a little bit ham fisted in its execution (especially the dialogue but it admittedly is hard to capture the ideosyncracies of a people who grew up in a multi ethnic multilingual environment AND also the exploration of religion erasing culture and how that affects national fabric of a, again, a multiethnic multireligious and multilingual country but also this is a romance novel and not a journal article), but I appreciate more SEAsian rep in the genre. would be a good airplane read! also out of context spoiler but… KUAN YIN?? right…