Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao

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Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao
Narrator: Feodor Chin, Emily Woo Zeller
Length: 9 Hours, 56 Minutes
Published by Simon & Schuster Audio on November 10, 2020
Age Group & Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Representation: Taiwanese American protagonist, love interest and side characters
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before meets The Farewell in this incisive romantic comedy about a college student who hires a fake boyfriend to appease her traditional Taiwanese parents, to disastrous results, from the acclaimed author of American Panda.

Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn’t met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your ’Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents.

Drew Chan’s passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your ’Rents employee to keep a roof over his head. Luckily, learning protocols like “Type C parents prefer quiet, kind, zero-PDA gestures” comes naturally to him.

When Chloe rents Drew, the mission is simple: convince her parents fake Drew is worthy of their approval so they’ll stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo, the wealthiest (and slimiest) young bachelor in their tight-knit Asian American community.

But when Chloe starts to fall for the real Drew—who, unlike his fake persona, is definitely not ’rent-worthy—her carefully curated life begins to unravel. Can she figure out what she wants before she loses everything?

Trigger & Content Warnings: parent with cancer, classism, fat shaming, homophobia, racism, sexism, slut shaming, xenophobia

As much as I loved American Panda and enjoyed Our Wayward Fate, I think Rent a Boyfriend might be my least favorite novel from Gloria Chao by far.

Rent a Boyfriend is inspired by a real-life practice of hiring fake boyfriends to bring home so family members could lay off the pressure to find a husband, though Chao adapted this into a fictional version. In this one, Chloe hires a fake boyfriend (Andrew/Drew) from a company that specializes in this called Rent for Your ‘Rents so her parents would stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo.

(Hongbo is the worst, though. Truly. I feel like I’d hire a fake boyfriend if my parents wanted me to marry someone like that as well.)

From my experiences with Chao’s previous novels, I usually go in with fewer expectations, mostly because there’s quite a bit of exaggeration, so if I go in with my usual I’m just going to walk out thoroughly disappointed. There are a lot of puns and funny moments that made me laugh out loud and to top it off, there’s the fake dating trope, which is by far one of my favorite tropes to read. I loved the banter between Drew and Chloe, especially the concept of Mooncake Points and sheep dressed as mooncakes (which I personally found was super cute, and I love that this pays homage to their heritage).

There are moments of seriousness as well, with a heavy focus on family and community dynamics throughout. At home, Chloe is Jing-Jing, someone who fits all the traditional boxes and hides her real self because the environment she’s in would punish her for it. There’s also an emphasis on trying to uphold cultural traditions as a child of immigrants while also wanting to fit into the culture you’ve been born in, something that deeply resonated with me at multiple points of the book. (I very much appreciated the recognition that there are blunders even within a culture and the different nuances between the diaspora umbrella.) Being a child of immigrants is very complex, and while this may come across as miscommunication to some, it’s difficult to communicate from both ends to make the other understand, though everyone involved cares. Chao depicts so well in her novels and it’s one of the reasons why I enjoy her writing style a lot.

But while I enjoyed this a lot, I did find this overly cringy; sometimes I feel Chao tries too hard and it just misses, making it awkward. Rent a Boyfriend does remind me of quite a few Asian romantic comedy dramas I’ve watched which do have their awkward moments and extreme exaggerations, but while I feel those actually have a good balance, Rent a Boyfriend doesn’t really have that balance. This could very well boil down to personal preferences, but there were quite a few moments that felt very over the top for me and I don’t know… it sometimes felt like a secondhand embarrassment. I’d go into a lot more detail, but then I’ll just end up spoiling parts of the book I’d rather not.

While I did read the eARC of it, I did end up listening to the audiobook narrated by Feodor Chin and Emily Woo Zeller during my reread instead of opting for an eBook. Zeller is a relatively familiar narrator for me, having listened to a few other works before Rent a Boyfriend and I generally enjoy her performances (although she’s sometimes a hit or miss for me), so it was nice to listen to her narrating again!

This was my first time listening to Feodor Chin and while I did enjoy his performance, I do feel it’ll be the same case for me with Zeller being a hit or miss depending on the book but maybe this will change in the future. I think the one thing that stuck out the most in their performance is when Chloe and Drew are texting each other, where they each read the text messages sent associated with the character they were narrating. As someone who’s a fan of full-cast audiobooks, I really liked that choice (perhaps it’s my favorite), although it was only when the two were texting.

Overall, this was cute while exploring family and culture and while I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I wished I could have, one iffy experience doesn’t mean I won’t pick up Chao’s future works.