Lauren Ho

Lauren Ho

Lauren Ho is a reformed legal counsel who writes funny stories. Hailing from
Malaysia, she lived in the United Kingdom, France and Luxembourg before
moving with her family to Singapore. Her first novel, Last Tang Standing was
an international bestseller.

The funny, heartwarming new romantic comedy from the internationally bestselling author of LAST TANG STANDING

Lucie Yi has tried love – it didn’t work.

She’s decided that finding Mr Right is a myth, and that finding Mr Right-enough-to-have-children-with
is the next best option. So when she meets easy-going Collin Read on a platonic co-parenting website, it finally feels like she has found her version of happily ever after. But things take a turn for the worst when they move back home to Singapore where her very traditional family and remorseful ex-fiancé await. With pressure mounting on all sides and her perfect plan unravelling, Lucie has to decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for a chance at happiness – and maybe, just maybe, love.

Lucie Yi is absolutely not a romantic. After the dramatic ending of her last relationship, she is done with love for life, but she still longs for a family. So when she comes across a co-parenting website for couples who want a kid without the drama of feelings, she see’s this as her chance. Collin Read is perfect, they get along, he makes her laugh and pushes her out of her comfort zone, so they quickly make the decision to have a child together. But the more time Lucie spends with Collin, the more feelings start to occur, and when you throw in her ex-fiance showing up out of the blue wanting to re-kindle their relationship, Lucie is at a loss what to do. Will she stick with what she knows, the safe and steady Mark who seems more that willing to settle down this time, or will she take a chance on true love. Lucie Yi is not a romantic, but romance will find her nevertheless.

I absolutely adored this book. The feelings, the drama, the friendships, the romance, everything was just perfect and that includes our MC Lucie. After a pretty emotional ending of her engagement, Lucie is off men and romance for good. She’s in her late 30’s, career driven and see’s nothing wrong with staying as she is, that is except for the person inside who is longing for a child and family of her own. She knows her family, and Singapore society as a whole will see her ‘partnership’ with Collin as out there, knows any child will be seen as illegitimate, but she doesn’t care for society’s trappings any more. She’s incredibly strong willed, but also someone who longs for the known, the comfortable, which is why she finds herself getting drawn back into a life with Mark.

Ho keeps our side cast small and intimate, but that just means that all of our characters get enough page time for you to fall a little in love with them. I enjoyed seeing the dynamics of all Lucie’s different relationships. how differently she acts with her friends to her family, with Mark and with Collin. We see two different sides of Lucie though this story, the one who longs for the mundane, the comfortable and known and the one who goes off and has a baby with someone she isn’t in a relationship with, someone who challenges her world view, and I loved seeing these relationships develop throughout the story.

Ho talks a lot about the stigma of raising an illegitimate child in Singapore, how both Lucie and the child would be treated differently in this situation. There’s a lot of pressure from her family to marry, be it Mark or Collin, to become the perfect family that society can accept. And through all this Lucie starts to see the true hypocrisy of societies opinions. She has to fight to be seen in her workplace, especially once they find out she is pregnant, as well as knowing that she is disappointing her parents by not conforming to the norm. Through the story she comes to see things in a different light, how her sister was seen as the problem in her divorce when it was her husband who instantly went and married someone younger, how her friend is looked down on for being divorced, muslin and childless. Things that she couldn’t see before, and she is more than willing to challenge these societal expectations to get her happy ending.

I loved the romance arc in this book. It’s kind of strangers to friends to lovers and it was so well done. Through the story we see Lucie’s internal battle of who to choose, Mark, dependable, her parents love him and wants to marry her and legitimise her child. What more could she want, but Collin offers something else. The unknown, someone to debate with, someone who will keep her on her toes. We see Collin challenge her outlook in life & on society as a whole, and he makes her realise there is more to life than living up to societies expectations.

I think it’s safe to say I loved this book. It did edge more towards woman’s fiction that romance for me, but if anything that made me love it, and the characters a little more. Have I gone out and bought Ho’s previous book? You bet. Will I be picking up anything else she writes? Absolutely. An easy 4/5