Rating: 4 stars
Official book description:
When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to replicate that moment. And when her longtime boyfriend announces he wants an open relationship before making a final commitment, a hurt and angry Anna decides that if he wants an open relationship, then she does, too. Translation: She’s going to embark on a string of one-night stands. The more unacceptable the men, the better.
That’s where tattooed, motorcycle-riding Quan Diep comes in. Their first attempt at a one-night stand fails, as does their second, and their third, because being with Quan is more than sex—he accepts Anna on an unconditional level that she herself has just started to understand. However, when tragedy strikes Anna’s family she takes on a role that she is ill-suited for, until the burden of expectations threatens to destroy her. Anna and Quan have to fight for their chance at love, but to do that, they also have to fight for themselves.
OK, so anyone looking for a light-hearted, fluffy romance read should very much look elsewhere for their fix. Ms. Hoang took more than three years to finish this novel because she was going through a lot of the same things as her protagonist Anna in her actual life. In her afterword, Hoang writes that this book is half memoir and the hardest thing she's ever written. She was going through severe writer's block and autistic burnout because her mother got severely ill and required a lot of intensive care from her family. In the novel, it's Anna's father who gets very sick and is taken home by his family to be nursed by his close family members. This happens when Anna is already struggling with anxiety, depression, and undiagnosed autism.
The early parts of the book, when Anna and Quan first meet and get to know each other are the easiest to read, even with Anna's perfectionist struggles to master her music. However, as the challenges keep building for the couple, the book also gets a lot heavier in its subject matter, and it actually took me a full 18 days to finish this book, despite its relatively low page count, because I kept having to put it down and didn't really want to come back to it too often, since the struggles Anna has in her personal life, and the difficulties she and Quan have to make their relationship work were really kind of bumming me out.
Nevertheless, Hoang is a good writer, and the heavy topics in the book feel all the more real since they're based in part on the author's own experiences. I don't regret reading the book and finishing the series, and I deeply sympathise with Ms. Hoang for having to go through such a hard time - but she probably got a better and more heartfelt book out of it in the end.
Judging a book by its cover: As animated romance covers go, you could do a lot worse. I love the bright red background and the subtle heart behind the elegant woman, seemingly traced by a rider on a motorcycle is a nice touch.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
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