Lucie Yi Is Not A Romantic

Wowser this book was good. Unputdownable/ignoring my children good… Lucie approaches the realisation that she wants a baby in the same way she approaches life. With research, and analysis and data. Collin is such a great match and it’s amazing to see them try to find their feet as co-parents to an unborn baby. I loved that it was set in Singapore and that there were various cultural differences for Lucie and Collin to unpick and the addition of Mark made for quite the dilemma. It was genuinely a fabulous book, so well written and engaging. I shall be looking out for more books by Lauren Ho.

Lucie Yi is a successful 37 year old Singaporean management consultant gunning to make partner. I had a few doubts about her professional portrayal, such as her specialising in tax structuring (is that management consulting? surely it’s tax advisory), regularly leaving the office before 8pm, working very uncollaboratively and referring to projects as ‘files’, but I recognise that was not the focus of the book. Lucie makes a trip to a chi chi maternity store in Soho, but the trip triggers an unexpected emotional outburst. Spurred on by her loudly ticking biological clock and the scars from the messy dissolution of her engagement, she experiments with a co-parenting website (think match.com but grown up) and finds a potential father. ⁣
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Collin is a half-Malaysian software engineer whose main flaws seem to be that he’s 5’8 (not 5’11 as he claims), and has severe health conditions which consist of lactose intolerance and a nut allergy. He’s also partially Peranakan, as is Lucie, which continues a trend of Peranakan fetishism in Singaporean literature (why?). They agree to platonically co-parent but inevitably are forced to have sex because Lucie has too few eggs to wait for IVF. Brought together by a love of puns and banter, sparks seem fly as Lucie gets pregnant and they move back to Singapore. ⁣
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Of course Lucie’s ex fiancé, a pretentious Singaporean man named Mark Thum, ruins the picture with his love for Tiffany photo frames, Le Creuset, going to therapy and banging his boss after Lucie had a miscarriage when they were engaged. Nonetheless she decides that he seems to be a safer bet, as supporting a child in Singapore is very expensive and she clearly comes from a disadvantaged background with parents who live in a multigenerational landed property in Serangoon. ⁣Meanwhile Collin rents an apartment in Bugis, which Lucie finds charming as it is both convenient but not excessively flashy. She continues to be attracted to Collin even as he dates a woman called Justine Maya, whilst Mark makes red date tea for her, which of course cancels out his toxic, controlling behaviour. Who will she chose???
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