I recently read "Crazy bao you" by Lyn Liao Butler and found it to be a quick, fun, and light romance read. The story follows Kimmie, an Etsy shop owner from Oklahoma, who goes viral for quitting her day job and then falls for one of her customers. The multicultural aspect of the story was refreshing, and I appreciated the exploration of adoption, Asian culture, and identity. However, the plot was predictable, and the book was dragged on with unnecessary drama. Additionally, the connection between the characters felt forced. Despite these flaws, I found the book to be enjoyable and would recommend it as a light and easy read in between heavier books.

3.25⭐

My first novel from Lyn Liao Butler. If you want something quick, fun, light, but sometimes cheesy and cringy, this is for you.

Kimmie and Matt initially encountered each other as a buyer/seller. Matt is buying an original tote bag from Kimmie's etsy shop for his Nana. Through DMs, they got closer to each other.

The cringy part came from the catfishing that happened, and it lasted up to about 50% of the story. Also, I know Kimmie is a bit sheltered growing up in Oklahoma but comments regarding race may be insensitive to some (such as making a comment regarding Asians and identifying Filipinos in particular like they're not one, although this was referenced again later on by another character).

Overall, enjoyed it. Would recommend for in between those heavy dark reads.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lyn Liao Butler for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you're in the mood for a quick and delightful romance, look no further than Crazy Bao You. This multicultural love story is incredibly charming and will leave you wanting more. It's a fast-paced read that you won't be able to put down until you've reached the last page. Don't hesitate to pick up this heartwarming book, you won't regret it!

Thankyou NetGalley and publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

This was heartwarming/entertaining romance that explores the challenges and triumphs of finding love and following your dreams. The story centers around Kimmie Park, a young woman living in Oklahoma who falls for Matt West, a charming and handsome firefighter from New York. However, there are several obstacles standing in their way, including Kimmie's recent viral fame, her insecurities about her appearance, and the secrets she's been keeping from Matt.

One of the strengths of the book is the author's ability to create relatable and likable characters. Kimmie is a well-developed protagonist who struggles with self-doubt and past traumas, but also shows resilience and determination in pursuing her passion for designing purses and accessories. Matt is a sympathetic love interest who respects and supports Kimmie, even as he faces his own family conflicts and personal struggles.

Another strength of the book is the author's use of music as a central theme. Kimmie and Matt bond over their shared love of country music, and the book is filled with references to classic songs and lyrics that add depth and emotion to the story. The use of song titles as chapter headings also adds a creative touch to the book.

While the book has many positive qualities, it also has some weaknesses. At times, the plot can feel predictable or formulaic, with certain conflicts and resolutions feeling a bit contrived. Additionally, some of the secondary characters are not as fully fleshed out as Kimmie and Matt, making them feel somewhat one-dimensional.

Overall, “Crazy Bao You” is a charming and enjoyable romance novel that will appeal to fans of the genre. The book offers relatable characters, a touching love story, and a heartfelt exploration of the power of music and self-expression. Therefore, I would give the book a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to LBB, IBPA as well as NetGalley and Lyn Liao Butler for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was a really fun read! The book is about Kimmie Park, an Etsy store owner from Oklahoma who goes viral for quitting her other job. Then she ends up falling for one of her customers who helps get her an incredible opportunity.

I really loved the characters. I could understand why Kimmie felt the way she did about what was going on and what motivated her. I liked how sweet and funny her and Matt were together.

The only thing I didn't enjoy was how many plot points the story had and how many chances Kimmie had to tell Matt the truth but something always came up. A few times it's comical, but too many feels like overkill. The story just felt really busy sometimes. I think the 3rd quarter of this book was the strongest because the storyline flowed really well.

Another thing I didn't understand (without giving away too many spoilers) is [ what happened in the epilogue. From what I learned from these characters as a reader I would have thought Kimmie would have wanted some special moments to be more private and low key, but that's just my opinion. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, this book was a fun time and I would read other books from Lyn Liao Butler.

Crazy Bao You by Lyn Liao

I adored this sweet mistaken identity story. Kimmie has so much to her character! She is an amazing lead! There were so many times that my heart ached for her, but there were even more times when I found wonder and joy with her. Matt is a fantastic lead also. Steamy, gorgeous firefighter, an excellent mind for business (nerdy sexy), and he loves animals. So many things try to pull them apart, but we get our happily ever after! The food in this story was a character all on its own!

I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Overall, it was an easy read and enjoyable book. This book dived into the themes of adoption, Asian culture, and identity, which was nice and fresh to read about. That being said, it was not new and very predictable. The author was creative in her approach to this book, and it kept me interested throughout, constantly wanting to know more. Despite that, the book was dragged on with unnecessary plot and drama. The pacing of the book was alright. Some parts (plots/ideas) were too quick and did not go into enough detail/information; others needed to be faster or didn't need much explanation. Without spoiling the book, the connection between the characters was not there and was very forced.

This was a cute, quick read. I don't really like stories with a Big Lie with inevitable reveal, but I appreciated the story behind this one and that it didn't last the whole book. Matt and Kimmie have a sweet friendship built on sharing their life stories, and less about each others looks. I felt bad for Kimmie going viral for an embarrassing video, and empathized with her not wanting to share her real identity with Matt at the beginning. Matt is really sweet and takes the truth a lot better than I would've if I'd been in the situation, and it just shows how patient, kind, and understanding he is. I also felt bad for Matt trying to achieve his dreams to be a firefighter (for he sweetest reasons) fighting his emotionally unavailable dad who hasn't dealt with the death of Matt's mother well.
Overall, I love how Matt and Kimmie support each other, become good friends making their intentions with each other clear from the beginning, and how they come together eventually in an honest and open manner.
I also loved the stories here of Kimmie achieving her designing dreams as an etsy shop owner and then with Matt's fathers company-- I loved her being able to find her passion in life to pursue that is authentic to her.
Thank you for the ARC!!!

I loved it! It was such an easy cute read. Catfish believable more young adult style romcom read. Kim is a small town Esty designer who sells her product to an NYFD firefighter who connects with her and an online relationship is formed.

My only hangup is that the characters came across about 10 years younger or more immature than they were supposed to be like 29? More like 19 acting.

I received an electronic arc version of this book through NetGalley. It was my first one, so I really wanted to like it.

Unfortunately, I didn't.

I really struggled to finish it. There are the bones of a good story however this feels like a first draft. The characters are inconsistent and the plot bounces from one conflict to another without actually stopping to explore the ramifications of the events. These conflicts pop up and are solved within a matter of pages, not to be discussed again. The main character is almost thirty but acts like teenager. The relationship between the two is shallow and unrealistic.

The traditional rom-com tropes are there and, with another draft, this could be a solid entry in the 'chick flick' genre. All in all, I can't recommend it.

If the thought of someone twerking while quitting their job doesn't appeal to you, don't read it.

This book gets 4 stars cause the firefighter aspect of it is fucking perfect. Like oh my god, it’s like 9-1-1 the tv show. So good, not too dramatic and no misogyny (even though I don’t think I heard of any female firefighter, anyway)

This is a cute quick rom-com, heavy of the comedy aspects of it. If that’s you’re jam then you’ll like it. But to me everything else wasn’t a complete miss (apart from the fire fighter). This book wasn’t enjoyable as I wanted and I’ll explain.

Let’s start with the fact that she unintentionally catfished Matt for 50% of this book. It was annoying cause every time she tried to tell him the truth something happened and she couldn’t or she chickened out. Apart from the catfishing, like some parts felt pick me energy when Kim discusses how Alice is always focused about her makeup and shit, but Kim doesn’t do that. She lets her skin look all natural and her hair all natural. Thar energy threw me off a second time. The whole idea that just because one video went viral people ask for autographs of her on the stress threw me off too.

The las 25% of this book was like how more ridiculous can this story get?

Thanks to @NetGalley and Lyn Liao (Butler) for my ARC in exchange for this review.

Kimmie Park has an Etsy shop and a crummy retail day-job. Rather, she HAD a crummy retail day-job, until she finally lost her cool on her rotten boss, told him off and quit. As if that weren't bad enough, a co-worker caught it on video and the whole thing has gone viral. Kimmie is no fan of the spotlight, and so is desperate to hide any connection between her small business and the viral video person. A happy accident occurs when Kimmie shares an image of her friend Alicia modeling some items and the internet believes that the girl in the image is Kimmie.

This confusion makes Kimmie uneasy, and things go from bad to worse when a male customer compliments her looks. Flirting ensues, but as the chance this innocent interchange might become a real-life meetup, Kimmie struggles to find a way to tell the truth. This little lie has the potential to cause big problems when the mixup, and the reveal of Kimmie's connection to the viral video, run the risk of torpedoing her chance to take her small crafting business to the next level of success.

Added to the mix are a host of personal issues stemming from Kimmie's history as an adopted child, and the death of her adoptive parents when she was still a teen. I understand that conflict is a necessary part of a good story, but these issues seem a bit heavy and complex for a rom-com novel.

It was interesting to read a story where the characters talk very specifically about being Korean versus Chinese versus Taiwanese versus none of the above. It was also fun to hear them talk about the culture-specific cuisine, since I geek out on food talk in fiction. The book was well-written and enjoyable, but I didn't fall in love with it. Definitely worth a read.

This book was not good, which was unfortunate. I really wanted to like it. I like that there are more non-white authors of rom-coms out there. However, this book felt like the author read a list of tropes and stuck them into the novel whether they made sense or not.

"It was a dream, and dreams killed you or someone you loved in real life."

I think this quote pretty much sums up how irrationally nonsensical this book was for me. Had this been a fantasy where someone's dreams actually did kill people, I'd read that in a heartbeat. But no, this piece of non-wisdom came from the main character. Who up until this quote, had been portrayed as a relatively well-adjusted and reasonable ADULT. I don't know if I have higher expectations of people, but I would be genuinely concerned if someone actually thought this. I was excited to learn that the main character was adopted and struggling with her cultural self-identity between growing up thinking she was Korean, finding out she was adopted and Chinese, and then really being Taiwanese after meeting her birth mom. But no. All the author did was discuss food. The mistaken identity thing was cute for a minute, but boy, the author latched onto that and drove it into the dirt. The IG/text correspondence got cringey. Fast. The *intimate* scenes felt like an afterthought. The author sure used the word "penis" a lot without ever getting explicit in those scenes, which was weird. Aunt Hana's non-traditional relationship reveal at the end of the book was so strange. I would have much preferred to have read a book about a woman navigating her new familial relationships after her adoptive parents' death. A journey of self-discovery with an aunt she didn't know as well as she thought she did, and a birth mother who wants to get to know her? Navigating the intricacies of her cultural upbringing in Oklahoma? YEAH! But no. I got a weird Etsy nightmare of a novel that talked about farts a lot.

This was a super cute rom-com that had me laughing and tearing up and would probably make an excellent Hallmark movie. However, it's definitely one of those books that if you think too hard about, everything starts to fall apart.

Kimmie works for a boutique in Oklahoma with a boss who is a huge jerk and berates his employees. Finally getting fed up over it, she tells him off and quits... but has a sort of dissociative anxiety episode while she does that results in her basically having a one-sided dance battle with him. It's all recorded by a coworker and uploaded to the internet where it promptly goes viral. Now unemployed, Kimmie starts throwing all her energy into her Etsy shop. She takes a picture of her best friend, Alicia, with some of her items and everyone assumes Alicia is Kimmie. She doesn't correct them because she's terrified of the viral video. Matt is a customer from the Etsy shop and he strikes up a flirtation with her over Instagram. They start to fall in love, but now she doesn't know how to tell him the truth.

There are so many subplots going on with the book, Kimmie's parents died in a freak accident and she finds out she's adopted. She's having an identity crisis because she thought she was Korean, then Chinese and now she's actually Taiwanese. She's afraid to leave Oklahoma because she's equated following your dreams to death. We've got the viral video that follows her around and then she's meeting her birth mother and it's just a lot and most of it doesn't feel needed because it's not really explored. The first half of the book feels like an Etsy ad mixed with the movie The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Kimmie is offered a collaboration with a major company and the CEO is impressed with her sales and profit and loss, but her shop has been open for years and only has 1000 sales. It just stops making sense. And it's a CLEAN romance, so there isn't even smut to save it.

Kimmie is hilarious bordering on obnoxious at times and Matt... well, he's hot. He doesn't have much of a personality, but he has abs so... Kimmie's aunt Hana was probably my favorite character and she was only in the book long enough to tell Kimmie she was being an idiot and to tell her she has lovers all over the globe. You go Aunt Hana!

All that said, this was a cute story, but it's probably not something I'd read again.

This was such a great book. I was totally absorbed into the story. I really fell for Kimmie and Matt.
I just reviewed Crazy Bao You by Lyn Liao. #CrazyBaoYou #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL]

If you want something quick and easy to read, this is the book for you. Let me first say that Kimmie and Matt were fine. Kimmie bordered on being just a bit annoying at times. Matt was a Gary Sue if I've ever read one. He was perfect. Like boringly perfect. Not once does he get upset over the fact that Kimmie catfished him for a month. No, he's all super understanding about it and is all "LOL WHAT A HILARIOUS MISCOMMUNICATION". It was okay because that's not how he pictured Kimmie at all in his head anyway. "There's no way this well put together woman on Instagram, INSTAGRAM OF ALL PLACES, could be the sweet, dorky woman I've been talking to all this time." NONE OF THESE COULD BE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. Okay, fine. At least that situation was cleared up and they realized that they do like each other and have chemistry. At least, that's what the author wants us to think. These two had more chemistry with the food they were eating throughout this entire book than each other. I believed they were meant for each other because they were both just...there.

Also, once I realized that Matt was a white dude (I guess I spaced out when Kim was describing what he looked like for the first time between all the "omg he's so hot"), the racist undertones when he was describing that area of the Bronx was not a good look as the millennials say. This could be based off Liao Butler's experiences since her husband is firefighter with the FDNY, but it didn't sit right with me.

There was also too much going on in this book for it being less than 300 pages. The viral video, which in this day and age, I refuse to believe people would have actually recognized her or cared. There's the catfishing. There's the product line with Matt's dad's business. There's Kimmie's birth mother. There's the accident at the last 1/4 of the book. It was too much and instead of shoving another issue into this book, the author could have spent more time building the actual relationship between Matt and Kim.

Like I said, if you want something easy, light, and quick to read, this is for you.

Crazy Bao You is a cute, light, fast-paced multicultural romance. I definitely recommend this novel for anyone who enjoys contemporary romances. Thank you netgalley for the ARC!

This book was a fun light read! There were some moments in the book that made me laugh out loud. Matt was such a great guy that it was hard for me to sometimes see what he saw in Kimmie. Sure he kept going on about how sweet and funny she was, and clever, but she wasn't willing to give them a chance when he was the one who gave her business the deal with Endless. Overall still enjoyable!

Oooh, definitely crazy bao this story!! This one was sweet and cute with all the misunderstanding and craziness. What begins with a DM slide-in and harmless flirting eventually turns into something more serious. Kimmie and Matt may not have known each other for a long time, but that thankfully didn’t stop them from realising that they do indeed belong together.

Great characters and a heartwarming story made this steaming plate of baos a wonderful read. Thank you for my advance copy @netgalley

thank u netgalley for the arc!

This book is about Kimmie Park, an Etsy shop owner from Oklahoma, who meets Matt West, a FDNY firefighter from New York. Despite the distance and the fact that they have never met in person, they connect and have great chemistry. However, Kimmie is hiding her recent internet fame from a viral video where she twerked while quitting her retail job, and Matt has no idea what she looks like. As their relationship develops and Kimmie gets a chance to partner with Matt's father's retail store, she knows she needs to come clean about her past. But in order to do that, she must confront the sorrows of her past and decide whether she's ready to embrace who she really is.

It was such an easy and enjoyable read, with well-portrayed relationships between Kimmie and various characters such as Alicia, Matt, Matt's grandmother, Kimmie's aunt, and her birth mother. I found it refreshing that there wasn't much conflict surrounding them and that the majority of the problems revolved around Kimmie and Matt. Additionally, I admired how Lyn resolved the challenges they encountered (such as with Matt and his father), aside from those that involved Kimmie and Matt, in a seamless manner.

However here are the things that bothered me about this book:

First, the main character, Kim, has too many problems going on at once. While this may be realistic, not all of them are thoroughly addressed. I found myself frustrated with Kim because she could have just told the truth from the beginning, but chose not to. If I were Alicia, I would have been angry with her.

Second was how often Matt was late. He's on probation, so it's frustrating that he couldn't be on time especially since that's on first appearance on the book.

Third, it also didn't sit right with me that the main character didn't know why she twerked while telling off her boss. It's understandable to go on autopilot when angry, but it was odd that she felt very clueless when she saw the vid like “THATS ME??” as if she doesnt know what she looked like. It's annoying, to be honest. And she just went “I don't know why omg I didn't even know I did that” all through out the book so why make it like one of the main details if she's not even aware of that happening.

Another issue I have with the book is that Kim's serious conversations are often interrupted by her thoughts about food or how attractive Matt is. I know the story wasn't in a serious tone and it's supposed to be light but when addressing a serious issue or having a serious talk, it feels out of place and takes away from the overall tone of the scene.

Additionally, the constant delays in Kim's confession were frustrating. It was understandable when it happened once or twice, but the repetition became tiresome.

<i>But then I realized Alicia didn't look Chinese. Even though she was half-Asian, she didn't look it. People often mistook her for Mexican or Italian, possibly Filipino. But definitely not Chinese. Crap.</i>
I also disliked the implication that Alicia didn't look Asian, even though she was half-Asian. It was frustrating its always implied that KIMMIE LOOKS ASIAN and alicia isnt because she looks either mexican or FILIPINO as if Filipinos arent asians on god.

Lastly, the addition of a new problem near the end of the book felt unnecessary and added more frustration.

Despite the issues, the book was a fun and easy read, and Kimmie and Matt's dynamic was cute.