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Book review: The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu
Dec. 29th, 2021 05:31 pmThe Donut Trap by Julie Tieu
Genre: Adult/New Adult, contemporary, romance, coming of age
Content warnings: Hospitalization due to drug abuse
Goodreads
This book annoyed me more than I wanted it to.
I love stories about second-gen Asian Americans, and I also like New Adult coming-of-age stories. I'd read from some reviews that this book was more women's fiction than romance, which I was a little apprehensive about, but then again I enjoyed So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park which was also more women's fiction than romance, so I gave this book a try.
Sadly, this book didn't work for me at all, and I'll explain why.
It's probably most accurate to call this book just a contemporary, New Adult coming of age. The pacing definitely didn't fit a romance—Jasmine and Alex got together before the 50% mark, broke up around the 50% mark, but then reconciled a chapter or two later, and the rest of the plot was about Jasmine getting a new job. Personally, I had lukewarm feelings about Jas and Alex's relationship; the chemistry was meh for me. Then again, I've been disappointed by most of the straight romances I've read lately (and a lot of the queer romances too, though they're a little less annoying to me). The problem was, though, that I also didn't find Jasmine's coming of age story to be that compelling.
Jasmine's character arc, I guess, is going from "stuck working at her parents' donut shop, which she hates, because she isn't passionate about anything" to "getting a job at a digital magazine."
Except the issue is that the original problem presented—Jasmine doesn't know what she's passionate about—is actually never resolved. Jasmine doesn't work at the digital magazine because she's passionate about it; she gets the job because her friend, who was formerly employed by the magazine, refers her there.
And, honestly, I do feel salty about that resolution. I know what it's like to be desperately searching for a job and have to shoot résumés into the internet while your Asian parents are interrogating you every day regarding what your future is going to be like. For Jasmine to get the job just because her friend tells the magazine to hire her feels like such a cop-out, and it glosses over how difficult the job market has been for millennials. How many of us suffer just to get minimum-wage jobs after we have college or even graduate degrees.
I admit that although I know what it's like to be a twenty-something second-gen Asian immigrant who doesn't know what to do with your life, I don't know what it's like to be someone who has no passions. My personal struggle has always been "what kind of job should I have while I try to have a novel-writing career?" But what baffles me is...you don't need to be passionate about your day job? Most people are not passionate about their day job, at all?
Jasmine talks so frequently about how she hates working at her parents' donut shop, yet she's apparently been half-assing her job search for a year because she's not passionate about any of the job listings. This just did not compute to me. After I finished law school, I was so desperate for a job that I even applied to internships. If she was really that desperate to escape the titular "Donut Trap," she should be sending her résumé everywhere and making up stories about how she loves every single employer. This also applies to her parents' initial disapproval of her digital magazine job; I can understand her Asian parents pressuring her to find a stable career path while she was still in college, but not by the time she was out of college for a year with no job. After all, she could always switch jobs once she gained some experience, especially while she was still so young (early twenties).
Basically, this book failed in terms of realism for me in multiple ways. And unfortunately, contemporary stories live or die based on realism.
On the topic of Jas's parents, I think it's always a delicate balancing act for Asian American contemporary stories to pose the parental relationship as an obstacle in the story while also resolving it in a way that feels realistic. Unfortunately, many of those books don't feel real to me in that respect, in the sense that you can't write uber-conservative Asian parents and then have them do a 180 and support their child's free spirit in the end. I don't know of any Asian parent who has had such a drastic perspective change, unless perhaps something drastic happened to their child that shakes them up. The Donut Trap isn't quite that bad, but I also didn't really feel convinced by Jas's parents' change of attitude toward her life choices.
While I did enjoy Jas's narrative voice, I found her a hard character to sympathize with. Partly because of the "not passionate about anything" part, and partly because I always found her to be hypocritical—she gets mad that Alex lies about her to his mother, yet she did the exact same thing to her high school boyfriend? She tries to justify it by saying that Alex actively changed facts about her to gain his mother's approval while she just pretended her high school boyfriend didn't exist to her parents because she knew they wouldn't approve, but I fail to see how that difference matters.
Finally, I also want to talk a bit about Jas's college experience, though I'll put that under a spoiler cut since it's not revealed until late in the book.
( ** SPOILERS BELOW ** )
While I usually hate comparing books to other books, I enjoyed So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park as a much better take on a similar theme. Although the protagonist is a bit older (in her late twenties), Jessie Kim also has to move back in with her parents, after being fired from her Wall Street job, and her arc is about rediscovering her passion for cooking that allows her to become a confident entrepreneur who forges her own career path, as well as reconciling her complex relationship with her mother. There's also a romantic subplot, and while it was just okay, it didn't annoy me as much as the one in The Donut Trap did. Just putting it out there, for anyone else who might be looking for an Asian American adult coming of age tale.
Genre: Adult/New Adult, contemporary, romance, coming of age
Content warnings: Hospitalization due to drug abuse
Goodreads
This book annoyed me more than I wanted it to.
I love stories about second-gen Asian Americans, and I also like New Adult coming-of-age stories. I'd read from some reviews that this book was more women's fiction than romance, which I was a little apprehensive about, but then again I enjoyed So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park which was also more women's fiction than romance, so I gave this book a try.
Sadly, this book didn't work for me at all, and I'll explain why.
It's probably most accurate to call this book just a contemporary, New Adult coming of age. The pacing definitely didn't fit a romance—Jasmine and Alex got together before the 50% mark, broke up around the 50% mark, but then reconciled a chapter or two later, and the rest of the plot was about Jasmine getting a new job. Personally, I had lukewarm feelings about Jas and Alex's relationship; the chemistry was meh for me. Then again, I've been disappointed by most of the straight romances I've read lately (and a lot of the queer romances too, though they're a little less annoying to me). The problem was, though, that I also didn't find Jasmine's coming of age story to be that compelling.
Jasmine's character arc, I guess, is going from "stuck working at her parents' donut shop, which she hates, because she isn't passionate about anything" to "getting a job at a digital magazine."
Except the issue is that the original problem presented—Jasmine doesn't know what she's passionate about—is actually never resolved. Jasmine doesn't work at the digital magazine because she's passionate about it; she gets the job because her friend, who was formerly employed by the magazine, refers her there.
And, honestly, I do feel salty about that resolution. I know what it's like to be desperately searching for a job and have to shoot résumés into the internet while your Asian parents are interrogating you every day regarding what your future is going to be like. For Jasmine to get the job just because her friend tells the magazine to hire her feels like such a cop-out, and it glosses over how difficult the job market has been for millennials. How many of us suffer just to get minimum-wage jobs after we have college or even graduate degrees.
I admit that although I know what it's like to be a twenty-something second-gen Asian immigrant who doesn't know what to do with your life, I don't know what it's like to be someone who has no passions. My personal struggle has always been "what kind of job should I have while I try to have a novel-writing career?" But what baffles me is...you don't need to be passionate about your day job? Most people are not passionate about their day job, at all?
Jasmine talks so frequently about how she hates working at her parents' donut shop, yet she's apparently been half-assing her job search for a year because she's not passionate about any of the job listings. This just did not compute to me. After I finished law school, I was so desperate for a job that I even applied to internships. If she was really that desperate to escape the titular "Donut Trap," she should be sending her résumé everywhere and making up stories about how she loves every single employer. This also applies to her parents' initial disapproval of her digital magazine job; I can understand her Asian parents pressuring her to find a stable career path while she was still in college, but not by the time she was out of college for a year with no job. After all, she could always switch jobs once she gained some experience, especially while she was still so young (early twenties).
Basically, this book failed in terms of realism for me in multiple ways. And unfortunately, contemporary stories live or die based on realism.
On the topic of Jas's parents, I think it's always a delicate balancing act for Asian American contemporary stories to pose the parental relationship as an obstacle in the story while also resolving it in a way that feels realistic. Unfortunately, many of those books don't feel real to me in that respect, in the sense that you can't write uber-conservative Asian parents and then have them do a 180 and support their child's free spirit in the end. I don't know of any Asian parent who has had such a drastic perspective change, unless perhaps something drastic happened to their child that shakes them up. The Donut Trap isn't quite that bad, but I also didn't really feel convinced by Jas's parents' change of attitude toward her life choices.
While I did enjoy Jas's narrative voice, I found her a hard character to sympathize with. Partly because of the "not passionate about anything" part, and partly because I always found her to be hypocritical—she gets mad that Alex lies about her to his mother, yet she did the exact same thing to her high school boyfriend? She tries to justify it by saying that Alex actively changed facts about her to gain his mother's approval while she just pretended her high school boyfriend didn't exist to her parents because she knew they wouldn't approve, but I fail to see how that difference matters.
Finally, I also want to talk a bit about Jas's college experience, though I'll put that under a spoiler cut since it's not revealed until late in the book.
( ** SPOILERS BELOW ** )
While I usually hate comparing books to other books, I enjoyed So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park as a much better take on a similar theme. Although the protagonist is a bit older (in her late twenties), Jessie Kim also has to move back in with her parents, after being fired from her Wall Street job, and her arc is about rediscovering her passion for cooking that allows her to become a confident entrepreneur who forges her own career path, as well as reconciling her complex relationship with her mother. There's also a romantic subplot, and while it was just okay, it didn't annoy me as much as the one in The Donut Trap did. Just putting it out there, for anyone else who might be looking for an Asian American adult coming of age tale.
