REVIEW: The Stand-In (book) by Lily Chu

The Stand-In is contemporary romance. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Gracie is trying to get her mother, who has Alzheimer's, into a better nursing home, but the one she wants for her is more expensive and has a huge waiting list. Gracie's job is a nightmare - she's being subtly harassed by her boss but doesn't feel she can do anything about it because 1) no evidence and 2) she really needs the money. Then she receives a nerve-wracking offer she can't really refuse: get paid handsomely to act as the double of famous Chinese actress Wei Fangli. This puts Gracie in frequent contact with Fangli's best friend, the gorgeous and equally famous actor Sam Yao, who disapproves of this plan but will do whatever is necessary to help Fangli.

The scenes with Fangli and Gracie were wonderful - I loved reading about those two becoming friends. Unfortunately, the romance between Gracie and Sam wasn't as good. In the midst of everything else, it didn't have enough room to breathe. Sam was pretty emotionally walled off - he took on the bulk of teaching Gracie to be Fangli, and one of the most important lessons he had to teach was that everyone watched literally everything he and Fangli did when they were out in public, and every word, gesture, and action had to take that into account.

Gracie learning to be Fangli was great, if anxiety-inducing. That said, the author went a bit easy on her, so situations that should have blown up in her face and ruined the whole plan ended up being much less disastrous than I expected. The story's internal logic occasionally had some issues, as well. For example, Gracie was acting as Fangli's double so that Fangli could rest while still projecting "Fangli is fine" to the world, but at one point Gracie used laryngitis as an excuse to avoid having to talk and there were no real consequences.

The cross-cultural mental health aspects were interesting. Also, I loved that each chapter started with an illustration of Gracie's latest stab at her productivity app (which, by the end of the book, I really wished I could try). I wish the romance storyline had been stronger, although I appreciated that this was a bit of a romance unicorn, with off-page sex (on-page was limited to kissing and hand-holding).

While I had some issues with this book, I still enjoyed it a lot and plan to try more of the author's works.

Extras:

Reading group guide, interview with the author, and blank templates of some of Gracie's various To Do list ideas.