Review: The Comeback

The Comeback by Lily Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Ariadne Hui is putting all her effort into making partner at her Canadian law firm. It doesn't matter if she works 14 hour days and weekends, just to see her father's pride in her achievement will be worthwhile. But it's an uphill battle, the law firm is snooty and old-fashioned. She's been offered more rewarding jobs by clients, jobs that appeal to her more than corporate law, jobs with a better workplace culture, but her father is old-fashioned and has set his heart on her making partner at the most prestigious firm in Toronto.

One night Ari gets home to the apartment she shares with her friend Hana only to find a strange man sleeping on their sofa. After the initial shock Hana tells Ari that the man, Choi Jihoon, is her cousin from Korea who has had a messy breakup and has escaped to Canada to get away from it all. Most importantly, no-one from the family can know he is in Toronto.

At first Ari is annoyed that she will have to act as hostess to a stranger, particularly when she is working so hard to get promoted, but over time she finds Jihoon to be a fun companion, thoughtful, as well as strikingly attractive. But just as the two of them start to fall in love, Ari makes a shocking discovery, Jihoon has a secret identity which will change everything.

Overall, I enjoyed this, but it did start to drag about two-thirds of the way through and I think that's because there was too much angst. Ari has sibling angst, parental angst, career angst, racism angst, and boyfriend angst. It seems to be a theme of the (admittedly small) sample of books I've read featuring Asian heroines that their parents have huge expectations of them, so I can understand that may be a cultural norm but the rest of it was too much. I think TBH the HEA could have come without the trip to Korea and the angst that ensued, there was enough work and family drama to sustain the plot.

I felt that all the other characters did a lot of psychoanalysing of Ari and her behaviour, but not in a kind way. Her sister, her 'friend' and even Jihoon on occasion berated her for her behaviour when IMHO Jihoon's behaviour was far more heinous and damaging to Ari both personally and professionally. Also, why do so many romances require the female MC to abandon high-flying jobs because the realise that actually they are more fulfilled doing something more creative (like organising walking tours)? It feels misogynistic as if we poor delicate little flowers are only good at creative things like cooking and sewing and should leave all the difficult stuff to the men (grrr).

I wanted to read The Stand-In but never got round to it. I understand this is the same author.

Anyway, I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed the education about K-pop and Alex's staunch defence of the genre was an eye-opener (more Alex please), i wasn't so keen on the 'all white people are racists' undertone, but perhaps it was just 'all snooty lawyers are racists'. I would definitely read more books by Lily Chu.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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