Author: Weike Wang (narrated by Jen Zhao)
Year published: 2024
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 224 pages
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (MA, MN, NY, OH)
Summary: Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.
Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?
Review: My in-person book group chose this book, and I listened to it. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I liked it.
This is a great study on family, relationships, expectations, and how we interact with the world. There isn't much plot which means about two-thirds of the way through, I was getting ready for the story to end. I need some plot and not just a couple meandering through life navigating their relationship with one another and those around them.
The last part of the book has Nate dealing with his estranged brother, which continues the themes of money and class as well as people's responsibilities to others.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Alphabet (Author)--W
- Cover Lovers--A proper noun in the title or design (house, couch)
- Diversity--Asian author, narrator, and characters
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