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Overall Summary
Crazy Rich Asians is a 2013 novel by Kevin Kwan, who was born in Singapore. The story follows Rachel Chu as she accompanies her boyfriend to his home country of Singapore and learns that he comes from an extremely wealthy family.
In the beginning of the novel, Nick asks Rachel to go to Singapore with him for his best friend’s wedding. He doesn’t tell her much about his family, and she is nervous about going because they’ve been dating for two years but don’t know much about each other. In addition, she has a best friend in Singapore who went to college with her and wants to see her again.
From Nick’s perspective, he and Rachel live simply in New York City. However, his old life in Singapore is very extravagant. He asks Astrid what to do about it, but she advises him to prepare Rachel for a culture shock. Instead of following her advice, Nick decides that it shouldn’t be a big deal.
Meanwhile, the Singapore elite is gossiping about Nick Young. They’re talking about his new girlfriend: some people say she’s a nobody, others claim she’s an heiress from Taiwan. Many of the wealthy men in Nick’s circle are displeased because they believe that Nick should marry someone with similar social status and wealth.
Nick’s mother hires a private investigator to dig into Rachel’s past. She also tells her friends and relatives to sabotage Nick’s relationship with Rachel. When Astrid finds an incriminating message on her husband Michael’s phone, she realizes he is having an affair. She confronts Michael: he admits that he has a mistress in Hong Kong. Astrid wants to work on their marriage, but Michael leaves her. Astrid follows him to his mistress’ apartment where she learns the truth about what happened between them—Michael was pretending as though they were having an affair so that she would leave him because of how unhappy he had been for years due to how much hate there was from his wife towards his family members, who are all very wealthy people who have high social standing within the community and society at large; these family members of hers include everyone from business partners of hers whom own many companies and businesses across Asia (and beyond) (such as Singapore), Europe (Italy included), North America (Canada included) etc., along with other notable politicians/government officials such as senators, congressmen/women etc., including those holding high ranking positions in major institutions like The World Bank Group, IMF etc.; which led up to this whole scenario being set up by him just so it could lead-up into him leaving her for good after finding out the real reasons behind this whole ordeal occurring between them both).
Rachel arrives in Singapore, and she’s overwhelmed by Nick’s wealth. Meanwhile, the women of his circle try to humiliate her. They don’t succeed because Rachel is able to stay strong and not let herself get upset or distracted. After a few days, Rachel goes on a road trip with Nick to Su Yi’s summer home. There they find Eleanor waiting for them along with Rachel’s father who had been hiding all this time from everyone else but was discovered by Su Yi. Eleanor reveals that Rachel’s mother kidnapped her father years ago and is wanted for kidnapping him again after he escaped from jail in China. The family doesn’t want Nick to marry Rachel since it would ruin their reputation if people found out about their connection with kidnappers, so they forbid him from marrying her. Instead of getting married as planned at the summer house, Nick takes Rachel back to Peik’s house where she stays for several days before leaving alone on a plane back home while Nick remains behind in Singapore without any way of contacting her for fear of being disinherited by his grandmother (Su Yi).
