You Can't Stay Here Forever

January 1, 2023

After her dashing young husband is killed in a car wreck, Ellie Huang learns that he was having an affair with one of her colleagues and impetuously cashes in his life insurance to fund a sojourn at the fabled Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France, with best friend Mable Chou. There, they share long, leisurely dinners with a couple they meet--until secrets boil over. Probing not just love and loss but interracial relationships and issues surrounding Asian American assimilation.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2023
After her husband is killed in a car crash, a recently married lawyer learns he was involved with another woman for years. And it's someone she works with! This disgusting detail is just one piece of an avalanche of bad news that tumbles down on poor Ellie Huang in the first chapters of Lin's debut. By the time she learns that her husband, Ian Anderson, a lawyer of less skill and brains but significantly more social elbow grease than she, was screwing this other woman even before he proposed marriage, she's reeling. It's then that a piece of somewhat better news arrives--Ian had life insurance based on a forecast of his future earnings, and Ellie is the sole beneficiary. In addition, her supervisor at work really thinks she needs to take some time off, as her sentences have stopped making sense. Her best friend, Mable Chou, who has been staying over at Ellie's house every night since the accident, strongly recommends therapy. She could pay off the house, but does she even want to live there anymore? Ellie decides to put her windfall to use flying Mable and herself first class to Nice, and then on to the ultra-luxurious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes. This premise sounds like fun, but Lin's protagonist is no merry widow, and her narrative takes things in a more serious direction. At the resort, Ellie and Mable make friends with a somewhat mysterious couple--the man Asian like them, the woman White. Long-standing flaws in the friendship are exposed by their differing reactions to Robbie and Fauna as well as by Ellie's choppy processing of her complicated grief and rage. (Mable's right--she really does need therapy.) Lin's treatment of the glamorous, decadent setting, with its stream of gourmet meals and artisanal cocktails, is far from escapist wealth porn--she has complicated things to say about privilege and its intersection with race, ambition, and identity. A probing, astute portrayal of a fraught and late-blooming coming-of-age.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 24, 2023
Lin debuts with the thoughtful if uneven story of a 29-year-old lawyer’s search for meaning after the death of her husband. Ellie Huang’s seemingly perfect world is shattered after her husband, Ian, dies in a car accident. What’s more, Ellie discovers during the funeral that Ian had been cheating on her. With an unexpectedly large life insurance payout in hand, Ellie flees to a posh hotel in the south of France, accompanied by longtime friend Mable Chou. The women spend their days swathed in luxury and befriend a couple, Fauna and Robbie. Ellie is particularly drawn to the latter—his “genuine warmth” makes her feel like she’s talking to a therapist. Meanwhile, Ellie grapples with the “garden-variety racism” she’s dealt with at her firm, where a senior partner repeatedly confuses her with another Asian woman, as well as microaggressions from others and conflicted feelings about her Asian immigrant mother. Some of Ellie’s musings are insightful (worse than the racism, for Ellie, is that the partner doesn’t know her), though others are a bit rote (“I like feeling as if other people are making my choices for me,” she tells Fauna), and despite some drama from her attraction to Robbie, the plot fizzles. Nevertheless, Lin piles on the charm with Ellie and Mable’s inside jokes and descriptions of the decadent setting. There’s some fun to be had, but it’s fleeting. Agent: Elizabeth Bewley, Sterling Lord Literistic.

June 1, 2023
Young newlyweds Ellie and Ian are two top-tier lawyers with their whole lives planned out, from their career paths to funeral preferences. But just a few months after getting married, Ellie receives a call that Ian has died in a car accident. Struggling to process her grief with her best friend, Mable, and her mother beside her, Ellie receives the police report of the accident that reveals Ian's two-year affair and raises other questions. Discovering the truth sends Ellie on an indulgent reality escape to the French Riviera, bringing free-spirited Mable along with her. They befriend a couple, Robbie and Fauna, and are soon forced to confront unspoken tensions that threaten to tear apart their long friendship. Throughout the novel, Ellie learns the power of human connections as she heals and finds the push she needs to move forward. Lin's debut is a heartwarming novel about self-discovery after loss, as she explores grief, deep disappointment, female relationships, and the Asian American perspective of living in a dominantly wealthy and privileged white society.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.