Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho – Audio
Book Blurb:
At thirty-three, Andrea Tang is living the dream: she has a successful career as a lawyer, a posh condo, and a clutch of fun-loving friends who are always in the know about Singapore’s hottest clubs and restaurants. All she has to do is make partner at her law firm and she will have achieved everything she (and her mother) has ever worked for. So what if she’s poised to be the last unmarried member of her generation of the Tang clan? She doesn’t need a man to feel fulfilled, no matter what her meddling relatives have to say about it.
But for a dutiful Chinese-Malaysian daughter, the weight of familial expectations is hard to ignore. And so are the men life keeps throwing in Andrea’s path. Men like Suresh Aditparan, her annoyingly attractive rival for partner and the last man she should be spending time with, and Eric Deng, a wealthy entrepreneur whose vision for their future is more lavish than she could have imagined. With her workplace competition growing ever more intense, her friends bringing dramas of their own to her door, and her family scrutinizing her every romantic prospect, Andrea finds herself stretched to the breaking point. And she can’t help but wonder: In the endless tug-of-war between pleasing others and pleasing herself, is there room for everyone to win?
My Review: 3.5 stars
Last Tang Standing was a humorous romance filled with the trials of tribulations of not being married by thirty. Andrea, the protagonist, is of Chinese and Malaysian descent and has an extreme amount of pressure by her “tiger” mother because she isn’t married yet. Marriage and taking care of a home trumps her daughter’s high-profile career in her mother’s eyes.
There are several cultures that have similar views, so it was fun listening to Andrea’s wit and sarcasm about that topic. This book was told through epistolary diary entries, which was a good way to learn the inner heart of the character, however I can’t imagine a diary on the planet that has full conversations written within them. Because I listened to the book, (thanks to Catherine Ho for the amazing narration) the conversations in the diary didn’t bother me. The book flowed and the narrator was able to portray mockery and jealously with perfect cadence and tone.
This book explores the trials and tribulations of online dating, dating outside of your religion or ethnicity, following your heart, the power of friendship and exploring what really makes us happy. These themes stood out among the endless tirade of designer brands, which reminded me a bit of Crazy Rich Asians.
Overall, this is a cute, workplace rom com.
Quotes I liked:
Tears sprang, unbidden, to my beady, plebeian eyes. That so much beauty was possible in the heart of this stone-and-concrete city, that it should be owned by one person, while I paid almost half my salary and almost all my waking hours for not even a hundredth of this space—it hurt. How could this be what my life had become about?”
