REAL AMERICANS |

Told in 3 POVs, REAL AMERICANS sucks you in and won't let you go.

It started from the POV of a young ABC American born Chinese woman who like many are seen as foreign but have grown up here all their life. She feels very average without any clear indication of what her life's passion should be. She's just graduated from NYU and feels unremarkable compared to her mother and what her mother's accomplished. Until she meets a young, hot, ultra wealthy white man, the type who can whisk her away to Paris on a whim after dinner.

I'll stop there. But the first section felt like a daydream. You're luxuriating in what she's getting introduced to, leaning into the decadence but also not really clear on where this is going.

Ultimately this book deals with the powers of the rich, the new frontier of how they can use their money to tap into a new frontier of control and manipulation, on time and health. For the rich, time is simplified by the hands of those they employ (hiding the efforts of what goes into making something), but it's still something they can't fully control so to the extent that the wealthy can utilize their money to buy out others, they will.

This idea is also explored from the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Rather than the ultra rich, it's those in power who will employ their power and authority to any end, and the horrors of their not having any limits.

It is a fast paced book but definitely felt long. However there really isn't anything I would want to edit out. There is a slow reveal and pacing that works very well for this book. I really enjoyed reading.

4.5

The writing is smooth, easy, and flows well. I stopped after chapter 2 (6%). Definitely three stars for the target audience and 4 to 5 for the right readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.

Part 1 - Lily: 2 stars
Part 2- Nick: 3 stars
Part 3; May/Mei: 4 stars

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD

This book was very uneven for me. It feels like Khong spent so long on the third part of the novel that she didn't flesh out the beginning. I considered abandoning the story when it centered on Lily because it was so light on characterization. Lily meets and falls in love with Matthew, but he is little more than an archetype of a rich, white man who wants to distance himself from his wealthy family. His father, Otto, is similarly painted with a very light brush. They don't seem like characters but narrative necessities to get where we're going.

The plot moved briskly in the first third, likely because the other parts were far more interesting. When Lily gives birth to her son with Matthew, the child looks nothing like her. "The baby who wasn't my baby was brought to my breast, and I let him eat," Khong writes. That is the briefest description of a mother's first experience breastfeeding that I've ever read. It's like Khong knew the rest of the book was meatier and wanted to get there as soon as possible.

The book gets much richer in the second part, as we delve into Nick's life. His character is much more fully fleshed-out than his parents', though we do learn a bit more about Lily and Matthew in part two.

The final third is where the book really soars--when you learn about the hardships Mei endures to make her way from China to the United States. Yes, it gives you insight into why she did what she did and how the revelation of her sins blew up Lily and Matthew's marriage. Matthew remains little more than an absent father archetype, but at least we understand the first part a little bit more.

The "magic" part of the book never worked for me, and I don't really understand its purpose in the story. So Mei swallowed a magic lotus seed that gave her, Lily, and Nick the gift of time? A gift no amount of money can buy. This ability to stop time allows Nick, who was struggling badly to understand anything in his college classes, to suddenly become a straight-A student? It seemed out-of-place and awfully convenient.

One loose thread--how did Ping's letter to Mei come into Nick's possession, and why did we never get her modern-day reaction to seeing a picture of her long-lost love? She now knows for sure that he lived. And thrived.