Omigod. I didnt see how this book was labeled as a "dark" until the third part. I loved all the plot twists and i genuinely didnt predict some of them including the last one.

The way yang describes the speyer family is truly delicious. Ivy deeply admires and covets their position bc of her desire to climb the social ladder, but susie yang then cuts the glamour that ivy is blinded by with Stellar one lines that show the speyer family as a detached from society bc of their class and whiteness.

Yea and i read some other reviews, if you dont like slow paced books this one might not be the book for you. It doesnt really pick up until the last third. 

If you also dont like reading about people with questionable morals, this probably wont be ur book either. I personally love reading about fucked up people so i really enjoyed Ivy and the Speyers as characters, not as people. Like if i ever met them i would absolutely kick their asses to the curb or rob them. I think some lines that sum up the rich WASP life that Ivy observes are, "Liana sat on the terrace surrounded by wives from her book club, debating fervently about the oil crisis, as if the president himself were waiting breathlessly for their phone call, to tell him exactly what needed to be done" and "'And there were some serious issues, believe me. Dad was gone most of our lives, commuting back and forth from Boston. He rented this house over in Back Bay. White walls, everything straight-edged, like a ruler, and boxed in. Every time Mom would bring us, we'd go to our bedroom and everything-the bed, the desk, the windowsill-would be covered with fruit flies and gnats. And still Dad refues to get a housekeeper. He said it made him look elitest'. She paused to let the word, elitist, settle in the air. It was a common habit of rich people to talk about elitism and privilege, as if by pointing out the fact, they were disarming future accusation of being so." (Like what a fucking read)


then some quotes i liked from the text which can be kinda spoilery.

" Why struggle to climb the corporate ladder yourself when you can reture after marriage to colunteer at puppy shelters and color-code your sweater drawers?"

"Nan couldn't seem to decide whether she was trying to talk Ivy up to Kevin, or shame Ivy into being a better person. Perhaps love and shame always went hand in hand, even in romance"

"Ivy felt something loyal and protective emit from the heath of Liana's hand, something that inducted her into Liana's inner circle, even if she barely understood how to navigate such a circle in which her Chinese-ness wasn't something to hide under the tablecloth like an unseemly dog, but flaunted in a qipao with a slit up the thigh. Suddenly, she felt ashamed of her earlier simplification of Liana's life, of her relatives lives. Maybe there were no new stories, only your story. But what did the real story even matter, when most people judged you based on the shallowest surfaces?"

"Though she and Ted never had much more to say to each other than these stock phrases, her affection for him increased each time he called her kiddo and asked how she was doing. That sheer repetition of superficial interactions could breed intimacy, in a different but no less meaningful way than did deep vulnerability, was a lesson the genteel had learned early." comp to the Lins "They snapped at each other over various past grievances, not in a serious way, it was just how they talked, without awareness of the other as other but only as an extension of speaking to themselves."

"'Everything is falling apart,' Meifeng said to Ivy in Chinese. ' Their wealth is made of dung. Not even useful even when spread'"

"Dripping from head to toe in lace and pearls, Marybeth looked like a Pre-Raphealite painting with her burnt-orange hair rippling under a sixty-two-inch ivory silk tulle veil, the culmination of a thousand hours of Chinese labor hand-embroidering all those cascades of delicate flowers."

I actually thought the story of Nan and Shen was kind of sweet: "I liked Shen Lin immediately. He didn't speak much but he was reliable. He came to the factory every day and gave me a hard boiled egg. I cursed him for it at first. I told him if I ate too much, I got hungrier, and he said that was all right because he would give me all the eggs I could eat, as much as I wanted. I told him I wanted twenty eggs. The next day, he came with a bag of twenty eggs." cont. " You used to ask how your faither and I got married. Thats how. It was because I willed it. If I had been a stupider girl, your father never would have looked at me. But I saw my chance and made a story for myself-even if it was a false story. You have to give a man something to fight for. Thats the secret to a lasting marriage.'"

"'I don't understand,' she cried suddenly, spinning to face Roux with anguished eyes, 'why you live me. We'd be miserable together. We'd fight constantly. You'd cheat on me. I'd steal from you. We'd be horrible parents. We'd die some horrible, pointless death. You said people don't change. That's who we are together.'"

Susie yang, bestie, ur so smart and this was such a compelling and fun read.