Rent a Boyfriend

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We’re older. We have life experiences. Haven’t we taught you to respect your elders?” — Chloe’s father I was a bit confused at first because it does not tell us the heroine's age until 1/3 of the way through the book. Honestly from what I read I thought that she was a few years older. So I wish that had been made clear earlier. Chloe hires Drew through Rent for Your Rents to save her from a HORRENDOUS engagement, and the web of lies and love that ensues is mind-boggling at times. NY, NJ, PA, DE, DC, VA, MD, IL, FL, CA, TX and NV. We’ve been featured on the top TV shows in the world and in hundreds of magazines and blogs. See our Press here. I really enjoyed how authentic this book was. This book included the tone markings with Mandarin words and the author also explained the system and significance of tone markings in the beginning of the book. I have not read many books that include tone markings with mandarin words and explain them. I really liked that it was explained so that readers who don’t understand Mandarin would be able to understand the reason for the tone markings.

Chloe Jing-Jing Wang (19, Taiwanese American) is an economics major at UChicago, much to her parents’ dismay. That and the fact that she doesn’t make an effort in dating. When the seemingly eligible bachelor neighbor Hongbo Kuo (25) suddenly proposes to her, Chloe’s parents jump at the chance to marry her off, for fear she might not get a better husband. But Chloe doesn’t plan on sitting around as life happen to her. For Thanksgiving, she hires fake boyfriend Andrew (real name: Drew Chan, 21, Taiwanese American) from Rent for Your ’Rents to convince her parents that a) she does date, and b) her boyfriend Andrew is perfect—son of surgeons and on his way to med school. While everything in Chloe’s life suddenly becomes an ever-growing lie, her and Drew’s feelings for each other is everything but fake.

Alex V

There were MANY Asian-themed puns and so much good food that my mouth was watering (that hot pot scene?? Lord have mercy). Chloe and Drew engage in some hilarious text banter, and the humour in this book was so much crasser than I was expecting!!! It was awesome. Even if I had to read the words “shrivelled vagina” like eight times. No ha sido lo que buscaba ☹️, uno de esos casos en los que las expectativas equivocadas matan el libro. Empecé esta lectura buscando una comedia romántica con la relación de relación falsa/novio por encargo, y bueno, el cliché está, pero la verdad es que no definiría esta historia en absoluto como comedia romántica. No me he reído demasiado, y no solo eso, sino que es que hay escenas en las que lo he pasado mal.

Oh man, I feel like this book doubled as a cultural studies class. I was SO PISSED at the Mom, and was talking to my co-worker and friend about how: SHE SHOULD JUST LET HER BE HAPPY. WHY CAN’T SHE JUST SUPPORT HER!? And my sweet friend was like: that’s not reality. 😆🤦🏻‍♀️ So, I learned some lessons in this book. Chloe，19歲，臺裔美人）不顧父母反對在芝加哥大學主修經濟學。王夫婦也對於Chloe不打扮、約會感到失望。當看似黃金單身漢的Hongbo Kuo（25歲）前來提親時，王夫婦迫不及待嫁女兒，害怕錯過這千載難逢的機會。但Chloe不願生活完全被打點。感恩節時，她聘請Andrew（真名：Drew Chan，21歲，臺裔美人，畫家）扮演假男友已說服父母她的確有在約會，而且有一位完美男友：醫生世家並準備從醫。當Chloe的人生變得處處都是騙局，只有她與Drew之間的感情才是真的。 Rent a Boyfriend was truly a breath of fresh air. It was seemingly a cute contemporary with the fake dating trope; but a closer look revealed the heroine's ingrained emotional and psychological issues due to the societal norms she conforms to when growing up. Featuring an Asian heroine who grapples with her dual identities, it explores the complexities and nuances of being an American-born Chinese (ABC). Mandarin is my mother tongue, so I understood every native word in the book perfectly, and I especially loved that the author weaved Mandarin seamlessly into the story because the prose was exactly how I think in my head – a mixture of English interspersed with Chinese words.

HANDSOME & TALENTED MEN ON DEMAND 

Because my current curse - which, if you haven’t already guessed, is to get excited about books and then inevitably be brutally disappointed - is neither dramatic nor romantic nor any fun at all. Drew, the other main character, is the fake boyfriend. He was disowned by his family after choosing to drop out of college to pursue a career in art and became a Rent for Your ’Rents employee to earn money. So what will happen when Drew and Chloe start to fall for each other? Follows Taiwanese-American teens Chloe (known as Jing-Jing to her family and community), a college teen who hires Drew, an artist, as her boyfriend over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Lunar New Year to disentangle herself from a preposterous proposal with the local yet rich asshole.

I was very, very excited for this book, as I am for everything I buddy read with Lily, and then, also as with most things I buddy read with Lily, I was absolutely destroyed by those mild expectations. But if you're someone who dislikes unresolved issues, unnecessary amounts of over-the-top, immature drama, and inconsistencies within the plot and characters, this might not be the show for you. Just my two cents.

Chloe and Drew don’t shy away from calling out her parents’ problematic beliefs when they crop up. The book is unafraid to critique the toxic aspects of Taiwanese/East Asian culture, from fatphobic body-shaming to the belief that a woman’s inherent worth lies in her dating (and marrying) a suitable man. Chloe drags her mom’s fixations on thinness and moral purity, and the book examines the stigma that Taiwanese culture attaches to dropping out of college. I have enjoyed this author's previous books. And I really like experiencing different cultures. The idea of Asian people having to rent boyfriends to please their critical parents is a crazy but fascinating idea. I enjoyed the idea of this book. The beginning was maybe a bit slow for me. But overall it was cute. The ending was super strong. The last 10% was my favorite. AHHH I LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS GAME!!!!! YOU GUYS DID NOT MISSSSSS!!!!!!! You guys have that "It' factor to make some really great games and stories; I hope your team plans to make more in the future!!!! I enjoyed every second of it and the voice acting really tied it together nicely. They both did incredible and somehow fit so perfectly! I was so flustered with those flirty lines from Aramis's VA lmfao I was screaming the whole time!! Really loved the pacing and as others mentioned, how you showed healthy relationship values/respect/consent through your writing. Me explico: nuestra protagonista, Chloe, es una joven de familia asiática pero criada en América, y como tal, se ve sometida a muchas expectativas que no puede ni quiere cumplir. Pero, para hacer felices a sus padres y que no la obliguen a casarse con un tipo despreciable solo porque es de buena familia, contrata al perfecto novio asiático por internet: Drew.

What I appreciated most about this book was its embracing of ambivalence. As a child of Chinese immigrants, I know. I know how our relationships and love are complex and painful and filled with contradictions that don’t make sense to most people, but are nonetheless very, very real. This is a warm, empathetic, and nuanced story that blends fluffy and romantic with serious and incisive. Rent a Boyfriend is unapologetically Taiwanese, and a true delight. I’m a huge lover of romance and rom coms, and to see one with a Taiwanese cast was just so refreshing. I can’t name many rom coms that do the same. Chang’e is one of my favorite legends, and seeing her story incorporated into Rent a Boyfriend made me smile.In Rent a Boyfriend, all the parents are problematic, and we also have the awful spoiled rich boy Hongbo. I think his character embodies, and is almost a caricature of, snobby, pompous rich guys, and is a stark contrast to guāi (good, well-behaved) boys which parents prefer their daughters to date. The story also briefly touches upon homophobia within the Asian community, and how some Rent for Your ’Rents clients hired fake dates because they weren’t ready to come out. Maybe I'll write a full review someday. But for now, I have to say that I'm personally miffed that teenage pregnancy was portrayed as something repulsive and shameful in this book, and I'm deeply appalled that this notion was never challenged. Not even by the supposedly "progressive" main character. Forgive me for the main character syndrome, but if I were to have a curse, I always presumed it’d be more of a fun one. I was trolling YouTube the other day when I came across an interview with Constance Wu, where she says something that really hit me hard. She talks about how she didn’t tell her parents about a traumatic event that had happened to her at school, and when the (white) host asks her why, she explains, simply, that she wanted to protect her parents. That it’s a dynamic that forms between immigrants and their children: we want to protect them as much as they do us.