Kevin Kwan’s books are the literary equivalent of crack. I burned through the entire Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, which clocks in around 1,500 pages total, in four days while the husband was away with the kids – but keep in mind I worked 10-hour shifts three of those days, so it wasn’t as though I was on vacation.

Kwan’s new novel, Sex and Vanity, is a bit shorter than his previous three (only 470 pages, how dare) and like those previous three, I devoured it in one day, which is saying something in this time of COVID-19 when I’m stuck in the house with my kids and my husband and the cats and the day job.

The book focuses, as always, on the upper echelons of American and Chinese society, on their intersections and the places at which they collide – though this time there’s the added tension of our heroine, Lucie, being the daughter of a famous Chinese American geneticist and an old-money New York family.

Having grown up feeling exiled from both cultures, Lucie isn’t sure what to do when she meets the devastatingly handsome, somewhat odd, Hong Kong born and Australia-raised George Zao at a wedding on Capri. Especially when the film-producer bride’s drone pilots catch them… in flagrante. Lucie’s older, supposedly wiser cousin convinces 19-year-old Lucie she must never interact with George again for the good of her reputation. Therefore, she and George agree to stay away from each other and never speak of the incident to anyone. Everything goes absolutely wonderfully until five years later when a “happily” engaged Lucie runs into George in the Hamptons…

Kwan’s novels are definitely not my usual. I’ve been reading more romance the last several years, so it’s not that element specifically that sets them apart but my preference, even in romance, is for science fiction and fantasy. So how is it I end up with these books that focus on the world of the insanely rich and social media famous?

To be honest, that world is as strange to me, if not more so, as distant planets or elven realms. I have never lived in a penthouse in New York, and I don’t know anyone who has. I don’t fly to Singapore for the weekend and neither do my friends. I did get married in Hawaii, but we didn’t have 500 guests. (We had 43.) My engagement ring sure as shit didn’t cost $26.5 million. My husband doesn’t buy me a new Aston Martin every time we fight; he doesn’t even buy me flowers when we fight.

So despite being firmly grounded in… some sort of reality, the world of Kwan’s books certainly isn’t my reality.

Despite that, his protagonists are, at their cores, people with problems. And although some of those problems are utterly ridiculous (aka: stressing out over not liking the couture jacket your future mother-in-law bought for you), Kwan always makes certain that, at least regarding his focus couple, he does full character studies.

In Sex and Vanity, for example, Lucie, though obscenely wealthy via her family, feels as though she is constantly working to earn her place in said family and that, if not for the indisputable bonds of blood and duty, they would be quick to disavow her because she looks like her Chinese American mother. In many authors’ hands, this would be a “poor little rich girl” pantomime, but in Kwan’s, it’s a genuine examination of snobbery, performative liberalism, entitlement, and privilege.

Kwan also turns a biting lens on the way in which racism and classism pervade all levels of society. Money, it turns out – no matter how much you have, no matter what you buy, no matter how generous you are with it – cannot buy acceptance or respect. The repeated lesson of both the Crazy Rich Asians series and Sex and Vanity (and one I think we’ll probably see in future novels) is: Let’s not fool ourselves; of course it matters what you have. But what matters more is who you have and who you choose to share it with.

It’s a take that’s refreshingly honest. Because let’s face it; it’s a capitalist world and people like stuff. That may change for short periods of time out of necessity, but it’s never going to go away. Not everyone is going to have a super yacht or a helicopter or a flat in Dubai. But don’t claim you don’t need anything. That’s crap. Do you need people – good, loving, trustworthy people? Of course. Does it matter where they came from? Absolutely not. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

In most other hands, these “messages” would be dry or preachy, but Kwan has an absolutely biting wit most writers can only lust after, one that both calls attention to the foibles of The Life and softens the blows as they land on individuals. He doesn’t let anyone, not even his protagonists, off the hook, and they take as many verbal swings at one another as they do at anyone else, showing us once more that no one, from the richest socialite to the single mom who raises a debutante, is perfect.

And that they don’t need to be.

Kwan reminds us that people are people no matter the size of their bank account or their ego and that, as with any other group, the society of wealth and privilege is composed of individuals we should really get to know before we pass judgment.

Though we can maybe still hate them a little bit for their fantastic shoes.

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan (Doubleday) is available now.