Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Simon Pulse, published November 10th 

Format: Ebook ARC from Simon and Schuster Canada 

Pages: 320

Rating: 4/5 stars

Summary (Goodreads):

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before meets The Farewell in this incisive romantic comedy about a college student who hires a fake boyfriend to appease her traditional Taiwanese parents, to disastrous results, from the acclaimed author of American Panda.

Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn’t met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your ’Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents.

Drew Chan’s passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your ’Rents employee to keep a roof over his head. Luckily, learning protocols like “Type C parents prefer quiet, kind, zero-PDA gestures” comes naturally to him.

When Chloe rents Drew, the mission is simple: convince her parents fake Drew is worthy of their approval so they’ll stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo, the wealthiest (and slimiest) young bachelor in their tight-knit Asian American community.

But when Chloe starts to fall for the real Drew—who, unlike his fake persona, is definitely not ’rent-worthy—her carefully curated life begins to unravel. Can she figure out what she wants before she loses everything? 

My Review:

Thank you, Simon and Schuster Canada for the copy of this book!
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This was a super cute story about two young people who struggle between living their true lives, but also wanting to be involved in their family and their culture. The book starts with Chloe hiring Drew to be her boyfriend and go home with her for Thanksgiving. Chloe feels like she needs to bring home a fake boyfriend to get her parents to stop trying to get her to marry someone she does not want to. Hongbo was the absolute worst and I could totally understand why Chloe did not want to marry him. Chloe is a nineteen-year-old economics major and I thought it a little weird at first that her parents would want her to get married so young and before she was done school, but it is later explained in the book.
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The book represents the struggles people have when they immigrate to a new place and they want to hold on to their culture, and how they build a community to keep their culture strong. Chloe and Drew represent the children of immigrants and how they want to embrace their culture, but growing up in American changes things a bit. I loved reading about Chinese culture, and I found myself immersed in the story for this reason!
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Overall a cute romance novel that has a lot of complexities underneath the cover!