I was unprepared to write such a long review but it turns out I had a LOT of thoughts.

THINGS I LIKED:
It took me far too long to realize in the paperback whenever we read Esme’s perspective she uses the appropriate accent marks on all the Vietnamese (including Quan and Khai) when it’s Khai’s perspective he doesn’t use them. This makes perfect sense with how they think of the world, and it was a nice touch.

Honestly this entire series made me think about how great Quan is, he did so much to help his brother and he was even going to marry Esme and was around for Stella and gave Michael a lot of shit. I loved that he was so open about things, giving Khai his sex manuals (shoutout to Quan for owning and clearly thoroughly reading She Comes First), talking Khai through whatever he needed, etc.

Loved the relationship between the cousins/brothers, how open they were with each other, how funny, how very present and loving they were.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE
I wish the side female characters were much more fleshed out - I noticed this in The Kiss Quotient as well, all of the sisters are merely present in the room or used to asking the probing questions so the protagonists can further fall in love but for how well written all the male cousins are, I was surprised.

In the first book there are constant references to their mom being mean/yelling a lot but in this book that is never mentioned? She was a bit controlling in the beginning by literally surprising her son with a woman who was going to move in him but other than that she was quite welcoming to/always brought Khai plenty of food/etc.

Also I entirely forgot about these two hanging plot points until just now: the whole time Khai wonders why Esme speaks in Vietnamese only to him (it’s mentioned a minimum of four times) and also all of Khai’s family alludes to how wealthy he is/that he’s a big time boss as his company but Esme thinks he’s just a regular worker bee and she doesn’t know what his family means, and yet neither of these points are ever addressed or resolved.

Now, let’s talk about this ending. It was simply too convenient - suddenly Esme’s dad shows up right in the nick of time (after receiving ONE voicemail from a stranger??) to see the wedding, suddenly Khai meets Esme’s daughter whom she NEVER mentioned and doesn’t question why Esme never told him a single thing about her?? And then four years later in the epilogue Esme graduated summa cum laude from Stanford AND her parents are married???? All of that seems simply implausible and it happened for too quick compared to the pacing of the rest of the book.

QUOTE
I really liked this quote of Esme realizing her value: “She wasn’t rich, classy, or smart, but she wasn't something you could use once and toss away. She had value. You couldn't see it in the clothes she wore or the abbreviations after her name or hear it in the way she
spoke, but she felt it, even if she didn't entirely understand where it came from. It pounded inside her chest, big and strong and bright. She deserved better than this.”

RATING
I was on the verge of rating this as 5 stars until the very end, where it far too conveniently wrapped up, so it was bumped down to 4. Overall, it’s decent. Based on this review I seemed to have only pointed out the bad things, but I actually did enjoy this book. I will be quite excited to read Quan’s story next.