My Summer of Love and Misfortune by Lindsay Wong

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My Summer of Love and Misfortune by Lindsay Wong
Published by Simon Pulse on June 2, 2020
Age Group & Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Format: ARC, eBook
Source: Publisher

A novel about a Chinese-American teen who is thrust into the world of Beijing high society when she is sent away to spend the summer in China.

Iris Wang is having a bit of a rough start to her summer. In an attempt to snap her out of her funk, Iris’s parents send her away to visit family in Beijing, with the hopes that Iris will “reconnect with her culture” and “find herself.” Iris resents her parents’ high-handedness, but even she admits that this might be a good opportunity to hit the reset button.

Iris expects to eat a few dumplings, meet some of her family, and visit a tourist hotspot or two. What she doesn’t expect is to meet a handsome Mandarin-language tutor named Frank and to be swept up in the ridiculous, opulent world of Beijing’s wealthy elite, leading her to unexpected and extraordinary discoveries about her family, her future, and herself.

A copy of the book was provided for review purposes - thank you! Receiving a copy does not guarantee a positive review and therefore does not affect the opinion or content of the review.

Trigger & Content Warnings: pls just pass on this book and save your brain cells.

My reaction while surviving the 18% of My Summer of Love and Misfortune that I read can be summarized in one GIF:

The book is that bad, friends. I think at a certain point I started viewing the book from a comedic standpoint just to make things feel a little better for me personally, but LOL, there are better books out there to read. Also, if I could give this book 0 out of 5, I would. But alas, I’ll have to settle with what I settled with.

Let me just talk about all the ways My Summer of Love and Misfortune was Hilariously Awful™.

So we start the book introduced to Iris Wang, who we quickly find out that because she is born as a tiger and has a teardrop-shaped mole under her right eye, she’s unlucky. She’s addicted to Starbucks lattes and expensive makeup, she parties a lot, she shows up hungover to SATs, and she half-asses her college admissions essays like I once half-assed a 10-page paper the day it was due. In other words, she lives up to being unlucky, and she has priority issues. It’s not even that bad yet.

Her credit card bill one day will rival that one person in the movie with a massive credit card debt — was that The Devil Wears Prada? — only, I don’t think Iris Wang will improve. And I have to wonder: do her parents actually notice the usage and teach her how to be responsible with it or do they just let her run wild and pay for it? How in the world do her parents trust her? I’m so confused??? And how are they not pissed about her credit card usage? She’s not even 18; she’s got to be an authorized user.

She knocks off the garage door with a $50K car while drunk after walking in on her best friend and boyfriend having sex. Don’t get me wrong; cheating is awful to experience, and I wouldn’t wish it on most people. But Iris had that one coming for her: she doesn’t remember her boyfriend’s birthday, and she didn’t even know her best friend Samira is capable of writing articles or that she volunteers. How… how do you not know your boyfriend’s birthday, and what kind of friend are you if you don’t even know your best friend is capable of writing articles? Hell, she thinks best friends are supposed to be an identical reflection of each other. So in the words of my mom, Iris Wang deserved what she got.

Oh, she also thinks no one uses the postal service anymore, and to top it off, she doesn’t understand what global warming is.

How… how do you not know this.

Basically, Iris Wang thinks the world revolves around her, and only her.

And here I was once told that I was in my own world for wanting to be an astronaut. The only difference is, I was in preschool at the time, so at least I had the Little Kids are Cute factor going on.

She thinks you can be voted in as valedictorian and salutatorian. LMAO Iris never studies, how the hell would she be top of the class? I’d be surprised if she’s not at the very bottom. Let’s not forget she showed up hungover to the SATs, either.

But anyway, let’s backtrack to where she knocks off her parent’s garage door with a very fancy car. The incident ends up as the last straw for her parents, so they decide to send Iris off to Beijing in the hopes she’ll get her act together. She wonders if her parents even love her for doing so, going so far as thinking they must not be her parents; her parents must be super rich, and they can be found in a Forbes list. She thinks she’s a genius for looking for what she thinks are her birth parents on Forbes.

Okay, but here’s what killed me, friends. Iris is in the plane’s bathroom for long enough time that people are in a line waiting for her to finish, she accidentally drops the contents of her purse into the toilet… and wonders if she should flush it all away. If you’re not supposed to flush paper towels down the toilet, why the actual fuck would you…?

And when she gets off the plane and tries to turn on her phone to no avail, she thinks she can bake her phone in the oven so it can work again. LMFAO, more like starting a fire if the entire oven doesn’t explode.