Book review: Lucie Yi Is Not A Romantic is a fun, frothy portrayal of single motherhood

Lucie Yi Is Not A Romantic

By Lauren Ho
HarperCollins/Paperback/400 pages/$17.56/Invest in in this article 
3 out of 5 stars

It is not each individual working day that you see a Singaporean girl as the heroine of a intimate novel pushed out by a important international publisher.

And a Singaporean girl who is 37 and expecting? Unheard of.

In a sea of rote romances, Malaysia-born, Singapore-dependent Lauren Ho’s sophomore novel makes a splash with its first premise.

Lucie Yi has made a decision she wishes a little one. In no way brain that she is single at 37, getting damaged up explosively with her fiance or that her reduce-throat organization will not glimpse kindly on a rising star waylaid by maternity or that her conservative relatives – and Singapore society – is unprepared for an unwed lady electing to turn into a mother.

Time and organic clocks hold out for no person, not the very least Mr Appropriate, so Lucie indicators up for a co-parenting internet site, swipes ideal on the best candidate and receives expecting.

The narrative may perhaps be a person of romance – Lucie’s two suitors are Mark, the affluent ex-fiance pulling out all the stops to get her again and Collin, the dorky father of the infant, with whom she is hoping to platonically co-parent and not exactly succeeding.

As romances go, it falls small of the chemistry that was so palpable in Ho’s debut Final Tang Standing (2020), which showcased a sizzling enemies-to-enthusiasts relationship in a Singapore legislation organization.

But then all over again, Lucie Yi Is Not A Passionate is not only a romance.

Ho paints a frank, humorous portrait of pregnancy, supernumerary nipples and all, that will be relatable to those who are mothers and eye-opening to those who are not.

She also will take treatment to flesh out Lucie’s other relationships, from her frosty family interactions to her bond with her most effective close friends, Suzie and Weina.

The trio’s conversations are a hoot. No-filter Weina is manically juggling toddler triplets, when pleasurable-loving Suzie, a Muslim divorcee, utilizes brassy cheer to mask her panic that motherhood will lead to her friends to drift apart from her.

People trying to get hard-hitting fiction about solitary motherhood in Singapore need to glimpse elsewhere.