Books of the week of Jan. 19

Title: “Crazy Rich Asians” 
Author: Kevin Kwan 
Reading Level: Adult

 Rachel Chu is an economics professor at NYU. She lives the typical life of a struggling academic.  

Part of her normal life is her boyfriend, Nick Young. Nick is a fellow professor at NYU and appears to live the same struggling life as Rachel.  

All this changes when Nick invites Rachel to spend the summer taking a tour of Asia and going to meet his family in Singapore. Rachel starts to wonder what she knows about her boyfriend when they are seated in a private first-class cabin on their first flight out of the USA.  

After landing in Singapore, she’s introduced to the life of the ridiculously rich. How does her normal boyfriend fit into this life of designer clothes, mansions, luxury cars, private islands and more? 

This book is the first in a trilogy that is supposed to introduce modern Asia to American audiences. “Crazy Rich Asians” is a romantic comedy that plays up the ridiculous life of the insanely rich.  

The relationship between Nick and Rachel is a great example of how two different lifestyles can clash but eventually learn to co-mingle. 

Title: “Without a Trace” 
Author: Colleen Coble 
Genre: Christian fiction

Bree Nicholls is part of a search-and-rescue team with her friend Naomi and their dogs, Samson and Charley.  

Bree’s husband Rob and son Davy went down in a plane crash almost a year ago, and Bree has been unable to find the plane. Still, when she isn’t working an emergency search or repairing the lighthouse she lives in, Bree is always going out into the Michigan Upper Peninsula woods to look for them.   

When her team is dispatched to search for two lost children, they immediately set out to find them.  

Once found safe, the children are telling them about a witch in the woods who fed them and put them back on the trail. Everyone dismisses their claims as wild imagination – until Bree’s friend Fay mentions she saw a woman by a cabin in the woods, along with an airplane seat.   

Before Bree can question her further about it, Fay is found dead at the bottom of the cliff she was known to hike frequently. Upon inspection, it is determined Fay was murdered and her body dumped.   

Now there is a murder to solve that keeps pointing to the mysterious woman in the woods.  Bree is desperate to find her, since she might have answers about Fay’s murder and where the crash site is.   

What she doesn’t know is that she is running out of time, and not everyone can be trusted.   

This title is the first in the Rock Harbor series.