"Lies and Weddings" by Kevin Kwan

 Lies and Weddings (May 21, 2024) by Kevin Kwan.

<This is a standalone novel.>

The legendary Gresham Trust has been so depleted by decades of profligate spending that the trust is almost a legend. The gargantuan mountain of debt is presently increasing by the millions due to all the money that the Countess of Greshamsbury, Arabella Leung Gresham, has had Francis, the Earl of Greshamsbury and her husband, dump into all of her resorts, including the one on the Big Island of Hawaii. Which erupted volcanically. For real. It’s during Augie’s decadent tropical wedding to a Scandinavian prince. Arabella’s scheming solution is to make their only son, Rufus, the Viscount St. Ives, marry a woman who’s at least a billionaire. His mom wants him to seduce Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey blond hair and a royal bloodline. Or Martha Dung, a tattooed venture capitalist genius “who passes out billions like lollipops” and is the “right kind of Chinese.” But Rufus, despite his chiseled jaw and washboard abs, doesn’t obsess over what he’s wearing, and the only woman outside his family that he’s comfortable talking to is Dr. Eden Tong (and he’s never actually comfortable talking to his mother; she’s always hyper-critical). Eden’s father, Dr. Thomas Tong, is the Gresham family doctor, and they’ve resided on Greshamsbury lands since Eden was a small girl. She’s the literal girl-next-door, humble and beautiful. Rufus proposed marriage to her when he was 14 years old. She declined. What schemes and downright nasty rumors will Lady Arabella cook up? Can the earldom be saved or will it fall into ruin?

            The newest globe-trotting novel from Kwan is ridiculously lavish and laugh-out-loud funny with an audacious plot, mega money thrown around like pocket change, an entertaining cast of characters and bustling settings everywhere from Hong Kong to Hawaii to London, Marrakech, Beverly Hills and Venice and other locales throughout. That people can and do live like this, in “an orgy of excess,” is unbelievable and also sickening, when, like Eden, I think of all the poverty in the world. Still, I devoured this novel with its wit, sarcasm and drama. It’s classic Kwan writing, cheeky as ever. So, hop on that private jet with your designer labels and fizzy drinks on your way to some luscious location and enjoy this escapist tale that’s a delectable diversion from daily, mundane lifestyles. Words to the wise: beware those lofty, meddling mothers and gossiping aunties. It is all too much, but it’s also never enough!