Classic Kevin Kwan - so much fun and full of biting, gossipy humour. I had the best time reading this, another perfect slice of escapism that touches on darker themes without ever losing its sparkle.

I loved Crazy Rich Asians and this book did not disappoint. It was quirky and funny. It kept me turning the pages.

This book was exactly what I needed. Fun, entertaining and mindblowing. Kevin Kwan never diasapoints. I especially loved Eden’s character. The big “reveal” was long predictable but that doesn't matter at all. Loved it!!!

Having not read anything from this author before it took me a while to get to grips with the style of writing. However as soon as I followed it, I loved this story. The descriptions of the characters & their motivations made for a very engaging read.

Loved it. Very entertaining , lots of laughter and I don't know if very wealthy people act like this but so much fun. Great holiday read or anytime read.

Enter the world of the ultra rich with lots of gossip, family drama and laugh out loud moments
It’s a rollercoaster of a ride, filled with secrets and lies.
Can see this making a fantastic film.
Would you marry a billionaire just for their money?
Thanks @kevinkwanbooks @penguinukbooks & @netgalley for the rollercoaster read

This book is everything I hoped Kevin Kwan's next novel would be. Quick, witty, characters full of relatable charm despite being so unimaginably rich. Read it in a single sitting, can't wait for the inevitable movie adaptation.

A great read that will give you a good few laughs along the way with memorable characters. A book that you will truly enjoy!

Honestly I don't have a huge amount to say about this one, I found it a pretty painful read. Kevin Kwan can be great but this tipped into something else for me. I was intrigued by the initial mystery and the wedding set up. We know Kwan can depict a good wedding lead up. Plus the flashbacks keep the tention rumbling in the background.

But there wasn't a single character here I wanted to spend time with. As a character reader, that's an issue for me. Some people will love the cast of questionable characters, it just isn't right for me.

Lies and Weddings is not a book I will be re-reading! I have never read any thing from Kevin Kwan before and I have never seen Crazy Rich Asians. All I know is that this is an average story (poor girl falls for rich, titled man. Said man needs to marry an heiress to restore the family fortunes. Hey presto, by the end of the book she is an heiress!) However where it differs from maybe a Mills and Boon book, is the fact that each item these rich privileged people wear or buy is documented by it's designer label! Every description of a ball gown or an item of furniture is prefaced with the designer label. A Chanel dress, a Dior bag, a Gucci item. Does anyone really care about what the brands are. It was easy reading but a predictable story and not for me!

A rip-roaring and rambunctious tale. The author has transported his successful formula from Crazy Rich Asians and Singapore to the UK. The most compelling thing about Kwan's stories are the insights he gives into the super rich and their lifestyles. It's fun and exciting to learn about how people with too much money live. The story is well-paced and there are some real moments of reflection and thought from the characters around racism. There were times that I felt the experiences of the main female lead as a Chinese woman in the UK were unrealistic. I find it hard to believe that she had truly been insulated from racism and xenophobia growing up in England, especially if she went to school and university there plus worked in the NHS. It also felt a little frustrating that Eden would at her age and stage of life allow people to talk the way they did about her and her friends e.g. the photoshoot editor's comments about Bea...
There were also moments that jarred where the use of US or international terminology was being used in the UK context. Thomas wouldn't have done a "residency" if he did his medical training in the UK - it would have likely been a fellowship when he went abroad to train. Similarly, when one of the characters describes knowing Rufus since he was in diapers - another term not used in the UK.
But apart from those minor niggles, this was such a fun and entertaining read with a satisfying ending.

Perhaps my favorite Kevin Kwan yet - I loved the US v UK commentary, and the flashbacks were perfectly placed to keep up the tension. A win!

This new book from the author of Crazy Rich Asians follows a noble British family, the Greshams, and those around them (especially Eden and her dad Thomas) as they go to Hawaii for the wedding of one of the daughters. Things fall apart though when Rufus, the son, fails to seduce the heiress his mom wants him to, and even worse, declares his love for Eden.

This has been my favorite of Kwan's books since the first Crazy Rich Asians book. I felt the characters were fun (minus Arabella, but every book needs a villain) and I had so much fun reading about their ludicrousness. Eden becomes somewhat of the main character, and I really enjoyed that since she was so much more grounded.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Crazy Rich Asians remains one of my favourite romance books of recent years. The mix of opulence and family drama offset by the luxurious backdrop of Singapore was the perfect combination. So I hoped Lies and Weddings would follow a similar theme. On many aspects it does - there's a lot of rich people drama and fabulous settings. However I found the large cast of characters overwhelming and all of them lack any real depth, with the result that they're mainly down right awful without any redeeming features.

Frivolous fun, but lacking in any staying power for me.

Kevin Kwan, best known for his Crazy Rich Asians saga, is back with a brand new collection of socialites, aristocrats, playboys and billionaires - and of course the requisite couple of wide-eyed ordinary folk to guide the reader through the excesses and eccentricities of the inconceivably wealthy.

At the centre of Kwan's latest offering, Lies and Weddings, is the aristocratic Gresham family, comprising hapless Earl Francis, his conniving wife Arabella and their three gorgeous adult children, Augusta, Rufus and Beatrice. When we meet them, it is days before Augusta is due to marry her very own handsome prince at the family's exclusive resort on Hawaii's Big Island - the first of what Arabella hopes will be a trio of royal weddings for her children. As a veritable who's who of the rich and famous gathers for the wedding, and his wife pulls out all the stops to impress them, Lord Francis is desperately scrambling to hide the fact that Britain's oldest family is actually flat broke and on the verge of losing everything.

For those of us who don't have a swimming pool with a transparent floor through which we can gaze at our fleet of Ferraris, and who are unlikely to be whisked off to a destination wedding on a private jet, Kwan's novels are pure escapism: an opportunity to disengage from everyday struggles and immerse yourself in a world of gossip, scandal, secrets and intrigue, in which the stakes are so unrelatable that you can just sit back and take it all in.

That said, Lies and Weddings, more than some of Kwan's other work, has quite the social conscience. Rufus voices strong objections about the use of sacred Hawaiian land for wedding celebrations, while reader proxy Eden Tong (the doctor daughter of Lord Gresham's best friend, family doctor and closest neighbour, and one of several potential love interests for Rufus) rails against the 'orgy of excess' powered by armies of immigrants which she witnesses on a trip to Los Angeles. Kwan also touches on the legacy of colonialism and the patriarchal nature of the institutions of wealth. However, none of it is tackled in too much depth or detail, and some parts did feel like rather superficial lip service to critics of Kwan's celebration of the 'crazy rich' rather than a genuine attempt to interrogate the ethics of the conspicuous consumption that defines Kwan's writing; for all their socially and environmentally conscious ideas, even Rufus and Eden spend much of the story criss crossing the globe on private jets with nary a moment's pause to discuss the devastating impact on the environment, while the various moments in which Eden, who is Asian, is mistaken for 'the help' are clunky and unsubtle in the point they are there to make. More resonant is the examination of the responsibilities and restrictions that accompany inherited wealth, and of the racial subtext that underpins the relationship between Eden Tong and Countess Arabella Gresham, both of them Chinese.

In essence, Eden is Rachel Chu of Crazy Rich Asians, while Arabella takes on the Eleanor Young role, and I didn't particularly enjoy the retread of the awful matriarch disparaging and dehumanising the object of her son's affections because she doesn't come from the right sort of family. Arabella is such an exaggerated charicature of the trope shd embodies that she is utterly unsympathetic, and it was galling to see how the conflict between her and Eden ended. There is a half-hearted, late effort to provide an explanation for why Arabella behaves the way she does, but it is ultimately insufficient to redeem her in any way.

Rufus is nice enough - especially in contrast with his mother - but I never found the romance between him and Eden to be particularly convincing or compelling. Nobody experiences any character development by the end of the novel, and Kwan resorts to a calvacade of deus ex machina in order to tie up all the loose ends.

Nevertheless, for all its flaws, if you are looking for a fun, entertaining beach read this summer that captures your attention and doesn’t make you think too hard, Lies and Weddings is perfect.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

This was an enjoyable read.
It somewhat had a modern-day Cinderella vibe; a rags-to-riches story.
We get to have a glimpse into the lives of the rich. However, money cannot buy love, and what will transpire if their wealth is suddenly jeopardized? Will the prince find his princess?

I could not stand Arabella Gresham. What an irritating woman! She's one of those characters you really wish bad things would happen to!

I must admit, I did anticipate the ending rather early on, and there was one inconsistency towards the end where a character who was present at the wedding of one of the sisters suddenly did not recognize her and inquired about her identity.
Despite this, I still found the book to be enjoyable, particularly the footnotes where the author provided commentary on the events and offered additional information about various locations and occurrences.

A n enjoyable read about rich people and Chinese mothers with sharp tongues. Now, rich people gossip I can get behind I loved this aspect of the book. Eden was my favourite character, the girl next door, living on the estate but growing up with the earls children a doctor but regarded as not worthy to marry the Earls son Rufus by his mother. Eden lives with her doctor father. In comparison to the spoilt behaviours of others, she seems unaffected, down to earth, balanced, and just an all-around nice person. It's a lovely gossipy read and the ending concluded nicely for me wrapped up in a wonderful bow.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started Lies & Weddings but what I got was an absolute riot! I read the novel for an online book club and described it to them as Bridgerton on steroids! There's romance, scandal, rivalry, lots of arguments and lots of fun and I really enjoyed getting to know these characters. Kevin Kwan writes in a humorous, lighthearted way that makes Lies & Weddings easy to read - I finished it in less than 24 hours - but there are also some more serious, but interesting issues for the reader to get their teeth into.

I would describe Lies & Weddings as a mostly character driven novel. There is a character list at the beginning of the book so that you can get to grips with who's who and how they are related to each other, but I must admit that it still took me a while to get my head round it! Nevertheless, the characters are all individual and very well drawn and I was very easily brought into their lives and quickly became immersed in their problems!

Lies & Weddings has many different settings and each one is described in really clear detail. I felt like I was on a whistlestop tour of the world! The travel between times and places is marked really clearly at the beginning of each scene and I can see the novel would make a really entertaining Netflix series!

Beneath the bold exterior, Kevin Kwan actually explores a number of more serious issues in Lies & Weddings and as I got further into the novel, I enjoyed peeling back the layers and learning more about the things that had affected these characters and made them into the people we see in the novel. I actually felt quite emotional as some of these issues were revealed.

This is my first novel by Kevin Kwan but I shall certainly be looking out for more!

I received a free ARC of Lies and Weddings via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
I LOVED IT!

It’s just non stop rich people drama and chaos it feels like one giant juicy gossip session! I had to pour myself a glass of wine as I came to the last quarter, it was just so juicy!
Sometimes books feel just like gossiping with my best friends over drinks, and this is perhaps the epitome of such a book!

I can’t wait to dive into more Kevin Kwan!

Just switch off your brain and prepare to be entertained!

This was a fun read, albeit a tad too long. The reader is transported into the dazzling and ridiculous world of the ultra rich. There are A LOT of characters in this book, which initially did get confusing and took time getting used to.

There are some really obnoxious, self-centred and exaggerated characters (Arabella and Luis Felipe, I'm looking at you) but they lent to the actual humorous aspect of the novel.

One of the two normal people in this book was Eden but there really didn't seem to be much character development there. She was a complete pushover which was quite annoying.

There are amusing footnotes throughout as well as every single character's educational background. I really couldn't understand how they could all be so educated and yet be so dense at the same time.

Do not expect to relate to any of the characters.