I was not a fan of this one. The characters were unlikeable, and didn’t have anything in them to make them relatable. The mc was too much. Irritating at best. I’m sure there’s folks out there who would love this story, but it was not for me.

I've put off reviewing this title for a while, because it's hard to put my thoughts into words.

There were things that I LOVED about it, and things that made it hard to make it to the last page. For instance, I loved the general premise, and the descriptions of Beijing -- and the wild adventures Iris is swept up into -- were opulent, thrilling, and altogether great.

And yet... like many of the other commenters here, I found it a little difficult to connect to Iris, to root for her decisions, and to believe in her relationships.

It's not that she's unlikable in a prickly, sardonic, or sarcastic way... she's just straight-up manipulative? Which, in a fantasy novel, might be all right for a villain, but... in a sweet, fun, contemporary/romance novel, it created some cognitive dissonance.

The writing is fantastic, and the cultural descriptions -- from food to architecture -- are phenomenal. And yet, Iris's difficult personality holds me back from rating it any higher than this. :(

I had a hard time connecting with the main character to a point where it was not readable. Tried to give it a shot a few times, but ultimately DNFed around the 40% mark. Looking to Goodreads, it seems I was in the majority opinion here.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I so wanted to like this book but it's not a good book. The written feels a little all over the place and is not engaging, the main character is incredibly dislikable to the point that the reader doesn't care what happens to her

First off I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I had high hopes for this book based on the description and the cover but I got a couple chapters in and was not able to complete it.

Iris Wang is an only child of immigrant Chinese parents and is spoiled beyond her means. She is completing her senior year of high school and has not gotten into any of the colleges that she had applied to. After hosting a party at her house, walking in on her best friend and boyfriend making and then driving the Mercedes into, her parents decide to send her to Beijing where she will live with relatives that she never knew existed.

That's about as far as I got in the story. I gave it a shot but it just didn't work for me.

Contemporary Fiction | 16-18
Iris Wang is in her final year of high school in New Jersey when everything goes wrong – she holds a party while her folks are way, discovers her boyfriend is getting it on with her best friend, accidentally drives the family Mercedes into the garage door, gets into NONE of her colleges and in fact, fails several courses. Oh, and she maxes out the credit card her dad gave her to apply to the colleges who don’t want her. Not surprisingly, mum and dad go ballistic, and ship her to Beijing to stay with an uncle she didn’t know anything about. She even has a cousin! Iris has never given much thought to her Chinese ancestry – she doesn’t speak the language, knows nothing of her family beyond mum and dad, and certainly nothing about China. Arriving in Beijing, she is bewildered by everything and everyone, and finds herself struggling to figure out who she is in this unfamiliar place loaded with history and expectations.
It's a great premise that fails to launch due to the author’s decision to create a character who is so self-absorbed and clueless as to be downright unlikeable. I could not relate to this character at all, which is such a shame, as I stuck it through and actually liked the way this story ended. The last quarter was actually a fun and interesting story. I wish an editor had been brutally honest and convinced Wong to create something about Iris early on to make us want to cheer for her. Obviously I’m not the intended audience, but truthfully I just wanted to slap her. My thanks to Simon Pulse for the digital reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52059186

I just loved this book. I was looking for a good easy read to escape from reality and that’s exactly what I got! Brovo 👏. I would recommend

I was looking forward to reading this one because the synopsis sounded so good but sadly I just could not get into this one. I really did want to like this, and I did like initially enjoy reading about Iris in a new setting and culture than what she knew, but her lack of interest or curiosity about the world around her became an insurmountable obstacle for me. By the end, I was just reading to finish the book, not because I cared about the characters or what happened to them.

What a WILD ride with this novel!

Due to the main character and her behaviour, it really impacted how I felt about the overall story. I really had a difficult time getting through the first half to three quarters of this novel. However, eventually, the main character's behaviours seemed to change and I had some real hope and was enjoying/anticipating the story's conclusion.

Well.

I have to be extremely vague here to avoid spoilers but.....I understand the message that the author was trying to deliver. I just don't feel that the message was delivered in the right manner. This main character made a lot of mistakes, lied, and people forgave her. I don't understand how a different character's mistakes are unforgivable and worse than her own. Especially as the mistakes made from the other character were at least justified and unselfish compared to the main character's mistakes.

I think the ending took away from any of the character development that may have occurred for the main character throughout this novel. It didn't sit right with me and impacted how I felt about the whole novel.

***Thank you to the publisher for supplying me with an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review***

I felt bad for not liking this book as I was reading it, but now that I see the other reviews, I can see I'm not the only one.

There are a few things I liked about this book! I actually love stories about teenagers going back to their home country or the country their parent(s) were born in and exploring their culture. This is why I loved Darius the Great Is Not Okay so much. I think there are so many unique and interesting stories that can come from that, so I was really excited about reading that in this book. I loved the description of life in Beijing, the food, the culture, the language. I also loved how Iris decided to stay in China at the end of the book. We always see stories of teenagers going to their home country, having an ~experience~ and then going back home. But Iris decided to stay and live there! I really liked that.

While I didn't like Iris (which I'll explain later) she did have some admirable traits. I love how she was a free-spirited, friendly, sex-positive, silly girl who unashamedly loves to drink and party and have fun. We don't get enough of girls like her in YA books.

Unfortunately, that's where it stopped. My experience with this book was the way it was because of Iris as a character. She is awful. And I generally try not to judge characters, even if I don't like them that much, because that's just the person I am. But Iris was terrible, and she wasn't redeemed at all in my opinion. She's spoiled and clueless and generally not a good person. She hurts people time and time again and apologizes and does it again. The way she treats the people around her is horrible!! But I thought her personality could be redeemed. After all, if your character starts at the lowest of the low, it really shouldn't be that hard to show some character development. Even Iris becoming a sort of decent person would have been amazing character development. I think the author tried to shove all her character development into the ending when Iris became interested in started that fundraiser, but nothing can make me believe that Iris understands the importance of migrant workers not having a hotel built in their neighbourhood after being explained the implications once.

What I really hated is the entire end scene when Iris has a whole moment with herself where she basically tells herself how she deserves better than Frank/Paul. She doesn't! I honestly did not understand why Iris thought Frank was an evil despicable person at the end. I felt so bad for him! He's actually very admirable! He and his university friends using fake identities to protest a capitalist from building a hotel in the neighbourhood in which he lives in poverty sounds pretty fucking rational to me. And Iris has the nerve to think she's better than him after forcing herself on him and then being mad at him for his "lie" (he was literally living in poverty I-)

Near the end of the book, I really wanted to finish it just to get it over with. This book had a lot of potential, maybe if Iris was just a different person entirely, I would have liked it more.

2.5 Stars

My Summer of Love and Misfortune by Lindsay Wong is a novel I was positive I would enjoy based on the premise. I love books about characters connecting with their culture, and the Beijing setting is immersive. However, the main character is unrealistically clueless, and there is not a single thing I liked about her. This book seems like an attempt to be quirky, but it instead becomes cringey and difficult to relate to.

This book is immediately overdramatic. Iris Wang, a rich teen, fails her classes and crashes her parents’ car, so she is sent to Beijing to learn about her heritage and hopefully change her ways. I was interested in this one because characters connecting with their culture is typically a plot I enjoy. The descriptions of Chinese culture were well done (especially the food), although the main character does not appreciate any of this. Honestly, the setting was one of the only aspects of the novel I truly enjoyed, but it was dampened because of the main character’s disinterest.

❀ DISLIKABLE MAIN CHARACTER

My biggest issue with this novel is the main character. Iris is selfish, ignorant, and incredibly dislikable. I understand that she is meant to be spoiled so that she can grow at the end of the book, but I was not convinced that Iris had changed after almost 400 pages of her antics. One of the things I hated most about her is how unrealistic she is. There is a long list of things Iris has said that are completely unbelievable, but the ones that come to mind are the fact that she does not know what a museum is, nor climate change, nor where China is on the map. All she really does is spend money and use the fact that she was born in the year of the Tiger as an excuse for everything. I had a lot of difficulty rooting for Iris, let alone connecting with her.

❀ ROMANCE IS COMPLETELY FLAT

While the story manages to be over the top, it is also completely flat. The romance is poorly written, and Frank and Iris have no connection. I have issues with the way Frank is clearly not interested in Iris, but she continues to pressure him into a relationship. There is also very little character development, and Iris does not really “transform” until the last pages of the book. Much of the plot could have been exciting, but it is too unrealistic to become invested in. I believe this stems from the author trying too hard to be quirky and funny. I don’t know a single person who could possibly be as clueless as Iris, and instead of being entertaining, the story is frustrating to read.

❀ LOTS OF POTENTIAL FOR A FUN SUMMER READ

My Summer of Love and Misfortune has so much potential to be a fun summer read. I enjoyed the setting, but the main character’s ignorance made her unrealistic and annoying. Too much of the plot seems exaggerated for it to be enjoyable. This one was not for me.

I loved this book. In the beginning I thought it was going to be about a spoiled teen believing the world owed her.. Instead Iris learned old world ways of family and life It is told with humour and insight. I wish Iris learned total forgiveness though. It was selective. A great read for teenagers

an engaging story, for young adults (and those who are young at heart) with some laughs and tears -- all about fitting in, and learning who you are -- a great first novel by Lindsay Wong!
for a while I wondered about the self-absorbed, and seemingly spoiled characters, and whether they had any redeeming qualities; however, fortunately, an important lesson was learned in the end.
I thought the dog grooming pageants were very funny (are these really a thing?) - I wish there were more dogs in the story (LOL)
I enjoyed the setting and the familial relationships - a fun read !

I personally found the main character of this book to be very difficult to relate to. I am not sure if it is because I am much older, but I just found it difficult to understand how someone could get to a point where they were so unable to see the consequences of their actions. Not to mention the little things the author included like not knowing when her boyfriend's birthday was. I can see teens devouring the book because it is a quick read, and the pace is quite fast, with a lot of glamorous settings. Readers who want something at a YA level that is similar to "Crazy Rich Asians" would go for this title.

Pitched as Crazy Rich Asians meets Love & Gelato, I really wanted to like My Summer of Love and Misfortune. But it took way too long to get into it, and while I could appreciate the character development and growth I couldn’t completely buy into Iris’s “transformation”. While it doesn’t necessarily mean this is a bad thing, in the case of My Summer of Love and Misfortune the uneven pacing along with all the drama in the book gave me whiplash. In spite of that, I didn’t hate Iris, in fact I couldn’t help but feel bad for her because she really is clueless and while she is shallow she truly believes she has good intentions. Also despite being an annoying character, I was still rooting for her to finally stand up for herself against those who did not treat her well. The writing in this book was strong, along with all the juicy family drama redeemed this book for me just a bit. My favourite parts were seeing the Wang family reunited and seeing Iris and her cousin Ruby come together and realize they actually make a great team. It’s unfortunate, but My Summer of Love and Misfortune was not the fun and light summer read that I had hoped it would be.

I had hoped to enjoy this book but I couldn't stand the main character and how annoyingly whiny she was. All the characters were quite shallow and vapid. The story could have been fun but I wasn't a fan.

I had really high hopes for this book due to it's description but unfortunately it just fell a bit flat for me.

The descriptions of Beijing and the food the characters were eating were both very strong. My mouth was watering thinking of the pork buns, dumplings and even the insects, which I've always been interested in trying. I also thought the plot in the last 1/4 of the book was fairly strong, as everything was finally coming together. The "twist"/revelation and resulting action was quite compelling.

Unfortunately that's somewhat where my enjoyment ended. A lot of the side-characters felt like caricatures of how people act and I was confused by their often contradictory personalities. Iris was definitely the most frustrating of the characters. I often love reading stories about unlikable characters, whether they have a redemption arc or not but I just found Iris' character to be so unrealistic that I was more frustrated than anything. Iris was self-centered and materialistic - yes, but what annoyed me was her having no knowledge on things she should have an understanding of (such as what museums are or what her Chinese name was). I also didn't understand how she could have made it into AP classes, let alone failed them if she had a panic attack every time she entered a learning environment.

I also took issue with the usage of metaphor and similes within this book. I understand that we were inside Iris' head but phrases like "Frank's accusations burn like to much Nair Wax on my upper lip" just seemed too over the top juvenile, and detracted from the seriousness of these moments.

Finally, I felt like the character progression was a bit too sudden, and often contradictory. In one section near the end, Iris is reflecting on how she is viewed as spoiled and how she can change this. However, in the next paragraph when her grandparents suggest making dumplings (something that would be a family activity, and would teach Iris about her culture) she comments that that seems like too much work and opts instead for everyone to get mani/pedis. Yes, this is a relaxing activity, but I feel like Iris missed an opportunity here.

I really wish that I had loved this story, as it's premise and framework were very interesting. I would still be willing to give the author's other book and future stories a try though.

Iris Wang is the epitome of anti-poster child for Asian kids everywhere. She didn't get into college, she doesn't understand the importance of education, culture and simply has no respect for herself and her elders. Her parents send her off to Beijing for the summer to live with relatives she's never met in hopes that she'll "find herself". It took me a long time to get into this book. I don't think I got to enjoy it until a good 2/3 of the way into it. I think it's Iris' character just rubbed me the wrong way. Everything she did just appalled me in one way or another. I guess, that was the point--the author did a damned good job of it! I really only started to not hate her so much when she really started to understand the real purpose of her trip and start to understand what life is really about. The book wrapped up nicely, but because it took me so long to get into the book, I just can't say I loved it.

My Summer of Love and Misfortune started strong. The description: "Crazy Rich Asians meets Love & Gelato in this hilarious, quirky novel about a Chinese-American teen who is thrust into the decadent world of Beijing high society when she is sent away to spend the summer in China." had me hooked. A Chinese-American main character? Sign me up.

Little did I know what I was actually getting myself into.

Iris is a spoiled, dense, immature, idiot whose actions frustrated me to no end. And yet, I was compelled by her journey and was rooting for her to get some semblance of character development. Unfortunately, there's no lead up to Iris' personal development. I felt like it came from out of nowhere.

Halfway through the book, there was no inkling or foreshadowing at how Iris could ever improve herself. The first 50% of the novel was reading about Iris' delusions/fantasies, her whining about academics, and her inability to consider others, especially with Ruby. Overall, Iris is depicted as a stereotypical airheaded teenager who only cares about fashion and her social life. I found it hard to like her at times, especially with the constant mistakes she made.

That said, I really appreciated Ruby's character. Her story arc is cliche, but at least I found her more relatable than Iris. There's romance in the novel, but I found it flat and shallow.

The writing itself is decent. I found the book to be a quick and easy read. Although I had a lot of issues with the main characters, I appreciated the side characters quite a bit. Also, there were multiple scenes that I related to in this novel. I really enjoyed the use of the belief system of the Chinese Zodiac animals because it reminded me of my childhood and how I grew up with that. The parents' over-expectation of their children and the parents deciding their child's career path was a total hit to home. I was actually stressed out during the scene where Iris was opening up her university acceptance letters.

Ultimately, if I could relate to Iris more and not be so annoyed by her actions, I'm sure I would have finished this book in one sitting. This book started out as 4 stars but decreased to as 3 stars due to the flaw with Iris' seemingly instant character development, and Iris' character flaws as a whole.

This book was not for me. Not only could I not relate to the character (I didn't expect to) but I found her incredibly unlikable. I know that was part of the story line, having a selfish, vapid girl go on a trip and experience personal growth, but it was too much. I found Iris to be irritating the whole way through, always thinking about herself, and even when she tried to think about others it wasn't sincere. The other characters didn't appeal to me either, none of them felt realistic or very deep. All of her poor choices were very frustrating and it reminded me a lot of Sopie Kinsella's Shopoholic series. The only redeeming parts of the story for me were all the mentions of food.