This wasn't my cup to tea, but it absolutely will be someone else's. While the writing style didn't work for me personally, it was still light and fun enough that I enjoyed myself til the end.

I adored this book. I adored these two and how their chemistry between these two and the love these two had. I loved them. I loved this. I have only love and appreciation for this story and everyone needs to read it.

3.5 stars, rounded up

This is a romance book told from Zoe and Derek’s perspective. They used to be best friends in college, but became strangers when Zoe altered her post graduation plans and ghosted him, from my understanding.

The book follows their journey reconnecting and working on the musical theatre they used to dream about in college, a Vietnamese Rock Opera called Tâm Cám, which is akin to Cinderella.

Zoe, our plus size, fmc, is demisexual. I appreciate that the author wrote her in a body neutral way.
She is skeptical about joining Derek’s team for the musical. She misses designing costumes, but she also doesn’t want to water down her work or lean into stereotypes, like she’s been asked to in the past.

Derek, our mmc, has found success and is well-known throughout the theatre community. Derek becomes overwhelmed with his first time role as director in his first all Asian musical. He wants to showcase a different part of Asian culture, and be as authentic as possible, but faces pressure from his mentor to change “a little” here and there to make it “palatable.”

Derek’s storyline, which Zoe is weaved into, was the most interesting part to me.

The romance between the two of them develops pretty quickly. They reminisce a lot, and though I get that reconnecting uncovered old feelings, I would’ve liked seeing them connect more in the present.

The third act break up annoyed me because it was a miscommunication. Although I understand where the crew was coming from in the end, I think it was a little disrespectful to not have a conversation with Derek prior to doing what they did.

OVERALL

Overall, I give this a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I liked the conversation about whitewashing and the musical theatre setting. Some of the banter was cute. If you want to read a book about the leads working on a musical and the mmc deciding if he wants to play the game or not, then I’d recommend it.

A standing ovation for the wonderful Thien-Kim Lam!!! As a former theater kid, I ate this one up. Absolutely loved the DC setting, costume shop vibes, body positivity, and friends-to-lovers journey. I desperately wish the Vietnamese Cinderella rock musical they're creating in this book were real and I could go see it.

Thank you Netgalley & author/publisher for the ARC.

Currently this book is on pause because I'm not sure how I feel about it. The dialogue is alittoe weird for me. I'm not sure how I will like the demi-sexual and plus-size accepts of the book either. They aren't a bad thing; I'm just not sure it's done right in this book.

I think I found a new favorite author in Thien-Kim Lam in her newest romance, Something Cheeky.

As a theater lover (and participant), I really enjoyed the musical developed in Something Cheeky. I'd love to see it on the stage. Thien-Kim did a great job in the friends-to-lovers romance at the center of the story. I loved Zoe and her friends. I think some of her friends are the center of the previous books by Lam and I'm looking forward to reading them in the future. I loved that Zoe was ready to take control of her life and the business she created from it. I can't wait to see snippets of the future for Zoe and Derek we may get in future novels.

Thank you to Avon and Netgalley for a copy in exchange for review consideration.

Last week, Thien-Kim Lam released her latest novel, Something Cheeky. I’ve been wanting to read her books, and when I saw the description for this one, I knew it was time to dive in.

Zoe and Derek were best friends in college, but lost touch after she was pushed out of the program. Now Derek is in Washington, D.C. bringing his first musical to the stage, and he wants Zoe to design the costumes. This Vietnamese Cinderella rock musical will shine a light on their culture, and could open the doors for more BIPOC voices in theater. Working together brings back not just friendship, but also romantic feelings. Can a love story fit in amidst their commitment to the musical?

Why I Chose This Book:
I love musicals and theater, so any book with those themes will capture my interest. I was also excited to read more about Vietnamese culture, a former friends-to-lovers romance, and discussions around authentic representation in media.

What I Liked:
- Zoe and Derek! They have great chemistry as friends, and it translates well to their overdue romance finally unfolding all these years later.
- Vietnamese culture and identity. They’re working with an all-Asian cast to bring an authentically Vietnamese musical to the stage, including cultural heritage and language. I loved getting to see a glimpse of that here, as well as discussions around what it means to really be Vietnamese (for example, Derek isn’t fluent in the language).
- Battling Gregzilla. Freaking Greg. He represents everyone who diminishes and dumbs down underrepresented voices. Racism, misogyny, fat-phobia… this guy has no limits. Take him down!
- Mr. Bobbins! What a purrfect cat!
- Zoe’s friend group. Zoe has some wonderful and supportive friends (who appear in the author’s previous books!), and I loved seeing them lift each other up here.

Final Thoughts
Something Cheeky is a delightful romance about friends finding each other and love again. I loved the musical development and behind-the-scenes, the Vietnamese culture and language, and fighting back against white-washing and belittling. This is a fantastic novel, and I look forward to reading Thien-Kim Lam’s previous and future books.

Something Cheeky is cute and emotional. It was fun to read about the main characters' passion for putting on an all-Asian version of a Vietnamese Cinderella. I don't know much about costume design, and I found Zoe's commitment to figuring the right costumes fascinating to read about. Derek is a solid "he falls first" guy. There was some writing that I found a bit cheesy, but I still enjoyed reading this.

4.5

I liked but didn't love Full Exposure when I read it in 2023, so I was excited to see more from Thien-Kim Lam and this blew my expectations out of the water.

Something Cheeky follows Zoe Tran, a plus size lingerie designer, and her college best friend Derek Bui, who reenters her life when he's preparing to create and direct a version of their dream musical and wants her to design the costumes. As such, this book heavily centers musical theater which I absolutely loved. It criticizes the lack of support and representation for minorities in theater (looking at you Miss Saigon), and more generally criticizes microaggressions faced in the workforce. Lam does an excellent job portraying some of the challenges Zoe faces being a plus size Vietnamese woman. There are chairs she has a hard time sitting comfortably in, when her and Derek get together she wants to keep it a secret because she knows people will assume she slept with him to get the job, and more. Zoe is also demisexual, and I always love to see aspec representation in media.

The relationship is very much he falls first, and I loved watching some of the hijinks that prevent him from confessing. I also appreciated that when the third act conflict occurs, it's primarily external, though I appreciate that the resolution shows clear personal growth.

One of the things I remember loving about Full Exposure, is how Lam incorporated the Vietnamese immigrant experience of New Orleans, and she does the same thing here but with the DMV. Zoe and her parents both have businesses in Eden Center, which is a historically Vietnamese strip mall in Falls Church and that was fun to see. I also didn't realize that Lam's debut Happy Endings was connected to the characters in this and in Full Exposure, so I'm looking forward to going back to read that.

🍰Review: Something Cheeky

💗 Rate: 5 Stars!! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🍭Praise: I am so in love with this book! I have the biggest crush on Derek!! And Zoe is firework Queen vibes! Nothing sexier than two ex-friends coming together to realize their feelings for each other! I love that Zoe designs plus size lingerie!! I truly love this book because it was honest, sexy, sweet, and oh so now apart of my heart!

🥞 The slow burn is as beautiful revealing as a butterfly coming out it's cocoon! As a former theater kid I really appreciate it all the references to the theater and Derek's hard work and dedication to making his show happen! Zoe and Derek are the perfect duo! Professional and personal! I felt this book was a stage play that I wanted reenacted over and over!

🌌Characters: Derek and Zoe along with all the other side characters had my heart chambers sprouting glitter, curiosity, and rooting for true love the whole time! A lot of funny times were shared between the characters that had me rereading the sentences so I can keep laughing more and more!

💖Extra/Tropes: I am looking forward to many many more romantic books by Thien-Kim Lam!! Any books with Asian male lead characters have my heart immediately! Any books with characters involving females that are plus size and supporting their plus size sisters make me feel important!

🍪Romance
🍪Theatre
🍪Sweetly Emotional
🍪Plus Size Representation
🍪Must Read

Bravo!! ☕

SOMETHING CHEEKY by Thien-Kim Lam

Pub date: March 4th, 2025
Publisher: Avon Books
Rating: 3.5 / 5


How much would you sacrifice to make all your dreams come true?

Zoe Tran once dreamed of being a costume designer alongside her college best friend/aspiring director Derek Bui. When Derek suddenly reappears in Zoe's life with an offer to design costumes for an original musical based on a Vietnamese fairytale, Zoe can't say no. But as things heat up between the two, so does outside pressure to make the musical more appealing to non-Asian audiences. Zoe and Derek are both chasing their dreams. But can their dreams include the other?

SOMETHING CHEEKY is a dual-POV story that shines a spotlight on Vietnamese representation and diversity in the arts. Reading Zoe and Derek's POVs as their production of Tấm Cám, a version of Cinderella, developed was so heartwarming. Both characters care deeply about representing their culture and expressing themselves creatively with their cast and crew. It was wonderful to read about an all-Asian ensemble creating a show they believed in. There is also prominent discussion and positive representation with Zoe being a plus-sized, demisexual woman and other characters being part of the queer community. While this is a romance, the chemistry and relationship between Zoe and Derek fell a bit flat. But there are sweet and steamy moments, as promised. Readers who love musical theatre, social justice, and happy endings for their protagonists will surely enjoy SOMETHING CHEEKY.


(Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!)

2.5 stars

This book is about college best friends who had a falling out and are reunited a few years later to work on the musical they always had dreamed of making together based. It's based on a Vietnamese version of Cinderella. She is a costume designer, he is an actor turned director. He's always loved her and she thinks they are just friends. Hijinks ensue.

I was quite excited about the premise of this book! I am a musical theater kid, I've enjoyed a lot of romances with Vietnamese-American protagonists recently, and I love fashion.

Unfortunately I found the execution to be very clunky. It's a dual perspective book but I never felt that I knew anything about the main characters' world views or personalities other than the basic biographical facts that are shared explicitly in the book.

The book's title refers to a lingerie shop that the FMC owns which has a fairly light role in the book. The first chapter takes place in the shop and is just a bunch of unnecessary graphic sex talk. I think of myself as very sex positive and read plenty of romance novels with lots of spice, but there was something about the way that these characters talked about it that made it sound like they were kids who had just learned what it was and wanted to say as much as they could about it for shock value.

She is a plus size woman, a fact which is mostly not mentioned, unless it's hitting the reader over the head with a very obvious comment about it like that a chair is too small for her.. You also learn that other characters are plus size out of nowhere when it becomes a plot point. Similarly, the main characters both have Vietnamese heritage, but it comes up in some truly cringey ways, including them making Vietnamese puns to each other during a graphic sex scene. It was weird.

There's also a power dynamic with the organization putting on the play that's foreshadowed in a very clunky way and ends up being quite predictable.

This is a book I certainly would not have finished if I had not been given an advance copy. Unfortunately I'd look elsewhere for my Vietnamese diaspora, plus size representation, and/or musical theater romance.

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager for an advance reader copy of this book for an honest review.

🎧 Audiobook + 📗eBook: Something Cheeky

✍🏾 Author: Thien- Kim Lam- I read Full Exposure and gave it 4 ⭐

📅Publication date: 3/4/25 | Read: 3/4/25

Genre: Adult Fic, Multicultural Interests, Contemporary Romance

Tropes: friends to lovers, in love w/ BFF, body positivity

🗣️Narrator: Vyvy Nguyen and David Lee Huynh voice all the characters with standouts from Zoe, Derek, and Thao. The reading style brought the text to life, and the author and narrators worked together perfectly. The pacing and flow allowed me to get lost in the story. The narrators paused and announced new chapters and there was a table of contents which helped me follow along.

🏃🏾‍➡️Run Time: 8:54

🌎 Setting: Washington D.C.

👆🏾POV: 3rd person dual Zoe and Derek

⚠️TW: SH, racism, 3rd act breakup

Summary: Estranged BFFs Zoe and Derek meet again after pursuing theatre in college. Derek asks her to join his musical as a costume designer to fulfill their dream of an all-Asian cast of a Cinderella rock musical. Derek has an unrequited crush that he wants to pursue while Zoe will try to redeem herself.

👩🏾 Heroine: Zoe Tran,27 owns Something Cheeky lingerie boutique

👨🏾 Hero: Derek Biu, 27 living in New York pursuing his directing career

🎭 Other Characters:
*Gregory Powers-Prestige Repertory artistic director, Derek's mentor
*Katie Mai-part of the musical
*TJ Nguyen-Zoe's BFF
*Boss Babes-Zoe's BFFs Trixie(roommate), Josie Parks (h from Full Exposure), Keisha (Trixie's bf sister), and Reina Guidroz
*Thao-Derek's co-writer and composer
* Mr. Bobbins-Zoe's cat

🤔 My Thoughts: I loved the Asian rep and speaking the Vietnamese language. I empathized with their plight to be represented by themselves. Zoe and Derek took a stand for themselves and the cast against racism. Their romance was sweet even though they had to hide it. Zoe had a lot of friends that supported her, and Derek had to learn about the nastiness in the industry.

Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Spice level 5/5🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥

🙏🏾Thanks to NetGalley, Avon and Harper Voyager | Avon, HarperAudio Adult | HarperAudio , and Thien Kim Lam author for this ARC and ALC! I voluntarily give my honest review, and all opinions are my own.

I was excited for this book, and although I didn’t love it, there was still a lot to like about it. As a theater girlie, I really loved seeing everything that went into Derek putting on the musical. The sabotage also made for some tense moments that kept me wanting to read to see how the characters would react or adapt. I also loved how adamant Zoe was on portraying Vietnamese culture how she and Derek had always envisioned. Derek was such a people pleaser, but it created good conflict, and made for a satisfying ending.

I did wish the romance storyline had been as interesting as the theater storyline though. This book has demi rep, which is very cool, but it was different than I expected. Because the main characters were friends in the past, Zoe is reunited with Derek and experiences pretty instant attraction to him. Since we didn’t get to see that history between them or see them just being friends until the attraction grows, it didn’t feel much different from any other kind of romance. I also felt like if you haven’t seen someone in six years, there’s a lot of relearning you need to do about that person. But Zoe and Derek didn’t seem to have changed much since college, and there wasn’t much discovery between them, so the romance again felt underdeveloped. I almost wished the story had been dual timeline just so that we could actually see instead of hear about their friendship in college.

The book also took some time to sink into because some of the dialogue felt forced in the beginning, and there was an over-explanation of details. I had to put it down for a few weeks and come back to it, but I liked it better when I revisited it.

If you like ‘he falls first and he falls harder’, the importance of community being highlighted, and theater galore, you might want to pick up this book. I do like the Boss Babes, so I would probably read another book by the author if Reina ends up being a main character in her own story.

dnfed at 44%
The writing is bad. There are no descriptions of looks or feelings so we don't know the characters' feelings. The dialogue is too choppy and not connected at all with what's happening, or what the characters previously said (in the same scene). It's like the author wrote random sentences and tried to patch them into a book but that didn't work.
MMC is too pushy too. He doesn't let FMC decide for ehrself, he's pushing her to do things he wants. She's afraid because of what happened at college (which we can only guess from very vague context clues) and has other commitments to think about, but he doesn't wanna hear it He's optimistic about his musical, but very naive about it too. He doesn't even think about a plan B, or any other avenue, and naively thinks that everything will work out despite warning signs. And he trusts Greg too much, never even thinking of talking to the board himself.
FMC isn't much better. After promising MMC to keep things secret, she immediately sang a song from the "super secret musical" in front of her friends and told them all about it. And I'm supposed to like her? She's an anxious mess and while it's understandable, it can come off ass annoying. She literally kissed Derek and then kicked him out, she's acting like a teenager despite being supposedly a 27-year-old woman. She doesn't act her age, she acts like a stupid kid most of the time.
And Greg is an annoying asshole. He tries to block the show while pretending he's so on board, and then during the worship he acts like this whole musical was his idea. And he butchers the name on purpose, I'm sure, he doesn't care. Talks big about inclusivity, but doesn't really care.
This book isn't for me and I was just bored the entire time. Which is a shame because I really wanted to like this book. But the writing took me out and I was honestly not into the book at all.

Thank you, netGalley and HarperCollins for allowing me to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I enjoyed Zoe and Derek’s story a lot. Some things irritated me but they had to figure it out and I’m happy they did. It’s hard being a minority in a white world and holding on to your principles. Especially when you’ve dreamed about something for so long and are so close to getting. So I understood Derek’s perspective but did not agree with him caving at all. Because getting your dream not the way you saw is just as bad as it never coming true at all. But Zoe and Derek figured it out. The supporting cast was amazing in this book and I loved them all and the spectrum of LGBTQIA+ rep. Greg can go jump out of a first story window over and over again. He was awful and I was so happy to see Derek stand up against him and for him to get what was coming to him. I can’t wait to read the books about the other Boss Babes before Zoe!

I absolutely loved this book! I couldn’t put it down and read it in one day.
I thought this book was funny, sweet and steamy. The characters had great chemistry and you really wanted to root for them.
Their chemistry was off the charts and the banter was just amazing.
A great read with humor, steam and great characters.

ARC provided by NetGalley

This was a cute friends to lovers romance with two Asian main characters. Zoe Tran is running her successful plus-size lingerie store when she's visited by her college best friend who she hasn't spoken to in years, Derek. An up and coming director, Derek wants Zoe to work with him on the musical of they used to dream of starring an all Asian cast. They have to work together to make the show a success while navigating a difficult artist director and their feelings for each other.

The romance was cute. I enjoyed seeing pining from the male mmc as we don't get that as often. Some of the the dialogue was a little cheesy, but I can see theater fans enjoying some of the references. The musical aspect was great and had me invested in their success. I loved the representation of the Asian cast, Vietnamese culture, and how they fought to have accurate representation in their production (Greg was the worst!). I would definitely go see this musical.

I was really excited about this book because its setting sounded incredibly intriguing – the idea of former best friends collaborating on a Broadway play that highlights Vietnamese culture truly captivated me. Unfortunately, the execution just didn’t live up to the promise. I admired Zoe’s strength as a character, but I wasn’t a fan of Derek. Their chemistry as a couple never quite clicked for me. Derek often came off as a pushover who didn’t really deserve Zoe. Although he constantly praised her and championed her talents, when it came time to stand up to his boss, he opted for the easy way out. He also proved to be a poor support for Thao during her stressful moments.

Thank you to Netgalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

Something Cheeky is a witty and steamy former best friends to lovers romance featuring Viet characters, musical theater setting, a plus-sized demisexual heroine. It's like the book is written for me!

Thien-Kim Lam has written a wonderfully realistic yet lighthearted story of finding love, fighting and holding onto your dream, and being proudly Asian while doing so! The novel is a beautiful love letter to Vietnamese culture from the diaspora that emphasizes the beauty of our long tradition and history while also paying tribute to the Asian American community in this country. (And I totally agree with Derek. We need more than Miss Saigon on Broadway!)

The book is fastpaced and keeps my attention throughout. I also adore the way Thien-Kim Lam approaches and handles the dreaded third act conflict in a believable and unique way. The characters are the highlights of the book! The supporting cast all stand out and feel like their own characters. Our protagonists are fantastic! The author does such a fantastic job building up the chemistry between them. I blushed at certain scenes at how real it feels as Derek and Zoe fall in love and navigate their romantic relationship. And speaking of our leads, while I love both of them, I have a special place in my heart for Zoe. She is so fearless, lovable, and strong. A queen and a total Boss Babe!

This is my first Thien-Kim Lam's book and I cannot wait to read more from her in the future. In the meantime, I'll be checking out her backlist, Happy Endings and Full Exposure as I simply cannot have enough of her gorgeous writing and immensely loveable characters and romances.