I got to visit Toronto and a Canadian character in Lily Chu‘s new book The Stand-In. The book itself is fairly standard with a few twists thrown in to keep it fresh. And enjoyable read made more personal for me by its familiar setting.
Overview
The book takes place in Toronto. A pair of wildly famous Chinese Actors have come to the city to headline a play about the plight of Chinese Canadians during World War 2. They work by day, and by night they are seen all over the city attending gala events.
Elsewhere in the city, Gracie Reed is getting fired from her company for refusing the advances of her slimy boss. Worrying about how she will get her mother, who increasingly suffers from dementia, into a nursing home where the staff will be able to speak to her in Mandarin when she regresses from reality, Gracie pops into her friend’s bakery for a little comfort. Wearing sunglasses and a ball cap, Gracie gets mistaken for visiting Chinese actress Wei Fangli. Her picture is snapped and appears in the papers the next day.
Wei Fangli is exhausted. When she sees the picture of herself in a location she knows she’s never been before, a plan begins to hatch in her mind. She and her best friend, who is the World’s Most Handsome Man actor Sam Yao, approach Gracie with the plan. Gracie can move into their hotel for the next two months. Fangli will go to work at the playhouse during the day, and a be-wigged Gracie will attend all the evening social events with Sam. Fangli will pay handsomely (about 2 or 3 years salary) for a couple of months of work.
Personal Thoughts
The book was a fairly enjoyable read. I found it pretty average on the whole, but the Canadian touches and the familiar locations elevated a bit for me. There was a bit of a twist to the end that I did see coming, but not until well into the book which was nice for me. The romance between Gracie and Sam is cute once it gets rolling, but he is a real jerk in the beginning and that phase goes on a lot longer than I liked.
I enjoyed trying to figure out which, if any, popular actors were the inspiration for the characters of Sam and Fangli. Ultimately my brain settled on Dilraba Dilmurat and Simu Liu. I tried as hard as I could to make Sam be Yang Yang, but I think the name Sam being similar to Simu, and the book being set in Toronto just overwhelmed my ability to see him as anyone else 😅
My one minor complaint about the story is the overly depressing state of things for Gracie in the start of the book. Just once I would like to read a story like this where the lead didn’t feel forced into the “job” by her circumstances. I don’t think that most young women in their 20s would need dire circumstances in order to convince them to get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to wear designer clothes and eat fancy food for 2 months. It’s not a hardship. Heck, lots of girls would pay to get to live that lifestyle for a bit. Just let the character know a good deal when she sees it and go in for the once in a lifetime experience.
Overall, if you like these sorts of light romantic stories, you will probably enjoy this one too. It’s cute and enjoyable. I think it would probably make a very enjoyable Cdrama romcom. I know I’d watch it.