Delia Cai is a Vanity Fair writer, but this is not the droll, wise-cracking first novel one might expect. It is very different from Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually, or half a dozen other novels about women who hilariously haven’t quite got their lives together – and therein lies its charm. Instead, this is a fairly straightforward story about 27-year-old Audrey Zhou, whose parents got married in Wuhan before they moved to the United States, and ultimately Hickory Grove in Peoria, Illinois, to raise her. Audrey is now engaged to a seemingly perfect white photographer called Ben whose parents are wealthy enough to offer to buy the couple a home.
Audrey and Ben are returning to her family home for the Christmas holidays, but Audrey has effectively reinvented herself while living in New York and much of the book’s tension comes from her trying to reconcile the slightly stiff teenager she was with the happy, successful professional she has become.
