Books & Boba discussion

Hello! Our June 2021 book club pick is Happy Endings by Thien-Kim Lam. This book is hot off the press. It came out last month. The novel is a second-chance romance following Trixie Nguyen, who is determined to make her sex toy business a success, proving to her traditional Vietnamese parents that she can succeed in a nontraditional career.

This was a fun and steamy read. I thought the writing was a little simplistic a times, but it really didn't matter since I was smiling most of the time. Rom-coms really get a pass on that to a certain degree for me. I didn't realize this one was a book club pick when I grabbed it this week. I actually know her from her cooking and family blog rather than her romances. It's a cheater recipe, but my family and I love her pho recipe. :) https://www.imnotthenanny.com/2020/09...

Trixie was such a fun heroine. There was a bit of a deus ex Mike Chen (common enough name, but still made me smile) to get that HEA, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying it.

I've already talked about my feelings on Happy Ending on the podcast with Hannah, Jess, and Marvin, but I'm going to add my main takeaways here.

I loved how Trixie was sex positive and was passionate about her job as well as educating her community about safe sex. Sex and desire are subjects that are practically not talked about in the Asian community, even among younger generations. I liked how Thien-Kim portrayed a confident Asian woman who normalized sex and masturbation.

Unfortunately, I was not a fan of Andre. Breaking up with someone over a post-it note during a time when they are vulnerable and going through a life change (that you instigated) is frankly unforgivable in my personal opinion. Like I said in the episode, I wished there was a more of a drastic change in Andre's attitude. It seemed like he hadn't learned a thing from his past mistake of not communicating and being emotionally unavailable to Trixie, which is a shame since we rarely see interracial relationships between a Black man and Asian woman in literature.

I absolutely loved all the food descriptions. I approve as an Asian American from the South.

In case another comes along looking for the topic book, and finds the link goes to a different book, then here’s the link for the topic book, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

I forget how to make it look nice.