First I would like to say thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. As a Canadian I was really interested in this story and I'm glad it was a fun read. I highly recommend this novel.

Sunshine Nails by @bymainguyen

Thank you to @simonschusterca and @netgalley for this eARC!

Sunshine Nails follows the Vietnamese-Canadian Tran family who owns and runs their nail salon in Toronto. I love that this book is written in multiple POVs to showcase the perspectives of each family member that shows how they are connected and work together.

When a new high end nail salon opens in the same neighbourhood, the Trans must do what it takes to keep their salon running. This story is fun with complex friends/family relationships and shows different perspectives on immigration/culture among different generations.

As always I loved the Canadian setting and supporting a Canadian author!

Publication date is July 3!

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for this ARC!

What a debut! I loved this story so much and all of the characters. I think this book just found me at the right time, because it’s not usually my style. But oh man, I’m so glad that I read it! I felt it gave a huge and wonderful insight into a life I have never known. It was a little more backstabby than I expected in some parts, but in the end it just all felt right. I love the Tran family for being imperfect, for being real, and for their love for each other. If you are looking for a heartwarming/semi dramatic but also kind of feel good book, this is for you.

Having grown up in Toronto, I absolutely loved the setting. I loved the format of the book too, presenting the different viewpoints was a really interesting way to tell the story. The serious undertones gave this book a lot of depth too, taking it beyond what I expected.

What a fun, easy read that really makes you connect with each POV. Mai has done an excellent job of making the reader fall in love with each character throughout the novel. I only wanted MORE!

The Toronto story of a Vietnamese family running their nail salon is one that I think most readers can relate to - whether they have directly step foot in a salon or even heard stories about a nail salon, Mai does an excellent job portraying what it's like to truly be sitting in the massage chair getting a pedicure and/or manicure.

Jessica, Dustin, Phil, Debbie and Thuy all bring so much to this story that you can't help but fall in love with each of them. It was amazing to see the growth each developed over the course of the novel and how their decisions impacted one another (either directly or indirectly).

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who gets their nails done, living in Toronto, or if you want a truly great read!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a preview of "Sunshine Nails" by Mai Nguyen.

This book follows a Vietnamese-Canadian family who own a nail salon in Toronto as they try to save the salon from a new rival and the gentrification of their neighbourhood.

What I loved:
-Canadian setting
-complex family/friend relationships
-discussion around gentrification
-super cute cover

This was an interesting read that I did enjoy but I struggled to get super invested due to the 5 different POVs. I had a hard time feeling connected to the story and felt like things were happening very abruptly due to the frequent changing between POVs. However, I did really appreciate that the multiple POVs showed that despite all being Vietnamese-Canadian, each member of the family experienced life in Canada/immigration/first generation life differently.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the advanced reading copy!

Advanced Book Review! Thank you @netgalley, @simonschusterca and @atriabooks for sending me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
I really enjoyed this debut novel by Mai Nguyen and I was honestly hooked from the start. Sunshine Nails is about “a Vietnamese Canadian family in Toronto who will do whatever it takes to protect their no-frills nail salon after a new high-end salon opens up – even if it tears the family apart.”
The author writes from the of view of all five family members which I liked and thought it really enhanced the reader’s understanding of not only each person’s connection to the nail salon, but also to their own immigrant or first-generation Canadian experience.
I had no idea that so many nail salons had been opened by Vietnamese immigrants. I really enjoy immigrant stories and this was different from anything I’ve read before. Mai Nguyen’s parents were Vietnamese immigrants to Canada and opened up their own nail salon in Nova Scotia so she had a familiarity with this topic and I trusted that what she was writing was pretty accurate.
I also loved that it was set in Toronto as I recognized many of the locations and felt like this was a salon that could have been I would go to in my own neighbourhood.
I did think there were some holes in the plot and some misconceptions that I had based on the synopsis of the book. For example, I had thought that the kids and cousin would have tried more things to keep the salon open. It also seems like the real problem for the Tran family was the massive increase in their rent by the landlord, more so than the opening of the high-end nail salon on the same block. While I do wish some of these things had been explored further, I still really enjoyed this book.
I also thought the ending was perfect.

This one is a cute family saga but unfortunately I wanted for from the plot. If you like character driven stories than this is for you but I needed more action

I enjoyed getting to know the Tran family. The book is well written and easy to read. I actually lived in Toronto while I trained to be an esthetician, so I was familiar with the location. The book is told in MPOV, so you get each of the five family members perspective. My favourite storyline was Dustin’s and I would enjoyed reading more about him and Mackenzie. Overall, I enjoyed this novel about a family navigating the ups and downs of life together.

From the cover, Sunshine Nails looks like a happy rom-com. It is not a rom-com but still heartwarming and charming and shows what it means to be family. The Tran's own a nail salon which is in danger of going out of business when a newer, slicker salon opens across the street.

The Tran family are wholesome and flawed in their imperfect way. They do wrong things for the right reasons but in the end they still stick together. They work together to try to overcome their obstacles and not everything goes their way. There is so much heart and soul to this story, it will be hard not to love it.🇨🇦

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

First of all, isn’t the cover so cute?! That’s one of the reasons why I requested the ARC. The story follows a Vietnamese family-owned nail salon in Toronto. With family drama, family loyalties, money issues, gambling, blackmail…this book had it all. I quite enjoyed the Tran family. I learned about their culture, food, traditions, religion (Buddha) and the sacrifices made by immigrants in this country. It was such an enjoyable read. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was super excited for this book for the topic and the fun cover. And I wasn’t disappointed! The book had elements of fun, hardship, relationships, revenue and so much more. It was amazing to see that side of such a prominent industry. Loved it!!!

Thanks to Simon and Shuster and NetGalley for giving me access to an ARC of SUNSHINE NAILS by Mai Nguyen. It is lovely to see Vietnamese representation in media.

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Sunshine Nails releases July 4, 2023


Sunshine Nails is a family centered debut novel set in Toronto, Canada, that explores what it’s like for an immigrant family with a nail salon, as well as gentrification.

I enjoy seeing a new voice in literature for diversity and representation, and I think Asian-Americans/Canadians will be able to resonate to some extent with the Tran family. However, that being said, I thought this was going to be more light-hearted and inspiring, but instead, we got malicious blackmail and a married couple that had really poor communication. I often failed to see the humourous side to this story.

While I appreciated the important layers and spotlighting the difficulties of owning an independent business that was to be overshadowed by a more modernized chain brand across the street, in a neighbourhood that was to be drastically changing by way of gentrification, I couldn’t get past the character traits found here.

I found it difficult to keep track of the timeline within the story, and the 5 pov’s at times were muddled and had so many different directions, with Thuy really fading into the background as an afterthought (though, I didn’t anticipate her betrayal, but honestly good for her! She ended up being my favourite character)

On one hand, we had Jessica, a 30 year old first born daughter, recently back from her time spent in Los Angeles. She’s jobless and loveless after catching her fiancé cheating on her. It was hard to get a clear read on her — first she’s saying that she’s above working a service/hospitality job that is meant only for immigrants with no education and poor English skills, but is soon found to be supporting her family’s nail salon when she is shit out of luck on job prospects and out of savings.

Then, we have Dustin, their 28 year old son who is an overworked tech employee to a man that refuses to give him a pay raise, and is also leasing a soon to be developed office tower right in the same neighbourhood as Dustin’s family’s salon, that will destroy the existing history. I really thought that Dustin would have played a bigger part in helping Sunshine Nails, but instead he was mostly off-page in a new workplace romance… And don’t even get me started on when he invited his girlfriend to someone else’s Buddhist funeral and said “all you have to do is look cute” - I’m sorry, what?

Maybe worst of all were the parents. I really didn’t care for the scene of them getting frisky (not saying that 60 year old's can’t do that, but it wasn’t needed here), or the part when Phil publicly urinated?!
The blackmail was so irritating even though I saw it coming with how much Savannah was being mentioned, it didn’t feel like the right type of characterization for this family and their business. And then for Debbie to act freaking holier than thou towards Thuy as if she just forgot the actions she did herself?! PLEASE. In the words of Thuy - a hypocrite.
Phil (aside from the gambling and heavy drinking that was triggering for me personally), was also low key pretty hypocritical about the scandals of other nail salons — the way he couldn’t understand how those immigrant Vietnamese workers didn’t up and leave for a better job elsewhere, when they most likely didn’t have the luxury and depended on every dime. I’m surprised he acted this way and judged them so harshly being a Vietnamese immigrant himself who still sends money overseas to help his struggling family there.
Plus, when his own son got diarrhea from his cooking for a week and his mentality was “oh, well one less mouth to feed” BFFR.

The arranged marriage/green card plotline was weaved in unnaturally and I still can’t get over the one white woman saying kimchi reminds her of a wad of wet toilet paper…
Also, when Jessica got a missed phone call at 10pm on the night of her parent’s party from a job interview - that was so illogical!!

And lastly, as a mixed race Chinese-Canadian, reading this following sentence really off centered me as someone who continually struggles with identity and sense of belonging, which is a shame, especially to read in a book written by an Asian author, centering Asian characters. I mean, is this what people really believe? It's so disheartening regardless if it's fiction.
<i>“What do you care, you probably can’t even read it anyway, Debbie thought. This must be what happens when people marry outside of their race and disassociate themselves from their culture and community. They sever their ties to their identity, then claim it back whenever it was convenient for them.” </i>

And that ^ sentence doesn't even align with Debbie's characterization either. How can she think that towards a "friend" when her son is in an interracial couple, dating a Desi woman, and both of her children can't even read or hardly understand Vietnamese anymore? Yet she somehow supports them? Are you sure about that?
This whole book is a big contradictory to itself and the more I think about it or write this review the more of a headache I get.