

During her annual consultation with a psychic in Hawaii, Mai received a surprising prediction -- in the coming year, her family will experience a funeral, a wedding, and a birth of a son. This prompts Mai to reengage with her sisters, with surprising results for each of them and members of their extended family. As they spend more time together than they have in years, they must grapple with their past and what it means for their futures, alone and together.

Full of strongly drawn characters, this well written story will have you both laughing at loud and thinking about its perceptive examination of family.

Highly recommended!

The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a funny, fast-paced book that’s only slightly marred by the fact that it has nine PoV characters, sometimes making the incredibly winding tale overly complex.

Thousands of years ago, a jealous ex-mother-in-law cursed her former daughter-in-law to forever bear daughters and never know love or happiness in life, and the Duong family has been suffering ever since. Per Vietnamese culture, that traps the spirits of the Duongs’ ancestors in purgatory forever. But the curse has held true for generations. Oanh left her marriage for love, a witch provided the curse, and now every time a Duong embarks upon a love affair it is destined to end poorly.

Mai Nguyen, Minh Pham and Khuyen Lam are the second most recent generation of the Duong dynasty. Mai is a hypochondriac, bitterly divorced from a man who sucked her dry financially and equally bitterly estranged from her sisters. Minh is the put-upon middle child who clings to her only daughter, and Khuyen is an entrepreneur who may or may not be a figure from the criminal underworld in Orange County’s Little Saigon (not a pimp, she insists violently whenever her sisters suggest she is). All three women are estranged from their mother, Ly, who has lost both her first husband and her eldest daughter. But their other sister Kim has returned to the fold along with her own two daughters in tow, and she resumes her place as Ly’s favorite daughter. It’s Kim and her daughters who have inherited Ly’s coveted Santa Ana house and all four live on top of one another.

Mai has three daughters – eldest Priscilla (who’s very rich and a programmer), middle child Thuy (a dermatologist to the stars – including John Cho, as Mai often brags), and youngest Thảo, who returned to Vietnam and is an executive at a fashion company. Minh has a daughter named Joyce, an anthropologist and museum curator whom the other sisters accuse Minh of babying and who has recently moved to New York to escape her mother. Khuyen has two daughters Elaine and Christine; Elaine runs Khuyen’s coffee bars and Christine runs her nail salons. Elaine is an alcoholic who is well aware of her mother’s underground business and Christine is a martyr figure who wants to get out of California. And Kim’s daughters are Lily - a romantic research assistant - and Rosie, a wild, joint-smoking rebel with no particular direction in life. All of these young women are generally successful in their careers but are all romantically lovelorn.
Mai, who put her kids through UCLA with no help, is desperate enough about her own love life to consult with her psychic, Auntie Hứa, who promptly delivers a shocking announcement: if Mai is not careful, this could be the year she loses everything. It could also be the year the family will see the long-awaited birth of a son, but it will bury one of its own. And there will also be a wedding, all before the turn of the next lunar year.

The revelation sends Mai into a tizzy, putting her on a crash-course reunion with Minh and Khuyen and their daughters. But who will be visited by death, and who by marital good luck? Priscilla has a handsome boyfriend named Mark, with whom she is less than pleased and whom her mother hates; Thuy has a relationship with the adorable and sweet Andy Tran, who is always eager to help and please her but whom Mai hates; she’s cheating on him with Daniel Le, the son of a friend of her mother’s whom Mai tried to hook her up with. Thuy breaks up with Andy and pursues Daniel and her gambling addiction; and Thảo, who’s in a causal relationship with a man named Jeff, whom Elaine is also doing business with (arranging green card marriages), and thinks she’s found true love with, and whom Priscilla has recently broken up with. Khuyen has kept Elaine and Christine incredibly close to her, and thus they haven’t had the chance to branch out – Elaine is a bitter alcoholic who resents her rich, “white chasing” cousins and is flirty with Jeff while Lily still carries a torch for Peter, who works in Hong Kong.

This is a lot of story, and it’s generally a wild good time. The Fortunes of Jaded Women follows a variety of women who are trying to figure out what this momentous year is really going to mean to them. It’s classic women’s fiction, writ large. There’s even some magical realism to be had in the book’s thick mix of humor, soap and family warmth. It is incredibly easy to devour, but so much is going on.

Out of the sea of characters, I loved Rosie the most because she has absolutely no damns to give. My favorite romance is the one between Andy and Thuy, which is tender and sweet.

The only reason I marked the book down is because with thirteen (!!) PoV characters, there’s way too much going on and the book is far too brief to properly cover everything readers might need or want to know about everyone. Add on boyfriends to the pile and you have way too many threads to keep track of. And yet trying to track every setback and triumph is worthwhile, because this is quite a readable tome. The Fortunes of Jaded Women comes with a solid recommendation.

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I wanted to like this book more than I did. I enjoy reading about other cultures and families. I liked the connections between the mothers and the daughters. I didn’t like the message that a boy would be more appreciated and valued than a girl and the continues angst at not having a son. I know some cultures are steeped in that tradition, but it’s very devaluing to girls.

The beginning was alright. After the funeral, things got much better and the story’s pace quickened. However, WHAT IS THAT ENDING ?!?!? I don’t really understand it and don’t really know what she wanted to ask.

The Duong family is cursed to only have daughters. Mai Nguyen and her sisters, Kim, Minh and Khuyen, all have daughters. They all each have rough relationships with their daughters. The main plot of the book was how those relationships would get resolved. We see some messed up men come in to the daughters’ lives.

I did like how the author touched up on yellow fever and how some white men will only date asian women. It’s so gross. I also enjoys the different perspectives from the different characters, even if it was a bit confusing at first.

I give this book 4 stars because it started off pretty slow, the ending was not my favorite, and it was a bit hard to keep track of who everyone was. There were so many characters and I would have to rethink who the person was and their story. In the end, it was easier to remember.

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think fans of Kevin Kwan will appreciate Carolyn Huynh's hyperbolic style; readers who have a knowledge of Vietnamese cultural stereotypes will possibly find more humor in this book than I was able to. The titular jaded women here are all Orange County residents from Vietnam, daughters of estranged mothyer Mrs Ly Minh Dúóng: Mrs Mai Nguyēn (the dramatic mother of 3 daughters Thâo, Priscilla and Thûy), Mrs Minh Pham (quiet mother of 1 daughter, Joyce), Mrs Khuyên Lâm (headstrong mother to 2 daughters Elaine and Christine), and Mrs Kim Lūóng (mother to 2 daughters, Lily and Rosie). The daughters of the four sisters live all over the place and date piles of men, details I quite frankly could not be bothered to keep straight. The thematic curse of generations of various Vietnamese witches was another aspect of this book that escaped my grasp, but having said all that, it was a light and frothily entertaining read, despite having taken me a few weeks to get through, and I liked the modicum of tolerance that some characters gain at the end.

I loved this book. I know, it's not constructive feedback, sorry.

This debut novel by Carolyn Huynh is a breath of fresh air in many ways. It doesn't necessarily do anything revolutionary, but it's also not something I've read in general fiction for a while, if ever.

It's a multi-generational story told through the matriarchal line. The Duong family is cursed to never find true happiness, and to only give birth to daughters. It's a story of a family leaving Vietnam as refugees and re-settling into the United States - and all the trauma that the war brings. Both direct trauma, and intergenerational trauma. Yet at the very heart of the story, it's a story of hope for peace, happiness, and most of all forgiveness.

Though my parents fled from Cambodia due to the Khmer Rouge, it was still due to colonialism and the rise of Communism, I still saw my parents story in the Duong sisters, and in turn my story. The unspoken trauma, the overbearing parents - ones that only want what is best for their children, that want to make sure their children succeed (financially).

Huynh has a way of deftly weaving some of the more serious topics with some light heartedness. I could imagine how these scenes would play out in a soapy television drama (so if the TV rights haven't been picked up yet, some TV producer should get on it now)

Thank you to Atria and Simon and Schuster for providing me an early copy of this book to read in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

Delighted to include this title in the September instalment of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

DNF @ 30%

This is probably a "not right now" book for me. Something about it is just not pulling me in, but I'm pretty sure that I'll try it again later in a different season of life. I know I have a lot of friends who may really enjoy it!

The Duong women have been cursed for generations, but when Mai Nguyen visits her trusted psychic, Auntie Hua, she predicts one funeral, one marriage, and one pregnancy. The curse would be reversed! The catch was that Mrs. Nguyen must first repair her fractured family.

I am not Vietnamese and even as a first generation American, I could not relate to that part of this story, but I found the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, as well as sisters, engrossing. Families can be very complicated, and this one was no exception.

Though the story incorporated some weightier issues, Huynh injected lots of humor and some over the top antics. These were some of the most chaotic women I have ever encountered in a book. They were complicated and messy, and I loved getting to watch them take control of their lives and evolve. It was to root for all these women as they sought their happiness, and it was so important to me that they reconciled with their family. I loved the little touch of mysticism too. The way Auntie Hua was woven into this multigenerational tale delighted me.

The Fortunes of Jaded Women was sometimes amusing, sometimes sad, but always extremely interesting. This was a complex group of women who were bound by blood and a curse, and I reveled in their tale. I was eager to see how their fortunes would play out, and if the curse would be reversed. In the end, I was so pleased with their personal journeys.

Overall: A beautiful and captivating story of mothers, daughters, and sisters that made me laugh, made me cry, and made me think.