Review by Booklist Review
Kathleen Cheng's breakup is the catalyst for putting her graduate program on pause and moving back into her mom's house in California. Still processing a tumultuous childhood full of heartbreak and resentment, Kathleen is shocked to see her mother, Marissa, transformed into a completely different person. While preparing for her upcoming wedding, Marissa presents herself as rejuvenated by love, a far cry from the woman who for so long used alcohol to ease her grief and trauma associated with her struggle with moving from Shanghai to America. Kathleen is given maid-of-honor duties, during which the two find themselves clashing left and right. While Marissa is embracing her new life, Kathleen struggles to move past their painful history. Through unexpected friendships, a new job as a "professional cuddler," and spending more time with her revitalized mother, Kathleen begins to break down the walls she put up to protect herself and find consolation for her past and hope for her future. Xie's novel is full of mother-daughter emotions and beautiful moments of love and light.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A woman struggles to come to terms with her mother's newfound happiness while her own life falls apart in Xie's funny and sharp debut. Kathleen Cheng has just been dumped by her boyfriend, prompting her to leave her graduate psychology program at Johns Hopkins and return home to her mother's house in California. On impulse, she takes a job as a "cuddle provider," providing clients with nonsexual touching. Meanwhile, her mother, Marissa, who emigrated with Kathleen from Shanghai when she was an infant and became a heavy drinker after divorcing her father, is now sober and on the verge of marrying a tech tycoon. As Kathleen puts together a Vegas bachelorette weekend for Marissa, crosses a boundary or two with a client, and deals with the fact that her high school boyfriend is now dating her best friend, she slowly begins to find a new path for herself. Xie's strong character work keeps the narrative bubbling along on its episodic arc, and her affectionate study of the ways Kathleen and Marissa madden and inspire each other adds depth. This author is off to a stellar start. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman returns home in the aftermath of a breakup and rekindles a relationship with her estranged mother. Kathleen Cheng, recently dumped by her longtime boyfriend, drops out of a Ph.D. program in cognitive psychology and goes home to Oakland, where she is promptly swept up in preparations for her mother Marissa's upcoming wedding to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. When Kathleen was very young, she and Marissa had immigrated to the U.S. from Shanghai to reunite with their father and husband, but their reunion didn't last. Marissa suffered from depression and alcoholism in the wake of her husband's departure, but at the beginning of the novel she's a different person: aggressively healthy and upbeat, she is on the cusp of a new life. Adrift herself, Kathleen reconnects with high school friends who stayed behind when she moved to the East Coast for college. She also signs up on a whim to become a cuddle therapist at Midas Touch, a startup "cuddle clinic" operating under the premise that "a kind touch lowers stress, boosts your immune system, and releases oxytocin." She eventually grows close to a widower named Phil, one of her clients. Though some of the metaphors at the beginning of the novel strain (a white comforter is "like a pane of milk across the mattress"), the prose grows more confident as the novel progresses. Xie is a deft chronicler of the ways power shifts between people. What emerges is a novel offering a lucid examination of a range of relationships: those between a mother and daughter, old friends, and more passing acquaintances. An engaging and heartwarming story. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
