i love weike wang: her sharp and clean writing, her deft incorporation of grand-scale themes and commentary, her very weird and very real characters. this leaned much more into that middle one, and i really enjoyed it — it felt like equal parts hearing gossip about a couple you kind of know, or catching up with a good friend at a coffee shop, and reading a long and clever article.

This is the story of a successful daughter of Chinese immigrants married to a white professor who was a first-generation college student. The book takes place at two different rental houses, both times with family members joining them. It is an interesting way to tell their fairly mundane story of the ups and downs of family and marriage.

Nate and Keru (like Peru, as she always says) are an interracial couple in their early thirties. They are professionals with young kids (but don’t call them DINKs!) who rent a vacation home on Cape Cod for a week. Their parents each visit on alternate weeks. Keru’s parents are Chinese immigrants, extremely cautious about Covid, and extremely hard on their only child. Nate’s parents are flippant about Covid, small-town and right wing, and not very understanding about why Nate gets upset with their viewpoints.

This book brought up interesting ideas: the dynamics between a couple where the breadwinner is a woman, how difficult it can be dealing with in-laws you don’t like, how to balance needing money with enjoying your job, and more. Yet somehow it didn’t quite work as much as I wanted it to. It did too much telling and not enough showing. Between everyone’s constant interior monologuing, plus the conversations between parent and child, I felt like I got the point pretty quickly and then was just left hoping that something exciting would happen.

This was written in the same style of Sally Rooney or Rumaan Alam books. Does anyone know a good word for it? Pared down, muted, not emotive, etc. And while I do enjoy some of Rooney’s books, that style often falls flat for me. So while I didn’t love this one, I would still recommend it to readers who enjoy that style of writing and I do anticipate this book being pretty popular.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I love character focused stories. They're some of my favorite books. This was a very character centered, slice of life story that I did really enjoy.... While simultaneously found somewhat unsatisfying.

The story revolves around a married couple. And while you get to know the wife, Keru, pretty well, I didn't feel like Nate as a character was fully developed all the way through. The story literally just involves two separate instances of them renting vacation homes and their individual families coming to see them in the vacation homes.

Both Nate and Keru were decently flawed. They were relatable though, and I enjoyed seeing them as characters. They had a good deal of depth to them that carried the story. Mantou the dog was my favorite overall though - she was the best. I do think the story was somewhat meandering and at the end, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that it was sort of a waste of time reading it. The end just sort of happened. There wasn't a clear plot so there wasn't really anything to wrap up, but I couldn't help feeling like I was missing something. I also thought at times the didactic nature of the story was a bit heavy handed. I felt kind of like I was getting a weird round about lesson without actually being taught. The humor made this less frustrating, though.

If you like stories that focus on issues like immigration and marriage and relationships, you'd probably enjoy this. The family and marriage dynamics were interesting and well done. However, if you need stories that wrap up neatly, this might not be the best choice for you. It definitely doesn't have a clearly delineated plot.

Keru and Nate are well off DINK (double income, no kids) couple in their 30s, who decide to rent a summer house. They have a large sheepdog and decide to invtie their parents on different weekends of their vacation. She is the child of Chinese immmigrants, and he is the son of working class Appalachians. It is set during two summers 4 years apart. It is an interesting view of contemporary marriage and how their families view their marriage compared to more traditional ideas. The dry humor and focus on the characters was enjoyable.

Rental House by Weike Wang follows a married couple during two family vacations separated by a decade. We see Keru and Nate first at a beach house in Cape Cod with their parents, and then 10 years later in a luxury bungalow in the Catskills intruded upon by Nate's brother and girlfriend. The book explores cultural differences, the intricacies of family relationships, and generational trauma. It also explores how personal goals and familial ties impact marriage. I enjoyed this character-driven novel written with such deliberate and delicious prose.

Rental House is Weike Wang's follow-up to 2022's Joan Is Okay. Sparsely written, Rental House details the differences in upbringing for Keru and Nate, a married couple who met in college. Dealing with the manifold issues that are familiar to anyone who has every experienced a vacation with your partner's family, using two trips as examples, Wang gets to the heart of what it's like bringing someone new into your family and being the new person in another.

While I enjoyed this rather sad novel of a marriage throughout, I liked the first half that concentrated on the in-laws more than the second half that related the Keru-Nate couple to other couples. The book does not portray marriage with much hope or joy. Nate and Keru do not seem to communicate or understand each other. They seemed destined for unhappiness and can only reflect what other couples are showing. The parents-in-law are slightly cartoonish, but they show potential futures for the central couple. I have been meaning to read Wang's other novels and this reading should spur me to do so.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A culturally different couple deal with each other's families on holidays.

Rental House shows the merging of two families through 2 drastically different family vacations 5 years apart. Nate and Keru plan their vacations around their parents and realize just how different their origins are.

This is a sad, but ultimately hopeful portrait of a marriage in two vacations, in two different rental houses, years apart. Weike Wang's distinctive voice is present as ever: her prose is crisp and precise and she is able to cover ground in just a fraction of the space other writers might require to do so.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of Rental House by Weike Wang.

Rental House was a nice, short, quirky novel about marriage, in-laws, and existence. Wang writes with wit and humor, and it was enjoyable to read. It's probably good it was short though because there really wasn't a lot going on. But, I think individuals in relationships will find truth and comedy in the story.

For literary & contemporary fiction lovers, this story touches on race, social and family topics. A story of a couple who have two vacations with their families at two different rental houses. There are a lot of familiar, relatable aspects to the relationship between the two main characters and to their family members and I particularly enjoyed the time spent with the quirky neighbors next door. This is my second novel to read by Weike Wang and I plan to continue reading anything she publishes.

a portrait of a marriage, one that might feel familiar (interracial, in-law relationship strife, etc.) and a strong conclusion. pacing and plot isn’t super applicable here but the character study element shines.

many thanks to penguin riverhead and netgalley for the advance reader copy.

I don't have to like characters to like a story, but every character was so unlikable that it made it hard to care about anybody in the story. The story just dragged on and on from one unhappy page to another. Nobody or nothing ever got better. Sometimes there is something to be learned from this kind of book, but there were no lessons here. I would not recommend this book. I gave it two stars just because I read the whole book hoping a story would start.

In Rental House, Weike Wang examines the lives of an international couple in 3 stages of their relationship. Through rich vignettes the reader perceives the inner workings of Keru and Nate's relationship. We find out what they mean to each other and as well as to their parents. We are given glimpses of their work personas and wonder how their lives will unfold with the passage of time. This is a short novel with a quiet plot but Wang's descriptions are full of thoughtful imagery, "Keru's mother had pronounced wedding ... weeding. It was unintentional and her mother could not hear the difference. But maybe there was no difference, Keru thought. Who was the weed, herself or Nate? The weeding of Keru from her family to his, and vice verse. The sudden appearance of a conspicuous foreign plant in an otherwise immaculate lawn." Another insightful novel from an accomplished storyteller.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the advance ecopy of this book.

Rental House is told in two parts over the course of two family vacations. Keru and Nate met in college and married despite the differences between their families and their upbringings. Keru's parents moved to the US from China when she was young for the opportunities they hoped she would find there. Nate's family is from the South and he's the first out of all of them to go to college. Keru and Nate have grown and moved on from the families they've come from, but these vacations bring those differences back into focus. This book touched on a lot of interesting ideas about what it means to be family, how where we come from and the people who raised us influence us our whole lives, and what it means to belong. I'm a huge fan of Wang's writing style, so I found this to be a quick read. The tone is very straightforward, but it's also heartwarming and humorous. This will definitely appeal to readers who enjoy stories about families and character-driven stories.

I just love the Weike Wang's style. While I appreciate her slim novels, I could stick with her writing style forever! This was an interesting look at marriage and how our identities shift within and throughout it. Really enjoyed my time with this one!

I was excited about this book because I really enjoyed Joan is OK and am the child of an interracial marriage, so I thought that Keru and Nate's experiences might resonate with me. There were some moments, like Keru's action after a particular time with her in-laws, that I thought were really poignant, and I liked that there was also displays of the need for harmony through dissonance in the smaller interactions between the couple and their in-laws. I have not read Chemistry, Wang's debut, so I will have to check it out next.

A thought-provoking look into marriage- life, love, death, anxiety, and the terrible feeling that you are hurtling into nothingness. Nate & Keru met at a Yale Halloween party; initially brought together by their collective witty nature & impulsiveness, the two follow the blueprint of the typical successful millennial American dream: marriage & a dog. This story follows Keru and Nate through the lens of two vacations a few years apart.

I found it compelling the use of outside factors to provide the reader insight into Keru & Nate’s emotions, their dog Mantou being one of them. As the stress and heartbreak of the owners’ lives materializes through anxiety & depression, those same symptoms are revealed in the pup and are quickly medicated. Nate and Keru are not so quick to take care of themselves- so that provides an interesting and well thought out contrast.

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that vacations can be some of the most stressful times of peoples’ lives, but Wang does a great job of encapsulating the stress of unplugging, and all the nasty emotions that don’t get brought out in everyday life, when the monotony is simply too monotonous for you to care.