Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Beautiful half-Chinese Girl is orphaned and taken in by Scottish father’s associate, one of Canton’s Big Pajandrums. Half-Chinese Girl is forced to masquerade as a man so she can be Big Pajandrum’s interpreter and spy. Tormented White Dude arrives in China with the intention of visiting secluded temple, a big no-no since Anal Imperial Court Dudes have forbidden any and all White Dudes from venturing outside Canton’s warehouse strip.

Tormented White Dude is saved from certain death by Beautiful half-Chinese Girl (mistress of wing chun, haaiii-ya!) and finds out she’s a chick, not a dude. Tormented White Dude gets Beautiful half-Chinese Girl to help him escape the confines of Canton, and offers to help her to go to Scotland after the trip to the Secluded Temple. Tormented White Dude and Beautiful half-Chinese Girl engage in naughty shenanigans en route to Secluded Temple. Tormented White Dude experiences satori at Secluded Temple but is caught in Podunk Chinese Town on the way back to Canton. Tormented White Dude is sentenced to death by Super Anal Magistrate Dude and marries Beautiful half-Chinese Girl by handfast on the night before his death sentence.

Beautiful half-Chinese Girl travels to England to inform Bereaved Twin Brother of the tragedy. But—whoa! Tormented White Dude isn’t really dead after all and returns to England, more tormented than ever. Big Misunderstanding ensues, with Tormented White Dude thinking I’m unfit to be a husband; she’ll be better off without me and Beautiful half-Chinese Girl thinking I’m nothing but a burden to him and an unfit wife for him; he’ll be better off without me. Pointless and strange suspense side-plot comes out of nowhere so our intrepid hero and heroine can gang up, kick some ass and discover their True Love for each other.

My biggest peeve with the book is its saccharine quality. Putney’s characters are sometimes so Too Good To be True that it’s about all I can do to prevent myself from hurling. Kyle Renbourne and Troth Mei-Lian Montgomery are good people, but they are so very, very good that they’re bland caricatures. Kyle isn’t nearly as badass as he was in The Wild Child, and the amount of New Age-y internal musing he indulges in grated at me. Troth is Too Good To Be True, period. She knows tai-chi, wing chun, feng shui and a host of other Chinese accomplishments while still remaining suitably modest and insecure about her looks and ability. Despite all these very Chinese accomplishments, though, Troth still strikes a false note.

Which leads me to my second biggest peeve: the Chinese characterization and culture in the book. I am by no means a fluent speaker of Chinese, but I do know enough to distinguish between dialects. Many of the words used in the book are Mandarin, while a few are Cantonese. Since part of the book is set in Canton, and since Troth lives there for much of her life, I was expecting more Cantonese words. Putney got tai-tai right (a phrase that literally means Big or Great Mistress, and an honorific given to the first wife in a household), but others such as feng shui are distinctly Mandarin words that have Cantonese equivalents (fung sui in this case). And what’s with Troth’s constant use of “dear gods!” and “my gods”? As far as I know, Chinese people don’t really invoke deities the way Europeans do unless it’s during prayer or to call for protection. When we exclaim, we tend to use the much more prosaic “aiyah” or “wah” or resort to blue language. Of course, saying “Wah, Kyle really loves me!” isn’t nearly as romantic as “My gods, Kyle really loves me!” even if it is more accurate.

This generic treatment of Chinese culture gave this book a kind of Chinese Lite feeling: half the fat, half the flavor and double the sugar. Troth didn’t strike me as a particularly Chinese person. She’s more like a white woman who happens to knows kung fu and some basic Chinese philosophy. It’s hard for me to pinpoint what exactly is lacking in her character; all I know is, something about her didn’t resonate as a Chinese woman, or any kind of Asian person at all. I kept comparing her with the people in, say, The Joy Luck Club or Snow Falling on Cedars, and she came up short. OK, Amy Tan is Chinese so she does have an unfair edge. But David Guterson, to my knowledge, is not, and he did a wonderful job with the Japanese women in his book. I think Troth’s overpowering blandness despite her über-Chinese abilities has something to do with it.

But overall, the book isn’t too bad. It’s readable, and though Putney’s prose is kind of awkward, it’s not execrable. Once the Big Misunderstanding got under way I perked up a bit (which isn’t a good sign now, is it?) but the rest of the book, despite the setting, is a yawn.