Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic by Lauren Ho

4.5 stars, actually.

I really liked Last Tang Standing, so was happy to pick up this book which was billed as a kind of Austen/Crazy Rich Asians mash up. I agree with the Crazy Rich Asians part (there’s all the high-level finance, Singapore multi cultural rich culture as there was in the movie and Last Tang Standing) but not so much with the Austen.

It’s more contemporary crazy romance tropes: pregnant/fake marriage than manners and restraint.

Collin and Lucie both want children but haven’t been successful in relationships. They meet on a parent app and suss each other out as potential co-parents with the understanding of NO ROMANCE at all so as to not mess up the parenting. Ya’ll can guess how that goes.

Meanwhile Lucie is navigating a high powered job, Singapore parents with certain cultural expectations, a friend in her awesome chatty friend group who isn’t a parent and single and feeling left out, and an ex who was awful and now…keeps appearing again.

Not to mention the pregnancy body changes 🙂

This is fun for the food, Singapore, and kooky tropes, but as in her other book, I longed for a little more dwelling in the actual relationships than summarizing. Whenever Collin was making her food and bantering it was awesome, more of that 😉

Also, Ho creates an entire, deep emotional background for Collin (and a little bit of showing Lucie’s care) around a nut allergy. It’s awesome and unique and full of puns.