Real Americans is a multi-generational story broken into three parts from 3 distinct timelines. My favorite timeline was part 1 - learning what Lily thought it means to be a “Real American” when she meets the love of her life while trying to be her own person while still trying to get her mother’s approval.

The 2nd and 3rd timelines explore the consequences of an event that leads Lily to make extreme choices and to hide those choices from her son - Nick. There was a bit of magical realism in these sections and that part didn’t add to the story as much as I would have liked.

I liked aspects of all 3 sections-in the 3rd timeline we see a bit of the history of the cultural revolution in China and I felt like I was there and learning what it was like to live in a changing China as communism and Mao take over. That was probably my favorite aspect of that section.

This story is for you if you love intergenerational family stories with a larger picture.

Real Americans tells the story of 3 Chinese-Americans. We learn of Lily (mother), Nick (son), and Mei’s (grandmother) stories. The book is basically split into ⅓’s and each character has their own story. This actually worked really well and revealed mysteries and uniquely developed the plot. Real Americans starts with Lily’s view where she is in her 20s and trying to be successful in New York City. Her parents are both successful scientists who had fled China. From here we move through Lily, and how she ends up giving birth to Nick. I enjoyed each person’s point of view and also enjoyed learning about life in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

I rounded this up to 4 stars since I thought it was almost the entire way through the book. Overall, I found this to be more 3.5 stars. I loved the plot and was captivated all the way through. The big mystery was a little bit of a let down to me. I won’t spoil anything. However, something about it wasn’t entirely believable (was it magical realism or science fiction?), so I am still kind of confused about the big twist.

Thank you to Knopf, Rachel Khong, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

This intricate book which spans generations and cultures is, at its core, a chronicle about how people fail each other repeatedly. But as with so many failures, they are often wound up with the best intentions. Disentangling them can take years, unexpected and unwelcome discoveries, and often tragedies. Rachel Khong expertly wends her way around an ambitious story, which leans heavily on coincidence and a robust suspension of belief at certain plot points, and largely succeeds for the imaginative reach and breadth of her saga. Almost without knowing it, we become vested and enmeshed with her characters, as she carefully shapes the forces that will auger their decisions, often decades later.

The novel shifts between the POVs of Lily, the very American child of two Chinese scientists, May and Charles, who fled the 1960s Cultural Revolution, her all American looking half Chinese son, Nick, and his grandmother, May, whose passion seemed to extend more to science and genetics than her family ties. Lily bore the brunt of her mother’s expectations and subsequent disappointment as she did not share her zeal for science, but instead, barely survives as an unpaid intern for a sexist and racist boss at a prominent media firm. At a company party Lily meets very rich old money Matthew, whom she eventually marries, to the barely masked disapproval of her mother, and a series of events is set in motion that plays out through both family lines, in this case in a very granular level.

This level also involves estrangement and a layering of secrets from one generation to the next and what it means to “look American” to be “American.” Khong beautifully pushes the momentum between generations and characters without sacrificing continuity or flow. The questions she raises are uncomfortable and important ones. They plumb the corruption of both wealth and poverty, the ethics of scientific experimentation, the human suffering caused by political chaos and by extreme inequity of financial resources, the strength and fragility of the parental/child bond, and how self-determination and identity can be compromised by all of this. For raising these questions this novel hits it out of the park. Recommended!

I went through so many emotions in this one. It’s an intergenerational family drama told from 3 perspectives during 3 different time periods.

The first scene happens in the 1960s. Part 1 starts in 1999 in New York City. I was nostalgic hearing about the Y2k scare and lack of smartphone usage. I was surprised when Lily experiences being in New York for 9/11. Part 1 is a character experience, told from Lily’s perspective. We’re just going through life with her as an unpaid intern falling love to beginning a family in a life she could have never dreamed of.
Part 2 is post pandemic 2021, a high school senior navigating life and finding who he is. The reader knows a secret that Nick, the POV in part 2, does not know. It’s sad yet thrilling. It’s almost like we’re back in Lily’s shoes, helpless knowing a secret and listening to Nick’s thoughts.
Part 3 is May talking to her grandson in 2030. I had no idea where we were going, and I loved it.

This may be the best book I’ve read this year. This book has all the makings of a sweeping intergenerational family drama and I was blown away by this story.

Rachel Khong wrote the delightful Goodbye Vitamin, and now she has a new novel that takes on three generations of the same family to look at the reasons they split apart and how they might come back together. This novel begins in the middle with Lily Chen, raised by immigrants from China, she feels her mother's disappointment in her lack of purpose, as she works unpaid as an intern and struggles to get by with a series of side gigs. When she meets Matthew, the golden son of a family whose immense wealth is based on their pharmaceutical company, they feel a real connection but their differences may sink their relationship. Then there's Nick, raised by his mother in a small Washington community, feeling like an outsider. Reconnecting with his father is fraught, but that's not the only family member he's never had the opportunity to get to know. And finally, the book goes back to the beginning, with a bright, determined girl grows up in rural China, eager to find a way to get to university, but that opportunity is destroyed by the Cultural Revolution and her best chance may be to get out of the country with the young man who wants to leave too.

Often, the different timeline structure doesn't work, but here, Khong keeps the book structured into three distinct sections, so there's no jumping around. She also gives each generation's story a different tone and style to reflect the time in which it is set. Khong writes so well, and is so deliberate in her choices, yet there's an effortlessness to her writing that made the entire novel a lot of fun to read. There's a lot of ground covered in this novel, but at its heart it's the story of family and of forgiveness and learning to understand each other across the generations. I loved this book.

This book was simply amazing. I love everything about it. The prose is so beautiful, and every few pages or so, I would come across some paragraph that was absolutely profound and wise. This book also reminded me of The Leavers by Lisa Ko, so if you enjoyed that I think you would really like this one too.

This is more of a slower, character-driven book, and fortunately the characters are well-written. They feel like real, complete people who have their flaws and make decisions you don't necessarily agree with but you understand. I love how we see the three characters' perspectives and how their past causes them to behave the way they do. I especially related to Lily's portion of the story. I think the author captures the feelings of a second-gen Asian American woman so well, and I've never felt more seen by a book.

Real Americans raises a lot of interesting themes - family, parenthood, genetics, choices, aging, race - and it will definitely be one that stays with me. Thank you Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This three-part family saga begins with Lily, a second-generation Chinese American drifting in New York City, who meets a wealthy white man at an office party; their first date becomes a spontaneous trip to Paris. Their relationship develops over the early 2000s. Their son, Nick, narrates the next section in the early 2020s as a teenager in Washington state and later a college student in the East. Nick doesn’t know his father until he tracks him down through a DNA test and develops their relationship. The final section comes from Lily’s mother, driven scientist May, and sees her recounting her past in China to Nick from her San Francisco Chinatown senior housing in 2030.

This novel is certainly ambitious. On the sentence and paragraph level, Khong is a beautiful, gripping writer. I flew through this book, captivated by Khong’s descriptions of particular markers of wealth, strange feelings of discomfort, the nature of love. Her eye for detail is as keen here as it is in Goodbye, Vitamin.

However, the big picture felt incomplete. Part of it is that the structure didn’t quite work—the sections felt imperfectly fused. A plot about genetics, while meant to tie everything together, distracted me and didn’t get as deep into eugenics as it seemed to want to. It’s fine if messy questions about things like biological and cultural inheritance remain unresolved, but here, the questions themselves felt inadequately articulated. The third section, with the bulk of this, really lost me. Khong invokes Asian American tropes, apparently meaning to play with them, but again incompletely—whether or not Asian parents say “I love you” comes up more than a few times, always confusingly.

I felt the strongest writing was about access to wealth and affects of wealth—in all three of the sections—and it’s a testament to Khong’s skill as a writer that I wished the entire book focused more on this topic, one that on its own I don’t feel particularly invested in. I think I’m hard on this book because I did like reading it, and it had so much potential to be riskier, more critical, better.

Thank you to Knopf and PRH Audio for the review copies of an amazingly intricate, even stunning, read in the Real Americans. This one took a bit for me to get into, I suspected it would be (and some of that is end of semester exhaustion for me!) but this book just works to weave together stories, characters, and the use of time, which I love in a good book. I love a time spanning story and while not a fantasy fan, this book is more fantasy adjacent, suggesting and hinting at big things and never moving into a genre or theme that took me away from the characters. A lot of this book is about luck, happenstance, and the circumstances we are born into or find ourselves in and this is a lot of what I ask my developmental science students to think about: time, social class, race/culture/ethncity/gender, the places we live in and the relationships that influence us... It's all in here in interesting ways and brings in ideas about how previous generations influence later ones with decisions and events... again the trajectories of time set in place before we are even born. Fascinating ideas.

US pub date: 4/30/24
Genre: contemporary fiction, own voices
Quick summary: At the turn of the millennium, intern and daughters of immigrants Lily falls in love with suave, rich Matthew, heir to a pharmaceutical company. But twenty years later, her son Nick has no idea who his father is - and all the secrets to be revealed when he starts looking.

GOODBYE, VITAMIN is one of my favorite under-the radar reads, and Khong has created another strong story here. Love across classes is a timeless topic for a reason, and I savored Lily and Matthew's story. Would love be enough? If not, how would it all end? I also enjoyed the perspective shifts after the initial story, covering Nick and May, Lily's mother. I'm used to multi-generational stories being mostly historical fiction, so it was cool to see those elements translated to a more recent story. There's a scientific subplot as well that I won't spoil here, but it made for some interesting connections in the end of the novel!

If you like family sagas, give this one a try!

Thank you to Knopf for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This story is told in three parts, from three different perspectives, in three different time frames. It was such a fascinating read with a plot that I was not expecting. I feel like I can’t even explain the plot without giving away the big reveal so I won’t even try.
But I will say that this story deals with themes of racism (specifically micro aggressions), morality around genetics, complicated family dynamics, and immigrant culture in America. There is also a look back at what it was like to be in China as communism took over and the shift that took place there during that time.
I really enjoyed this book. I went in without knowing much about the plot and I was pleasantly surprised by where the book went and how the story was told. The three different perspectives from three different generations gave a lot of insight into the way that families can be shaped and fall apart as well as the different issues that the generations were dealing with. The themes around immigrant families and first generation Americans and racism in America was enlightening. I would definitely recommend reading this story.

In 400 rapid-fire pages, Rachel Khong follows three generations of a Chinese American family across several decades, managing to fold in scientific, cultural, and philosophical themes without any of it ever feeling unwieldy. A family melodrama with enough substance at its core to be truly compelling, this is a great book that, like a lotus flower, knows just when to reveal its true beauty.

Real Americans was an interesting story- divided into three POVs that span different generations. Each POV is unique to not only the character but to the writing as well. There is romance, historical fiction and something I didn't see was a slight sci fi element. As much as I wanted all these pieces to work- for me it didn't. I liked it but didn't love it.

I loved Part I of the book, the first POV, I thought it was well done and it pulled me in immediately. I found it to be a quick read and I really believe that this would make a great book to read with others to discuss.

I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys a multigenerational read and character driven books.

Thank you to NetGalley for this eARC.

Real Americans by Rachel Khong is a story that spans three generations. The first generation comes to the US, the second generation tries to figure out who they are, and the third generation is making sense of everything. But who makes us who we are? What is an American identity, and who shapes our destiny?

The book begins with Lily, a first-generation American who, in appearance, carries her Chinese heritage but is American in all respects. In the second part, we have Nick's story, who is Lily's son. The third part is May's story, Lily's mother. Each of these characters is unique, and their voice is loud and clear. I don't want to give away too much of the plot.

This book is still with me even after 12 hrs of my reading it. It's powerful, and it just creeps upon you. The impact of this book is not fast but slow, and as per me, that makes it a unique one. The layers that this book has are like peeling an onion. The subjects that this book talks range from patriarchy, colorism, sexism, culture, identity, racism to genetics. I think this book is my favorite so far of this year.

In this multigenerational story, Rachel Khong takes us on a journey from China to New York, exploring the true meaning of good fortune. The novel spans three generations within one family, delving into questions of identity, privilege, and immigration. Khong weaves themes of class, race, and family inheritance. Real Americans asks whether destiny shapes us or can we shape our own lives? The novel challenges us with these deep questions, leaving readers thinking about the threads that connect us across time and place. I was gripped by this story from the beginning and highly recommend this book.
Thank you Netgalley and Knopf for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Wow I loved this book. The 3 POVs, the way secrets and events are revealed as the story progresses and each side is shared, the beautiful ending (!!!) I loved it all. it touched on so many important topics while still being an immersive story that I couldn’t put down. If you love the book tomorrow, tomorrow & tomorrow, you will love this!

This gorgeous book gutted me. An epic tale spanning three generations, Real Americans grapples with what makes us and how much choice we have in who we become.

The character work is exceptional and each time we switched perspectives I longed to go back to the last… until I fell in love with the current narrator. The story is perfectly placed and the mysteries reveal themselves at exactly the perfect time. It’s an exceptional book that I’m still thinking about, trying to work out the questions it raised.

In the last months of the year 1999, Lily Chen is a twenty-two year old woman who lives in New York City, where she works as an unpaid intern at a media company. At a party, she meets Matthew and they start dating. The two are from two entirely different backgrounds, two backgrounds that, without knowing it, are connected to each other and that form a red line in the story. Lily's parents are scientists that fled China during Mao's cultural revolution. Matthew is an heir to a high profile pharmaceutical empire. Lily and Matthew's dating continues and they become the parents of Nick. But soon after Nick is born, Matthew leaves and Lily moves to Washington Island where she starts a new life.

We fast forward to the year 2021, in the middle of the corona pandemic. Nick grows up and when he is in the age of starting college, he gets curious of his own background, which he starts researching without Lily's knowledge, as she doesn't have any contact with Matthew or her parents anymore. Nick feels Lily is hiding something about her own and her parent's past. Digging up his past raises even more questions than answers, but later on, from his grandmother, he learns more about her past that is strongly interwoven with his own in the present time.

This is a book I have mixed feelings about. What I liked most of it was the first parts of the book, in Lily's POV. That clearly is the part with the strongest storyline that is easy to follow. When it changes to Nick's pov, the story still is good, but it gets lost in too much unnecessary details and things that don't help the story any further and that make the story at some parts uninteresting and the reading of it, very slow. In this part, for example, it get's stuck in too much college details, and too little real action in the story. For anyone not familiar with biomedical science, the story can also be somewhat confusing, as it at some point wasn't clear to me if the biomedical science in the book was based on reality or fantasy. The last part was also somewhat slow and confusing, this point was mostly about the history of Lily's parents in China before they fled, and what the connection with them is to Matthew's parents. I found the overall storyline good, as I love Chinese-American books, and I also love the multigenerational part, but the story get's lost, as I mentioned earlier, in too much unnecessary dialogues and details that don't help the story any further and which makes it a slow read that doesn't hold the interest of the reader for long. I truly wanted to like this book more that I did, as my expectations of it where high, but it didn't live up my expectations.

The Real Americans explores multigenerational trauma through the lens of a mother, daughter, and grandson. The book is revealed in three sections, each with a different point of view. Interestingly, the POVs don't move in historical order but start with the middle generation, the daughter, move on to the grandson and end with the grandmother's perspective as an octogenarian. This worked as the grandmother was the more reliable witness and cleared up a lot of unanswered questions. I found all the characters likable, each in their own brokenness. In other words, even though there is plenty of dysfunction, and the main characters had their flaws, each was in their own way redeemable.

Khong's novel is a masterful blend of historical and contemporary fiction, with a sprinkle of fantasy/magical realism. While magical realism can be a tricky genre to navigate, 'The Real Americans' strikes a perfect balance, never straying too far from the realm of reality (for me). Some characters possess a unique relationship with time, capable of entering a state where time slows or even halts momentarily. This fusion of literary styles is a treat for readers, although those who prefer more traditional narratives might find this aspect of the book a tad perplexing.

Some science is described in the book (primarily molecular biology as it relates to gene regulation). It is an essential part of the story but at a high level. I'm a scientist and cringed at some of the descriptions - they weren't wrong, per se, but stretched what is feasible. Also, self-experimentation is pretty out there - it happens in novels but not IRL. It's needed for the story, but I don't enjoy storylines that defy things like research ethics committees and such. The book covers a mainstream family-owned research facility, but at times, it's a little too "mad scientist" for me. If you are picky about how science is portrayed in books, consider this before you pick up this book. I enjoyed it despite some reservations about the science because I see the story as more about the family dynamics and legacy than I see it as hard-core science fiction.

Other aspects of the book I enjoyed:
The part of the story set during the Cultural Revolution in China was interesting and matches the personal stories my Chinese friends have told me.

Part of the story is set on a remote Puget Sound island, rarely used in literature. I enjoy original settings. This book covers 1960s China, Puget Sound, NYC, and San Francisco.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an electronic ARC in exchange for a review.

Thank you SO MUCH to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC copy of <i>Real Americans</i> in exchange for an honest review. I blasted through this book - I couldn't put it down!

This is very <i>Little Fires Everywhere</i> meets speculative fiction and historical context, and I loved it! It won't work for everyone - the story is slower-paced, and the shifting narratives were a bit jarring at times, especially at the end (although I will say that the narrators all had pretty specific voices, which was brilliant. Often with shifting narrators I feel like they're all the same person with a different name, but this one felt unique and well done.... I digress). The mix of historical fiction with speculative fiction was really well done, though, so let me break down the reasons this worked for me (and explain why it might or might not work for you as a reader):
- The science aspect - genetics is a big focus - is something I am super interested in already. I've been fascinated by genetics since I was a kid, and even wanted to go to school for it. This does a fantastic job of explaining the scientific aspects without jargon and making them appropriate for readers. If you're not a science person, you'll probably still enjoy this because it's very approachable, but it's definitely going to be more interesting to readers that are already invested in the science and ethics of this topic.
- I thought the pacing was great - I was incredibly invested and wanted to continue reading. However, the story focused on really heavy issues, and on family dynamics more than it did actual 'plot'. I wanted to know what would happen and figure out some of the mysterious elements, but not everyone likes stories like that. I happen to love them!
- There is a lot of ambiguity and purposeful 'hang the reader out to dry and make them think' elements. Again, I love this. Others don't. Be aware.
- Themes are a bit overexplained at times. That said, there's still a lot of ambiguity (see above point). I liked that it wasn't overly hidden but wasn't 'hit you over the head' obvious.

Overall, I loved the themes, ideas, characters, and story. I thought this was incredibly well done, and I know I'll be thinking about it for a while!