📚Kyla’s Musings: I MET KEVIN KWAN AND HE KNOWS MY BOOK

(Also, I turned 26, but that's neither here nor there)

Hi friend!

Three things happened recently:

I turned 26,

and

Enjoyed a reunion with some of my oldest writing friends (we’ve known one another since 2020!),

and

I MET KEVIN KWAN

The moment I heard he’s hosting a launch event for his new novel, Lies and Wedding, I knew I had to be there. Even if that meant driving 40mins there during rush-hour traffic after work. His Crazy Rich Asians trilogy was the first time I saw Asian characters being the star of a story that’s fun. Vibrant, joyful, sexy.

His books provided me with so much comfort and entertainment during the pandemic. So much so that when I got the itch in 2020 to write a story of my own, I set it in high society in Singapore—Kevin’s and my common hometown. And of course, that story later became my debut novel, The Fraud Squad.

Kevin Kwan in real life is just as quick-witted as his writing would suggest. He had the audience laughing uproariously so many times over the course of an hour. He even did a live reading of an excerpt from Lies and Wedding, which was so hilarious that I was dying to devour the whole book there and then. Reading Kevin’s writing is like greeting an old friend—there’s something so distinctive about his style and it instantly leaps off the pages across all his novels.

And then I got to meet Kevin! When I mentioned how much Crazy Rich Asians had inspired my debut novel, he interrupted, “The Fraud Squad? I’ve heard of it!”

I just about dropped dead.

It’s honestly a little surreal that I got to meet the mastermind behind the book series that launched a cultural turning point. He helped redefine how Asians are perceived in pop culture, and even how us Asians perceive ourselves.

I also loved meeting fellow authors and book lovers at the event! Thank you to those who came up to me and said very kind things about my books :’)

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The Fraud Squad in a nutshell

Crazy Rich Asians meets The Devil Wears Prada in this tale of an ordinary woman who goes to extraordinary lengths to get her dream job. 

In The Fraud Squad, Samantha Song enlists her friends to help her masquerade as a socialite and infiltrate high society, all in the hopes of getting her dream job at Singapore’s poshest magazine.

But as her fraud deepens, so do her fears of being exposed—especially with a mysterious gossip columnist on the prowl for dirt. As she slowly realizes not all that glitters is gold, Samantha is forced to reconcile her pretense with who she really is before she loses it all. 

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And that’s all from me for now 😊 Take care, friends, and until next time!

Love,
Kyla

P.s. Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement about something that I’ve been BURSTING to share… Will most likely announce it first on Instagram @kylajzhao ;)