Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu

 

My last read for the month of October 2024 was Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu. I listened to the unabridged audio version of Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu and well narrated by Natalie Naudus.

I have mixed thoughts about this debut novel. I loved the concept of this novel. The main character, Willa Chen, is 24 years old, biracial woman (Chinese American) and living in New York City. Willa has never felt like she fits in within the white community, nor the Asian American community. To make matters worse, she feels like an outsider within in her own family. Her parents divorced when she was really young. Both of Willa's parents eventually remarried and had children with their new spouses. Willa spent time with both of her parents growing up, but she didn't feel a deep connection with either of her parents or step-parents and her half siblings... Willa has an identity crisis, if you will, on how and where she fits in with not only inside her family, but within society as well. Willa is also not very confident and somewhat shy. All of this comes through pretty well in the novel. 

Additionally, Willa works as a nanny for a wealthy family in the Tribeca neighborhood in NYC, which is a large chunk of the novel. So, this is another part of the storyline and how being a nanny factors into Willa's overall life and world view.

The cons of this novel for me was it didn't quite hit the mark. The premise of the novel is a good one, but the supporting characters were kinda flat. The character interactions felt kinda flat and needed another pop to make things a bit more engaging as well. I also felt like Willa had low self-esteem/low self-confidence and needed to speak up for herself. I was hoping to see this issue resolved by the end of the novel or at least an improvement, but really didn't seem to happen. Also, the ending was lacking... So, what happens with Willa? I guess we'll never know.

Below is the publisher's summary for Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu from Amazon:

A perceptive and powerful debut of identity and belonging - of a young woman determined to be seen.

Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly White school, and too White to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too.

For years, Willa does her best to stifle her feelings of loneliness, drifting through high school and then college as she tries to quiet the unease inside her. But when she begins working for the Adriens - a wealthy White family in Tribeca - as a nanny for their daughter, Bijou, Willa is confronted with all of the things she never had. As she draws closer to the family and eventually moves in with them, Willa finds herself questioning who she is, and revisiting a childhood where she never felt fully at home.

Self-examining and fraught with the emotions of a family who fails and loves in equal measure, Win Me Something is a nuanced coming-of-age debut about the irreparable fissures between people, and a young woman who asks what it really means to belong, and how she might begin to define her own life.

I am giving Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu a rating of 3 out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!