I'm a big fan of Kevin Kwan, so was super excited to get this ARC. Plus, it's a retelling of one of my favorite books/ movies - A Room with a View. Talk about a great combination! After reading the book - which I did in nearly one sitting - I'm getting out my old VHS of that Merchant and Ivory film, in which Helena Bonham-Carter makes her debut. Kwan updates Lucy's story to fit a contemporary, social media world in the high society of the one percent. He also delves into what it's like to be of mixed ethnicities and how those expectations, prejudices and presuppositions can shape a young person's behavior.

His main character, Lucie, is American born and bred. Her mother is third generation Chinese, tho, so the white, Churchill side of Lucie's father has never quite known how to relate to her. Lucie looks more Asian than her brother, Freddy, and - although she's gorgeous, with curly hair - she's always felt less than adequate around her Churchill relatives. She's taught herself never to put a foot wrong, to try to live up to their expectations of top scholar, advanced degrees and marrying well. When she meets George Chiu at a cousin's wedding in Italy and nearly gets caught via drone camera having a fling with him, Charlotte, her Churchill cousin who's looking after her (Lucie is 19) has a conniption. She basically tells Lucie she's ruined and that hanging out with George is a huge mistake and won't be tolerated. This initial character arc is what's addressed in the rest of the book - how Lucie struggles with her own identity and maturity to be true to herself, regardless of what her extended family thinks.

Fast forward to 2018 and Lucie is now engaged to a highly suitable billionaire, who's obsessed with his social media standings. This character cracked me up several times, as I was envisioning Daniel Day Lewis's character in the movie updated to the 21st century and I think Kwan's vision is perfect. If you liked his Crazy Rich Asians book, you'll like this one,.

And if you're a Merchant and Ivory fan - you'll LOVE it!

I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining tale of privilege! The fact that it is somewhat reminiscent of "Crazy Rich Asians" did not bother me, since new settings and different characters provided plenty of fun, romance, and family drama. I am happy to read and recommend anything by Kevin Kwan!

It's a little less than Crazy Rich Asians, but still a fun breezy book; especially for fans of Room with a View. A very enjoyable escape.

Fun, sexy and irreverent, SEX AND VANITY is another lightning-paced read from Kevin Kwan, perfect escapist reading for these dark days.

Kevin Kwan is back in an entertaining and over the top new story. I was a huge fan of the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy and the movie, so I was so excited to see that Kevin Kwan had a new book coming out. I didn't even read the synopsis before I decided that I wanted to read his upcoming novel, but once I did read the synopsis I was completely intrigued. The story opens up when two young women, Lucie and Charlotte, attend her cousin's extravagant wedding set in Capri. When I say extravagant, I mean no expenses were spared. Isabel's wedding was the kind you read about and see pictures of in couture magazines. It made me think of the Sex and the City movies, both when Carrie and Big marry and when they travel to Abu Dhabi. Throughout the first part of the book, we are introduced to several characters that play a part throughout the story, two of those important ones being Rosemary and her son George. Lucie and George have a fling, if you will, but they both return to their normal lives as soon as the wedding festivities are over. Years later, when Lucie is engaged, George and Lucie see each other again, and all of those unresolved feelings from their time in Capri resurface. Sex and Vanity was entertaining with the perfect amount of fluff that I needed in my life. I have been reading some "heavy" books lately, and I felt like I needed something light and easygoing. Some of the things that were over the top that stood out to me in Sex and Vanity was the $225,000 car Lucie's fiance gifted her, their luxurious mansion complete with its on Venetian gondola that went throughout the house. Um, what?! It had all of the over top wealth that I have come to expect from Kwan from the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. Speaking of Crazy Rich Asians, there is even a part where a "beautiful Asian woman named Astrid" makes an appearance, and Kitty is also mentioned at the very end. I thought it was sweet of Kwan to pay homage to those characters that I remember so well. This book also had footnotes, that gave more explanation about things he was describing. I read CRA a couple of years ago, and I can't remember if they had these same footnotes. At first, I thought they would be somewhat distracting, but as I got used to them, I continuously looked to them to get more information on the schools, labels, designers, etc. that Kwan mentioned. This was helpful and added to the overall entertaining factor of the book. Sex and Vanity is out on July 7, and it is the perfect summer read. I will post my feature in about a week, a little closer to its July pub date. Thank you to Doubleday and Netgalley for this e-ARC of one of my most anticipated novels of summer!

Another frothy bit of fun from Kevin Kwan. This hit all the marks you want from a summer read: a little romance, a lot of glamour, and some family drama in the mix. I think this needed a slightly better (worse?) antagonist and George was a bit bland and flat, but that honestly didn't hurt my enjoyment of the story.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of Sex and Vanity! I was so excited when I found out that Kevin Kwan wrote another book because I am obsessed with Crazy Rich Asians. I thought this was cute, though it didn't suck me in quite like the CRA trilogy did. Maybe I missed something? I'm not entirely sure. However, I wasn't disappointed and I'll probably read it again to see if it'll suck me in again.

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

When Lucie Churchill attends her friend’s lavish Capri wedding, she has no idea that her own life is about to change. Accompanied by her snobby, rule-following cousin Charlotte, Lucie isn’t expecting any surprises... until she meets George Zao. It’s hate at first sight for Lucie, but there is something about George that she can’t stop thinking about. After a scandalous rendezvous, Lucie puts George out of her mind for years. When Lucie and her new fiancé stumble upon George in the Hamptons years later, she is overcome with nostalgia and wistful memories. What is it about George? And is he about to torpedo Lucie’s life for the second time?

Kevin Kwan is back at it again with another juicy novel, filled to the brim with larger-than-life characters who have larger-than-life bank accounts. If you want a crash course in the hottest designers and luxury goods, a Kwan novel is a great place to start! I loved Lucie and enjoyed her character development. As a half Chinese woman born into a WASPy family, Lucie had to find her voice to stand up to her racist family members. I really enjoyed watching Lucie become more assertive and sure of herself as the novel progressed. The other storylines are less serious, and at times ridiculous, but fun nevertheless. Pick this one up if you need a soapy, fun beach read this summer. Fans of the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy will likely enjoy this one, and I can easily see this novel becoming a series! Thank you @doubledaybooks and @netgalley for my advanced reader’s copy! Sex and Vanity will be released on July 14th.

As with Crazy Rich Asians, Kwan’s book is a paean to the finest things in life, walking a fine line between revealing luxuries and reveling in conspicuous consumption. There is a lot to look up, but each thing turns out to be a pretty wonderful discovery, whether it is a piece of music, a work of art, or (naturally) a fashion designer. There are also entertaining footnotes (which, fascinatingly, are in the first person), hilarious glimpses behind the perfect smiles of oh-so-polite ladies, and a brief cameo by Astrid, Han Suyin, and Kitty Pong from Crazy Rich Asians.

Part I opens in 2013 with Charlotte, a major supporting character, panicking because of something that Lucie, the main character, has done (or has done to her) which will ruin her, but the audience is left in ignorance as to what terrible thing that might be and instead transported several days back in time to the beginning of an extravagant wedding in Capri. It ends, after describing nearly a week of indulgence with Lucie being filmed via drone during an intimate act and Charlotte making it Go Away..

Part II takes place five years later in New York, opening on a cringe-worthy, over-the-top proposal from Lucie’s boyfriend, who does a splendid job of rubbing the reader the wrong way with every word out of his mouth. The fact that Lucie seems to enjoy his awfulness makes me question whether she’s a protagonist I’m going to enjoy following for the second half of the book, but at least she seems to be getting everything she wanted from life. Until the man she’d been intimate with in Capri five years ago, George, reappears in her life with an instinctive understanding of her innermost feelings and acceptance of her as a whole person, rather than the sum of two racial halves.

There is a Part III, but discussing it would be to give away spoilers. Instead I will talk about one of the design choices for the book that I particularly liked. The chapter headers are lovely minimalist line drawings invoking the setting of the chapter: wavy lines for Capri, a skyline for New York, a beach chair for the Hamptons. It’s a delightful detail in a book that is all about the details.

Substantially, this work includes an interesting consideration of culture, identity, and self- versus public perceptions, as well as privilege and prejudice. The descriptions of microagressions Lucie contends with because of her half-Chinese heritage not only from strangers, but from her own “high WASP” family are enough to make any decent person’s blood boil. I hope she has the opportunity to tell them all to go to hell. That said, the vicious rivalry between Old Money and the Nouveau Riche is still clearly alive and well, and still titillating to read about.

Such mixed feelings about this one! Sadly, Sex and Vanity definitely didn't live up to the Crazy Rich Asians books for me. I'm glad I read it and did enjoy some of it... I just felt like there was something lacking throughout the book.

The story starts on the island of Capri where Lucie and her cousin Charlotte are attending the wedding of one of Lucie's childhood friends. The pair meets Rosemary Zao and her son George and immediately dislikes them as they seem over-the-top and snobby. Lucie and George end up having a brief romance and then we're flash forwarded 5 years when Lucie is engaged to Cecil.

What bothered me is that we get no explanation of why Lucie decided to go for Cecil and with everything I had already learned about Lucie, it seemed a bit out of character for her. But then I realized I didn't really know much about Lucie's character because I didn't really "know" her. The book did more telling than showing and we never truly get inside Lucie's head or get a real feel for her motivations. In fact, we never really get deep with any of the characters and thus, it's tough to connect with any of them.

There are a few sections of the book that I thought were unnecessary and snooze-worthy (the parts with Mordecai and many of the Auden sections) and sections that I really enjoyed and wanted more of. But what I really wanted was a deeper connection with the characters, especially Lucie. I feel like much of the book could have been cut and more focus could have been put on her. I do feel like this disconnect happens often when a male author writes a female main character.

Overall, I did enjoy the plot of the book and really loved the scenery and descriptions. I just couldn't connect to the book how I wanted. I can see this being an absolutely stunning movie, though something tells me the screenwriters will be cutting out quite a few sections of the book!

Kevin Kwan is always a sheer delight to read, and to escape into the lives of the ultra rich. Certainly never more so then now as we live in such awful times. The escapist fantasy is a must, and taking a couch trip to Capri was fantastic, the characters and prose crackle, and it’s seriously terrific to see him give an homage to E.M. Forester. Bravo, and here comes another bestseller

Another fun read from Kevin Kwan. It was even more over the top than Crazy Rich Asians if that’s possible! I loved jetting away to Capri for an amazing wedding and the elaborately decorated apartments and houses of the main characters. It was a bit heart wrenching to see the journey Lucie travels in finding how to be true to herself and what that even looks like in coming from such different family backgrounds on her mother and fathers sides. Yet the more outrageous the character, the more genuinely caring they turn out to be and Lucie can find a lot of support from both likely and unlikely sources.

"The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with the glittering tale of a young woman who finds herself torn between two men: the WASPY fiancé of her family's dreams and George Zao, the man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.


On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can't stand him. She can't stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can't stand that he knows more about Casa Malaparte than she does, and she really can't stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin Charlotte. "Your mother is Chinese so it's no surprise you'd be attracted to someone like him," Charlotte teases. The daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucie is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment building, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world--and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures."

Your perfect summer escapist fantasy!

I have been a big fan of Kevin Kwan ever since I first read Crazy Rich Asians, so when I found out that he had a new book coming out, I knew I would have to read it. I am so glad I did! Sex and Vanity is a wonderful retelling of A Room With A View set among the lives of the filthy rich.

Sex and Vanity starts in Capri and follows Lucie Churchill as she attends a friends wedding with her cousin Charlotte. When Rosemary Zao hears Charlotte complaining about their rooms lacking a view, she and her son George offer to switch rooms with the cousins. George is also a guest of the wedding so he and Lucie start to see each other everywhere. Lucie fights her attraction to George until the night of the wedding, and after they are caught in a compromising situation, she and Charlotte head back to New York.

Five years later Lucie is engaged and spending the weekend in the East Hamptons when George reappears in her life. The old attraction starts to rear its head. Lucy is conflicted with what she feels and what she thinks her family wants for her. Will she go with her heart or do what she thinks is best? If you are a fan of Kevin Kwan, I think you’ll enjoy this book. It’s is heartfelt and hilarious all at the same time.

Part of me wants to give this a higher rating because Kevin Kwan has such a compulsively readable writing style. It’s mostly fast-paced (except for the constant asides providing cultural notes, which I really enjoy) and zig zags merrily across the line between sincere and satirical. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel as though I read a new story. I feel like I’ve read another chapter in the Crazy Rich Asians saga - or even a reinterpretation of it with the names changed and some identities swapped around. So while it was a fun read, it wasn’t really satisfying.

Writing: 4 Plot: 2 Characters: 3.5

Kevin Kwan’s new book has all of the humor, wit, social satire, and Conspicuous Consumption we’ve come to expect from his books (the Crazy Rich Asian trilogy). In this book, Lucie (our heroine) is bi-racial with an American Asian mother and a blue blood (read wealthy and WASPy) father, now deceased. Here the over-the-top behavior is ascribed more to the “new money” elements, both Asian and WASP, and there is plenty of snootiness and social climbing to go around. If you’re the kind of person who loves reading about couture clothing, palace like accommodations, and extravagant parties, you’ll hang on every word. I skim those parts because it’s not my thing — I like Kwan’s books because of the over-the-top plots and weirdly engaging characters.

And that was the problem with this book for me. It is a rewrite of A Room with a View — which happens to be one of my favorite movies (I confess I have not read the book, but Kwan’s book is a definite rewrite of the movie). And I mean a real — though not advertised — rewrite. The names are the same: Lucie Churchill (was Lucie Honeychurch); George Zao (was George Emerson); Auden Beebe (for the Reverend Beebe), etc. This is not a problem — there have been many, many, rewrites of classic (I can think of four rewrites of Pride and Prejudice off the top of my head). I loved the plot but I already knew what was going to happen! And I couldn’t help but picture Julian Sands every time “George” appeared. Also, while the plot was A Room with a View and the ambiance was Kwan’s signature over-the-top style, he added a slender theme of racism against Lucie — her perception that she was always “a little China doll” to her white relatives and that her brother, who looked more Caucasian, had white privilege she was denied. It is very hard to feel any sympathy for someone who has that much money, is beautiful, and has never been denied anything due to her race — so that fell pretty flat for me.

Overall entertaining and a quick, fun read, but for me, the zaniness and surprises of his previous stories were missing and the name dropping fell on my fashion-deaf ears so I was left with some endearing characters and an ultra-exclusive travelogue for the Isle of Capri.

I was excited to discover Kevin Kwan had a new book coming out. I devoured the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. Finding out his latest is a retelling of E.M. Forester's A Room With a View was just icing on the cake. I sped through this book. I enjoyed how Kwan reworked elements of the original into a 21st century setting. I chuckled at the references to Merchant & Ivory. I highly recommend this novel, especially to those who enjoyed his previous works.

Enjoyed this book in the end, but there might be too much conspicuous consumption for me to feel good about truly liking it. Good cast of characters, lovely locations, snappy dialogue. Felt like the protagonist behaved a little inconsistently - she was mature for her age in the beginning but behaved childishly in the end.

Absolutely loved this book! Kevin Kwan and his amazing story telling are back! His descriptions paint the most amazing pictures of both settings and characters. This book is exactly what we need during a summer where traveling is a bit more limited. A lovely homage to a Room with a View. The exploration of racism within families adds depth and is much appreciated.

Supremely funny as Kevin Kwan skewers snobbish Blue bloods, the Neuvo Riche and billionaires everywhere. Lucie, George and their immediate families seem like the only characters who are not caricatures of the super wealthy, upper crust. How Lucie could have put up with the obnoxious Cecil for as long as she did is not really as surprising as one would think. Lucie has many issues with her duel WASP and Chinese background.

If you are looking for a snippy, sarcastic laugh out loud romp through the Upper Crust then this is it. I can highly recommend this book to all romance fans.