This was yet another fun book by this author. I enjoyed reading more about this crazy world of excess with a new cast of characters. I thought both Eden and Rufus were interesting, relatable, and well developed characters. I wish there was some more development of Bea and Augie to make their storylines more impactful. Arabella was infuriating and my one problem with the book is that even at the end, there were no consequences or repercussions for her actions. She didn't grow or learn anything and I felt disappointed and angry by this. If you enjoy previous books by this author definitely check this one out!

I enjoyed Kwans previous book, i really wanted to dive into this one but i was having a hard time keeping up with the characters being introduced and get hooked to the story line. I did preorder a signed copy and will be giving this read another try.

All the trappings of a Kevin Kwan novel, with lavish parties and jetsetting to international destinations. There's also plenty of family drama and hilarity!

My first Kwan was read poolside in 95° weather, which was Crazy Rich Asians… that sparked my love for this author. Call me a Kevin Kwan completist! OBSESSED! I don’t think I have read a story with so many locations, characters, personalities, glitz, glam and gossip! PURE CHAOS… and he knows how to walk you through it. If you’re familiar with Kwan’s work you know you are in for a treat. This is the book you want to take on vacation with you.

A very very very brief glimpse inside… Rufus’s wealthy family, is well, not so wealthy anymore. His mom has great plans on him marrying for money to help the family but Rufus has other plans… forget money he wants to marry for love, which means he must confess his love for the girl next door!

What he manages to pack or really unpack in this soap opera like novel is really well written and full of arm chair travel! I can’t get enough of his books and may need to do a Kwan backlist re-read!

Thank you Doubleday and PRH Audio! 📖

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Can Kevin Kwan do anything wrong? This was SO good.
I could not put this down, loved the story, was completely obsessed with all of the characters and absolutely LOVED the setting.

I love love love the frothy fun that is a Kevin Kwan book. And the footnotes. There’s so much humor and satire in these pages. A perfect beach read.

⭐️: 4/5

Rufus Gresham, future Duke of Greshambury, and his family live a life of glamour and excess, while hiding the truth that they’re under a gargantuan mountain of debt. The solution, according to his mother, is for him to seduce and marry a woman with money. However, his heart is telling him to pursue the girl next door, the daughter of a doctor, Eden Tong. When a volcanic eruption interrupts the nuptials of his sister, ruining the family’s reputation, is the dukedom done for, or will it rise from the ashes?

I always have so much fun reading Kevin Kwan’s books. I watched the movie adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians (which I actually liked more than the book) in order to hype myself up for this one, and it worked. I think that if I didn’t already put myself in the mindset of being in this world of excess, this book would have been harder to get into for me, since even so, it took until about 25% for me to figure out the characters and their motivations, and what the central conflict was going to be. There’s a super huge cast of characters, as per usual, but only a few that have meaningful POVs, so once I figured out who those were going to be, the reading experience was overall smoother. One thing I could do without, but also fully know is a hallmark of a book by Kwan, is the rampant use of footnotes in order to explain rich people things. Like, they’re useful for the translations, but otherwise, it’s just a lot. I was hooked by the end of this book though, and the ending was so perfect on all counts.

Thank you to @netgalley and @doubledaybooks for this free eARC in exchange for my review!!

Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan is a delightful and intricately woven tale of family dynamics that unfolds across various exotic locations, spanning from Hawaii to Venice, Los Angeles, and the English countryside. This beach-ready novel portrays affluent individuals clad in designer attire, engaging in humorous and scandalous behavior. A summer must-read!

I've been a @kevinkwan fan for years & the Crazy Rich Asian series is one of my favorites! This book follows Rufus, the son of an English earl and former model from Hong Kong, and his best friend since childhood, Eden Tong, as they navigate several weddings, the antics of the wildly rich, and the potential financial downfall of generational wealth that may require Rufus to marry heiress Martha Dung to save his family's legacy. I enjoyed the various settings this book explored and the trademark Keven Kwan humor (there was even a very funny reference to Sima Auntie #iykyk). The vibes were definitely similar to Crazy Rich Asians while explore a new plot that contained elements of mystery which added a great layer to the plot. For all the Crazy Rich Asians & Keven Kwan fans, this book is definitely for us! Highly recommend & the perfect read for AAPI Heritage month!

Another billionaire family with the world at their fingertips, yet nothing is what it seems in Lies and Weddings. The level of extreme wealth in this story is so overtop with its laughable moments. In Kwan fashion, antics are precipitated by one families dynamics.

You'll root for Roofus to extricate himself from his mother's prescribed plan. You'll feel all the feels for Arabella, as she tries to manipulate situations, including her intense desire to protect her family and their wealth. The Tong's are such a loving father and daughter even though secrets shroud their present.

Lies, deceit, lavish weddings and world-wide travels is what fans of Kwan have come to expect, and this book didn't disappoint.

Thank you, Doubleday

✨ Review ✨ Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan

Thanks to Doubelday and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

Okay the question everyone will want to know was how does this compare to Crazy Rich Asians...Now it's been a while since I've read CRA, but I think I loved this even more.

I'd describe this as Gossip Girl meets Jane Austen meets Arrested Development and that should give you an idea of the pure chaos that awaits in these pages.

An adaptation of Trollope's Doctor Thorne, this has the familiar setup of class (and race) difference of the fancy manor house and the cottage next door. (Now Dr.) Eden Tong grew up next to the Gresham family and was dear friends with Rufus, Augie, and Bea. Now they're all adults, and the Greshams are facing marriage via their mother.

The book starts with Augie getting married in Hawaii, where things quite literally erupt, and the book takes us through a series of weddings, lies, and sensational reveals.

Without revealing too much, this book has lots of jetsetting travels, complicated family relationships, and mama drama that truly only compares to the one and only Cecile Bluth. We get the typical name-dropping fashionable descriptions of people and places that we can expect from Kwan, along with several truly jaw-dropping weddings.

This book is filling with drama, exotic (and mundane) places, and a whole lotta fun! It's hard to pin this to a single genre because I don't think it's just romance or women's fiction, but...I'm not really sure what it is, other than a delight to read! :)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (4.5)
Pub Date: May 21 2024

Read this if you like:
⭕️ colorful descriptions of people and places (complete with brand names)
⭕️ shocking family drama
⭕️ Jane Austen-style manors and mansions family/money narratives
⭕️ traveling around the world in a book

Rufus plays a huge role in his families future. After his sister’s wedding to a Prince, only to find out the Prince is poor, it is even more important for him to marry wealthy, and quickly. After his mother’s extravagant spending, their home depends on him. What he really wants though, is to marry Eden. His father’s best friend’s daughter, now a doctor, that grew up next door. His mother would never allow that though, she is not rich enough.

Whew, Kevin Kwan sure knows how to write a world full of some serious privilege and big money! Arabella was absolutely infuriating the entire book. If she was my mom we would have gone no contact years ago! I just hated how judgmental and money hungry she was! Her children however, were such great characters and I loved how they somehow ended up not caring as much about the money as their mother did. I truly adored Eden and her storyline throughout the book. I saw some of the twists coming, but not all, and found this to be another great read from the author of Crazy Rich Asians! And hey, still plenty of drama, but no fish heads in beds! IYKYK.

Kevin Kwan has just written another fun book that will be sure to be a hit this summer! This reads like a soap opera, and I loved every page of it;I loved getting lost in all of the designer brands, wines, cars, etc. The locations were fun, the characters were intriguing, and the storyline never lagged or became boring. If you're looking for a book that you can get lost it and ignore reality, Lies and Weddings is for you! Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the e-galley!

Thank you Doubleday for the review copy and I note I also had access to the audiobook for free from the PRH audio influencer program.

This is a fun book, Lies and Weddings is what you expect from a Kevin Kwan as he is deft at examining rich people behavior and layering in multiple stories and experiences, with satire and social commentary firmly in place as needed. I will note this one for me had a slow start, a lot of setting the story and stage for the later plot was in place but it does work as the plot and pace pick up. What I loved was the focus on wanting love and a wedding versus the mother's focus on status; the weaving of rich people stuff with family drama, the big things and the little nuances of relationships. A fun read that sucked me in once I got into the story and as always a writer I appreciate for his ability to tell a good story while also giving us a few big themes to think about.

“Lies and Weddings” is Kevin Kwan in top form: frothy and over-the-top with plenty of brand name-dropping and sending up of the 0.1%. The two main characters Rufus and Eden cloy a bit with their Pollyannaish qualities while tiger mom Arabella could have benefited from some humanizing softness earlier in the story. Overall, everything one would expect from a KK novel, in the best way possible.

I loved the Crazy Rich Asians series when I read it years ago, so I was ecstatic to see the author had a new release coming out and I was going to have the opportunity to read it as well. Although this book wasn't quite as good as that series for me, I still very much enjoyed it and would recommend!

You get the humor and the satire, the romance and the pining, and to dip your toes into the lives of the rich and extravagant and all the drama that entails. Oh! And also the Bravo references with Captain Lee playing a cameo role as the captain of one of their yachts while also giving us Kate Chastain references (but seriously can we have her back on our screens?!) What more could you ask for in a book? I think if you enjoyed his previous series than you will definitely want to check this one out.

I loved Eden! She was obviously my favorite character in this book and she brings the sensibility into this world of such frivolous, over the top characters. She's all of us while experiencing this world. But she's way more of saint than I ever would be if I was having to deal with someone as horrible and obnoxious as Arabella. 😅 Although annoying, Arabella really brought the drama and was a necessary evil to making this story so entertaining.

I stayed interested in the story throughout and really liked how the book played out. We get dual timelines starting out with a flashback reliving a traumatic event to then seeing how it becomes relevant to the current time and characters this book revolves around. As I mentioned earlier, this felt similar to his previous series, Crazy Rich Asians, so if you enjoyed that, like watching reality tv, enjoy a good escapism book, and it even gave me Magnolia Parks/Daisy Haites vibes, especially with the footnotes (but these footnotes weren't overly excessive and were actually funny),then I think you'd enjoy this book!


**Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced copy of this book and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion. I am posting this review to my Goodreads account immediately and will post it to my Amazon & Instagram accounts upon publication.

this was quintessential Kevin Kwan and I loved it. The writing style, sharp wit and observations, engaging dialogue, and complex yet lovable characters were reminiscent of all the things I loved about the Crazy Rich Asians series, but with refreshing new twists and perhaps a bit more biting in his snarky hilarious commentary that is something I've come to associate with Kwan's signature style. Also I had to google brands. ALOT. I always learn so much about how the other half lives -- plus I just want a visual of the looks we are talking about here!

I found myself drawn into the shocking storyline and choices his characters made (as usual, very Gossip Girl-esque), and while I wish we could've had more books and more development to get to know this cast of characters and some of the middle parts/choices felt clunky or bizarre (Rufus being whisked off to an air balloon wedding and all of Martha's storyline?), it was nevertheless an excellent standalone book that I devoured once it sucked me in.

I really liked Eden as a character and liked seeing her explore her treatment outside of the small circles she had always run in, her reflections on her experiences with racism and microaggressions she faced, and her confrontation with Arabella. I think Kwan always does a good job of sprinkling his books with doses of reality and while these characters didn't grapple with the internalized self-hatred/racism to the same degree that his characters did in Sex and Vanity, I think these truths and his poignant societal observations, while in conversation with others in the genre, also really modernize the comedy of manners genre successfully

The title echoes Kwan's literary predecessors in the novel/comedy of manners, and yes there were many many lies and many weddings. While his endings are always a bit outrageously deus ex machina in their execution, it is something I've come to love and expect from him, and as predictable as the ending may have been in some ways, it was still exciting to try to guess the extravagant and yes, *crazy* twists and turns that eventually lead to a happily ever after.

Thank you Doubleday Books and NetGalley for the eARC!

Hilarious satire, definitely a surprise 5⭐️ read!

The author mentions the story owes to Trollope, which certainly fits! But I also caught a distinct Pride & Prejudice vibe. Love love love

Rufus is delicious. In a Prince Charming kind of way (if said prince was trying to save his family and his own heart at the same time - albeit a bit rakish).

Trust me, this is going to be the perfect summer beach read.

Really enjoyed this selection and the lives and troubles of the wealthy and excessive. Kwan really knows how to write a book with over the top wealth and I could not put it down.

"𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶...? 𝘞𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘯𝘰𝘸; 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘴."

Title really says it all. We read Kwan for the drama and dialogue, but here it goes on for too long in some parts. A more refined Crazy Rich Asians that should just go to teleplay as I don't think it suits the book format all too well with the spitfire conversations. The glamor of the plot would be more exuberant in a budget for costume design rather than words. What I'm trying to say is the novel would be best represented visually than written.

For fans of CRA, run to this!