This is such a light review compared to what I normally write but I was pretty let down by this memoir and the way it depicted growing up in America as Asian American, while relatable, was just disappointing when considering how Nguyen looks back on the time. There are SO MANY moments of internalized misogyny and internalized anti-Asian racism even in her "current" musings that it was honestly just upsetting. Her and her parents deserve the best in the world, especially after everything they went through immigrating from Vietnam, but it's such a formulaic and typical praising of America and white people that I grew up with and out of, that it's disheartening to read that someone as accomplished and brilliant as Nguyen has yet to grow out of, or at least depict it.

Here are three “I wasn’t sure about this decision” points and three “yes” points to Nguyen’s <i>Boat Baby</I>. I’ll start with the former.

(1) The memoir includes encounters with deep struggle, from fleeing Saigon on boats as refugees, experiencing four miscarriages, and loving her entrepreneurial father. But overall, the memoir is clean, almost uncomplicated (with the one exception of Huy navigating his finances), and unfortunately, it comes across as formulaic.

(2) In multiple places, Nguyen places phenotypes like “blonde hair,” “blue eyes,” and “strong jawline” on a pedestal. This is not balanced with positive acknowledgments of her ethnicity’s physical traits (generally speaking).

(3) While Nguyen dates her high-school sweetheart, Brian, he joins them on a family trip. In response to them staying at different hotels every night, Brian asserts, “You know that’s not normal, right?” Nguyen goes on to express her appreciation for the normality of her second family because they annually vacation at Lake Tahoe and stay at the same lodgings. Brian’s comment works if he means Vicky’s family does something different than his, but the assumption is that Brian’s family’s rhythms are normal and thus good.

The three “yes” points follow:

(1) The highlight of the book was Nguyen describing her investigative work on Sysco. She offers exact numbers when discussing salary, which I thought was helpful. We love to see representation.

(2) Nguyen’s parents are incredible hustlers. Liên is absolutely gangsta for her work ethic and adaptability in her work. I appreciated her nuanced portrayal of her dad, and this doesn’t take away from their “success” in creating a home in America as refugees.

(3) I appreciated her description of how her parents left Saigon. I wished this part was longer.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC. I shared this review on GoodReads on March 18, 2025 (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7414706188).

This was a beautifully written memoir full of inspiration. When I requested, I thought it would focus on her time at NBC news, so was pleasantly surprised by the story of her family escape and arrival to America as refugees. This was a true inspiration and I cannot wait for this to be published.

Thank you so much for the gifted copy of this beautiful memoir!

The American Dream is alive and well and Vickie Nguyen is living it. She and her family immigrated to the United States from Vietnam on a boat when she was a young child. They worked hard, lived cheap and saved their money and sent Vickie to college. She excelled and rose to the heights of her profession which is investigative television journalism on NBC. This memoir fills in the interesting details.

I wasn't super familiar with Vicky Nguyen prior to reading this memoir, but I loved it. The complexity of the immigrant experience, the beauty of her partnership with husband Brian, and negotiation tips! I really enjoyed it.

Thank you Netgalley & Simon & Schuster for the advanced reader copy.

What a witty and relatable memoir! I loved reading Vicky Nguyen's story about her attempts to balance being both a Dutiful Daughter to her Vietnamese parents and her wants and needs to be successful in her own right. She is so funny and I loved getting to know this part of her after watching her on NBC News and the Today Show. My maiden name is Nguyen and my father was a Vietnam War refugee so I feel connected to Vicky's story. I love seeing her represent on national TV! I related to so many of her stories about her parents as they were very similar to my father. Vicky was very vulnerable in sharing her conflicted feelings regarding her relationship with her father.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC!
PUB DATE: 4/01/2025

I love a well-written, interesting memoir! This was a fascinating read from NBC News’ Vicky Nguyen. Boat Baby tells the story of her family’s escape from Communist Vietnam and their move to America. Vicky navigates the world as an American, raised by Asian refugee parents, and often not feeling quite like she fit in with the white kids she went to school with or her Vietnamese family. While I do wish she wrote more about what life was like for her parents under Communist rule and why they decided to flee, this was a very solid memoir that I enjoyed a great deal. She’s a great writer with great storytelling ability and I found myself chuckling several times.

Five gold stars. I have enjoyed many of Vicky's stories and segments on NBC and knew I wanted to read her book. Vicky's storytelling is short and concise, but she's able to do it in a way that you can visualize the story she's sharing. I enjoyed hearing stories from all stages of her life...escaping Vietnam as a baby with her parents, visiting Vietnam and meeting family members for the first time as a pre-teen, navigating new school systems as a child, growing her broadcasting career, and learning how to be an "American kid" and proud of her Vietnamese culture and heritage too. She balances telling comedic stories about her family's adjustment to American life with heartfelt stories about knowing your worth and dealing with racism. My only complaint is that the book wasn't long enough...can't wait to read her next book!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I've watched Vicky Nguyen on the Today show for years. When I saw she was publishing her memoir, I knew I had to read it. Her story of leaving communist Vietnam as a baby to NBC News Daily anchor and Senior Consumer Investigative Correspondent on the Today Show was detailed, raw, and inspiring. Her parents wanted a better life for themselves, their family, and especially for Vicky. They undertook a harrowing boat journey, spent almost a year in a refugee camp, and finally got to California. After years and years of hard work and perseverance, they gave Vicky the opportunities to live the American Dream. Vicky found her passion in journalism, especially investigative journalism. Her professional path took her around the country and finally she landed a dream job at NBC. She shares her relationship about her husband as well as the challenges of becoming parents to three beautiful daughters.
I highly recommend this memoir for a deep dive into her family, jobs, and personal journey. I had a hard time putting this book down as I had to keep turning the pages to see what would happen next. Her relationship with her parents, as well as her in-laws, is amazing and challenging, especially since her dad loves to take risks to get the next best thing. She is a role-model, not only for other young Vietnamese girls, but for all girls wanting to be reporters and balancing family with work.
#BoatBaby #SimonBooks
Thank you Simon & Schuster and Net Galley for a complimentary copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

An excellent read for any and all readers! Author comes at you with both barrels and knocks you out of your shoes! Great job fleshing out all the characters. I give this book FIVE stars! Definitely recommend!

This book was funny and heartwarming. I enjoyed the journey of Vicky’s family and how they had to learn to acclimate to American life/culture.

At first glance, Boat Baby is a seemingly short memoir, but it packs a punch.

Detailing her family's history before, during, and after the Vietnam war, Nguyen takes time to detail the impacts of war trauma by focusing the lens on her family's pragmatism, humorous, and at times frustrating, methods of survival. The novel does a great job of detailing the relationship between immigrant parents, and diaspora children -- where children must parent their parents on the culture of their new home.

Nguyen's journey also details her personal life in school, her community, and as she pursues her career as a journalist up until she landed her dream job. This was, of course, juxtaposed by the challenges of pursuing this role: from martial fissures, familial fights, to COVID and having to report on the horrific AAPI hate crimes that rose because of the pandemic. The latter half of the book really stands out, it feels like a full circle moment in which it started by showing how hard working her community is to the undercurrent of racism coming to a head with the deaths of those who were victims of AAPI hate crimes.

Overall, it was a good, short, memoir. I could tell she was a journalist by the way it was written -- very little prose, no nonsense, to the facts. I think this makes sense given her career, but it was a little less enjoyable personally. This is going to be a good memoir for the current administration. I think Nguyen is personable enough that she could reach people who maybe wouldn't normally read a memoir by an author of color.

An optimistic, convivial memoir about a Vietnamese American reporter starting from her family’s history of becoming refugees to her starting from the bottom rung to being an accomplished news journalist. This is the most narrative-friendly memoir I’ve read, as each vignettes from Nguyen flow so smoothly from one to the other.

Nguyen has a talent for storytelling that makes you feel like you’re listening to a friend. She starts off the memoir with a history of her parents and relatives, and usually, it can be difficult for writers to relay experiences they haven’t experienced themselves. However, I think that she did her mom and dad’s personal stories justice and paints a picture of the harsh conditions of what her family had to endure to immigrate to the US.

Most chapters impart a personal lesson that she has learned, and she’s had a wealth of experience growing up Asian and living in multiple US cities, while learning to go with the flow. Overall, this was a joy to read and one of my favorite memoirs about the Vietnamese diaspora experience.

Special thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.

The story was very engaging and at times heartbreaking. The struggle to get to a free country only to face more challenges. Fascinating read.

As a Vietnamese American person whose mom was a boat person, I appreciate and can relate to a lot of Vicky's experiences and journey. Being able to relate and see myself and my family in a book is heartwarming. The structure of the chapters is a bit repetitive, and kind of a "this happened, and then this happened" style moving forward in time, documenting her life. I think that makes sense given that she is a TV reporter. While I've read other memoirs that include research to add context, or that may be more illustrative and immersive, as I kept reading Vicky's memoir, I found her style to kind of remind me of how my mother and aunts might relay anecdotes to me, and that felt endearing. Overall I think this is an accessible read, and if anything a great introduction into learning more about Vietnamese American/refugee experiences especially for those that may not know much about Vietnamese American people or culture beyond war veteran stories and pho or banh mi 😅.

Boat Baby

I thought Vicky did a great job sharing her story in such an open and honest way. I admire how she was willing to share her vulnerabilities and doubts regarding her career and her father with the rest of the world. I had actually never heard of her or seen her on TV prior to this book. Though I am not of Vietnamese descent, my husband is. Thus, I was able to recognize and connect with much of her words and experience growing up as a child of Chinese immigrants.

I will say that about the first half of her book seemed a bit more wooden and stiff whereas the latter half seemed to have more of her own personal "voice" in the writing.

Overall great read!

Thank you for the advance copy to enjoy!

Vicky Nguyen is one of my favorite journalists, so I was thrilled to be able to read an ARC of Boat Baby. This is a clearly written memoir that takes us through her entire life, starting with a little bit of her parents' lives before she was born. I found the story of her parents' courage in escaping Vietnam so inspiring. Nguyen dives into the hardships her parents and other relatives endured to escape their homeland, the wait they faced while waiting a turn to come to the U.S., and plenty of challenges in assimilating and making a life for themselves in a new land. She shows the reader the beautiful parts of her life thus far as well as the harder things like racism and sexism and the differing expectations of her parents compared to those of other kids. I loved getting a peek into her life as a journalist as well.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the eARC!

I was not familiar with Vicky Nguyen before I started reading this book, but I think I might start watching the Today Show just for her. I loved hearing her story! She's a great writer who doesn't shy away from stories that may not cast her in a perfect light. But the stories are so relatable, even though I'm not an Asian American, and my relatives immigrated many, many generations ago.
I loved hearing about how her parents left Vietnam, how they worked so hard to provide a beautiful life for her (and themselves), and how they always encouraged her to pursue what she loved (whether it was a white boyfriend or a less-than-lucrative (at least in the beginning) career.
I do wish there had been some photos included - maybe there will be when the book officially publishes.
I also really, really appreciated her discussion of how she got into reporting and how she traveled from job to job, learning along the way. I also really enjoyed the Vietnamese sprinkled throughout - I bet the audiobook would be so fun to listen to!
And that chapter on Covid?? Wow!! I was moved many times throughout reading, but that was maybe my favorite chapter.
I'm not afraid to admit that Nguyen made such an impression on me that I've started following her on Instagram!
Definitely recommend, even if you aren't familiar with Nguyen at the start. You'll learn a lot about her, about immigrants, and maybe even about your self along the way.

I found this book incredibly insightful and beautifully written. I thought Vicky did an incredible job of conveying the story of her parents escape from Saigon after the Vietnamese War, to how her family struggled to get on their feet financially to Vicky pursuing a career in journalism and rising to the top of her field. An inspiring story- not without its struggles- but told so honestly it felt like listening to a friend talk about her past. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

"Boat Baby" by Vicky Nguyen, is a memoir of the author's life. She writes about being born in Vietnam. When she is an infant her mother, father, two young uncles and an Aunt. made the brave decision to escape Vietnam. It took close to a year of travelling to another country to finally make it to the USA. She writes of growing up moving to many different homes and locations while her parents found employment. her parents had to move several times to support the family. she describes growing up going to many different schools.
When in college she changed her major to journalism and spent the rest of her life working at different news stations until ending up on the Today show where she still works today.
She also writes of her family, being the daughter in an Asian family. Marrying her high school sweetheart. being the mother of three daughters. Dealing with racism. and many other parts of her life. I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. A good read. I was glad to read this memoir myself. I would give this book a 4.5.