I received this ARC from a Goodreads giveaway. I loved getting to read it before it is released. Be prepared to be hungry while reading about all of the amazing and interesting food Eddie eats and cooks during his trip. It was awesome to travel to China with Eddie and his brothers Emery and Evan. The ending is sorta sad. Overall, the book is really great. I highly recommend it. ( )

I listened to the audiobook version and would highly recommend it! ( )

Eddie hang takes us on quite a journey through Chinese cuisine while he plans to cook his way in China.
I have enjoyed Eddies first book and enjoyed it humor and reminiscent childhood and all the funny stories he shares with readers.
This book was similar but left me wanting more. A great story over all and I learned quite a bit about Chinese cooking. But I wanted more and feel like there was something missing. ( )

After a couple seasons of the definitely-divorced-from-the-source-material-but-sharing-the-same-name television show (which is great, but not Eddie's story anymore), I binged on Huang's World on Vice to get back to [a:Eddie Huang|1709433|Eddie Huang|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1359702116p2/1709433.jpg]'s voice. I find it's a mix of the vulgar and the cultured, the erudite and the crass that makes him so compelling (that, and the footnotes).

Double Cup Love (so-named from how a bar served its drinks in double styrofoam cups) as pitched to his editor would be just the tale of a Taiwanese-American child of the diaspora returning to the mothership to see if his cooking would pass muster against the Chinese palate. That voyage is still the bulk of the book. Interwoven, though, are thoughts about his relationships with his siblings and with the love of his life, Dena. As he travels to China, he decides to propose, but then wonders about what it really means to be in love (does she love just what she knows, or the whole package including identity?), the future (would his hypothetical hapa kids want to be Chinese or even consider the culture?), and family.

A fairly quick read, and it made me think about the nature of being a descendant of third culture kids (I was never even taught the Taishanese dialect my grandparents and great-grands knew- learning Mandarin would be useful in going for a China visit, but irrelevant to my history), and how food is still one of the ways I'm connected to my ancestors. If you've been watching ABC's version of Fresh Off the Boat, the real Evan & Emery might be a little jarring (apparently Evan becomes a more tempered mini-Eddie and Emery is a bit of a woke hipster, I guess) but such is the nature of adaptations. Can't say I followed all of the hip hop and street references, but that child-of-the-diaspora talk hit me right in the feels. ( )

As someone who reads usually several books a week, this book took me a whopping 20 days to inch through. Given, I was pretty busy so it's not entirely the books fault...but a fair bit of it actually was.

I'm a big fan of Eddie Huang and have enjoyed the stuff he has produced in the past, even Fresh Off The Boat which I'm realizing is maybe not the most accurate portrayal, but a fantastic TV show nonetheless. So with this next statement I'm going to sum up what is both fantastic about Eddie and what made this book so difficult to get through:

Eddie writes EXACTLY how he talks.

If you've seen him in an interview, you'll know that he tosses out pop culture references and slang like candy, and the footnotes in the book are entirely indicative of that. More pages than not have several lines of explanation which to me seems like it would have been better to just work into the text or leave out altogether.

But we all know how picky I am. (You didn't? It's really picky.)

That being said, the premise of this book is top notch. Eddie goes to China as an Asian-American to see if he and his cooking would be as well received. Everything about that concept was awesome and I enjoyed his portrayal of everyone's reactions to his food. What I found harder to swallow was his ramblings on love...yes, generally my favorite part. Will it work? Won't it work? Who knows? Probably not even Eddie is my guess.

What did I think?: Overall, I found the story to be very enjoyable, but the writing a good bit more difficult to follow. I would have to sit down for larger chunks of time to really get into it but when I did, I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the story that Eddie has wanted to share.

Who should read it?: If you're already a fan of Eddie's or if you're wondering about your own cross-culture heritage, or even if you're just looking for something that will make you look at race and food in a different light, I really think you would probably enjoy this one.




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