A very striking story. Renee Goh is the daughter of a mega rich businessman, in constant battle with her two brothers for their father's approval--CraA very striking story. Renee Goh is the daughter of a mega rich businessman, in constant battle with her two brothers for their father's approval--Crazy Rich Asians meets Succession, sort of thing. She fell in love with Yap Ket Siong at college. He's a talented musician whose family lost everything when they came up against a dangerous case of corruption and Ket Siong's elder brother's activist boyfriend (Stephen) was kidnapped and probably murdered. The Yap family had to flee to London where Ket Siong is scraping a living. He bumps into Renee at an event where she's schmoozing for business advantage and he's trying to force a rich guy into admitting what happened to Stephen, and we go from there.
The first half of the book is pretty dark and quite stressful. The impact of Stephen's disappearing on the family is brutal, and Ket Siong's life feels fairly bleak, with a strong sense of threat. Renee has all the privilege but is living a tense, joyless life, tied into a vicious family, forced to put up with gross sexism for financial/familial gain. We really see the harm done by rampant capitalism, and the ghastliness of its perpetrators--and Renee's complicity in the system is absolutely an issue. Their reunion is intense and physical, but there's unquestionably too much baggage and too much unspoken on both sides for it to work initially.
With all that, it's something of a triumph that the author shifts gears to make this really work as a contemporary romance. The plot pivots impressively and takes the mood with it, opening out into people reaching for joy and self-respect in a way that doesn't deny the pain of the first half. This isn't a book that pretends everything's OK globally, or that the millionaire fantasy is other than horrifically problematic, but it is a book that says you can fight to make things better for at least some other people, and that doing so is worth more than scrabbling for the next million for yourself. It is in fact a super-rich person romance that doesn't shy away from the reality of what super-rich means, with a level of honesty we rarely get, and I'm absolutely here for it.
We also see that Renee has the drive but is in desperate need of unconditional love and warmth in her life; Ket Siong is quiet and caring and needs a push to achieve what he's capable of. We end the book genuinely believing they will be good for each other.
It's a compelling read, doing something distinctly different in the romance field. The title is bafflingly inappropriate, though. Wtf publisher.
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